Gen Z is unhappier at work than any other generation. Here are the two things they want. ( www.businessinsider.com )

IHeartBadCode , 4 months ago

I guess I'll interject with personal experience so take everything that follows as, my most humble opinion of things. I have zero expectation for anyone to agree.

Gen X myself, I am currently in a position that I am completely happy with now. That did not come without a massive fight. This is quite literally my 6th job in my field (system's programming) and now the second longest I've stayed with a company. Quoting from the story:

Without the promise of high returns for their loyalty, Gen Z has learned to follow the money

And this should be people's default until shown otherwise. I cannot count the number of times I've heard "it's just business" in the course of my various jobs. At the end of the day, your employer is looking at bottom line most times. One should not invest themselves into any relationship when the other is simply looking at the piratical ramifications of the relationship and not the broader nature of that relationship.

It's about the money and being able to pay for living expenses, which is reasonable. The dollar went a lot further when baby boomers were entering the workforce. It doesn't go as far now.

Yeah, while suffering when sufferable was okay when a taco was under a buck, dollar doesn't go anywhere today. The amount of time to have shits and giggles with an employer on actual compensation is about seven seconds today. When I first got into the field being underneath the region's average for X number of years wasn't unheard of. And for me, it was all cool because shit was cheap. Today, being under the region's average for a position needs to be measured in X minutes, not this year shit. Employer's that want to play games, Gen Z should not budge for a second on the matter.

When a raise and promotion don't hit swiftly, Gen Z is quick to jump ship

I'll say this. When I got to my current position, I knew right off that this was a good company. How? I can't really put a finger on the how, but having been in two jobs previous that were hyper toxic, I had a feeling. Now, I still didn't play games coming in though. I indicated exactly what I expected and that the job couldn't be "all hands on deck" 24/7, 365. That's just shitty management. I gave them six months to show me the money and if it didn't come through I had every intention to hit the door at the 121 day mark.

There was still friction, no meaningful relationship doesn't have those moments, but the things I was indicating was actually being taken serious, and compensation for kicking ass on my end was forthcoming. If your employer doesn't like talking money with employees, you're going to have a lot of friction and I'm not telling anyone what to do, but employer's feeling uncomfortable with the topic of money should be a red flag for you. If that's the straw that breaks the camel's back or just a stone in the wall for you, that's your call. But in my opinion, employers that get squishy about the word money shouldn't be employers. Not with how this world currently is. Maybe we can go back to the "ha ha ha" playing coy game when a significant percentage of a person's paycheck doesn't have to go for simply feeding themselves.

But Gen Zers "haven't lost the passion for what they want to do,"

And I have never thought they have. The Gen Z that I oversee are some of the best workers I've ever dealt with. But the world isn't allowing them to be slacking on ensuring that proper compensation is constant. Inflation is eating away any kind of raise I can give them as fast as I can give it to them. As far as I have seen, Gen Z is some of the best workers to date to come out of the woodwork and it's actually kind of shitty they cannot have the environment to flourish that I had at their age.

Again, from my personal experience, I think there's a lot of management that's still in the lax mood of how employment might have worked back in the day. When a few years under the line of compensation was just the name of the game. But the game has seriously changed and a lot of the folks my age and the boomers as well are still stuck in "the way things used to be™" and it's so bad right now, no one has time for that anymore.

As I've heard so often, it's just business. But I think employers have been so used to the giving that advice, they are completely at loss when receiving it. The Gen Z I've worked with, and it may be different for others, but the ones I've worked with and the ones I currently manage, they're some of the hardest workers who take everything they do as personal value and will be some of the best employees IF YOU ENCOURAGE THEM AND COMPENSATE THEM.

I too dislike that the world has become really centered around pay. But to quote some Tolken:

So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

Treat your folks like people, and the rest mostly falls in place.

Pepsi , 4 months ago

do you think this article was written to you?

SturgiesYrFase , 4 months ago

Thanks for the wonderful contribution to the conversation.

the_post_of_tom_joad , 4 months ago

He just contributed more to the conversation in one comment than you have managed in all 98 of yours.

There are all kinds of people in the world, and youre definitely one of em

KyuubiNoKitsune , 4 months ago

I feel like I get how you feel in your current job, because I’ve felt that way a few times before. But at all but one of those jobs, the environment slowly changed as the companies started to focus more on the bottom line than their employees. In my current job, I felt amazing, it honestly felt like the company cared about us and it showed, all the people I spoke to loved it there… Until we laid off 2k people last month… Now I just feel betrayed and angry.

IHeartBadCode , 4 months ago

Yeah that's with any position. Things change. More argument about loyalty being a transitory thing. My second job was like that. Was really good and then the company we third partied for was sued by a US State for fraud. When the contract wasn't renewed I thought we'd move on, but I was surprised by how many of our eggs had been placed in a single basket. The vast majority of the company I worked for relied on those contracts to supply jobs, so when that went away the company went from thirty software developers to one. 90% of the company I worked for's value evaporated within two months.

It was this that I also became aware of what the WARN Act was.