A future-of-work expert said Gen Zers didn’t have the “promise of stability” at work, so they’re putting their personal lives and well-being first.
I just saw Docs, nurses and staff who had pensions for 30+ years just get butchered as the new Hospital system took over. Routed it all to standard 401ks. Why put your soul into a company. They will never come through. That ship has sailed.
My only hope is people look around at the fact that one of the few ways to still get a pension is through union work, and the current unionization wave continues into something bigger, better, and greater than we’ve had in the past.
That’s what this new wave of layoffs and threats of layoffs is to help curtail.
That’s one of the risks of not being unionized. My employer can’t touch my pension (not that they would want to since they all came up from the union rank and file too) because it’s all managed through our union contract and there’s no chance in hell that we ever approve a contract that gives them that kind of control.
Even that isn’t complete protection. The government can always change the rules as they go. Not to mention a complete breakdown of society wouldn’t exactly do wonders for pensions and 401k’s either.
It reeks of those headlines saying that millenials/gen zs are “losing interest in buying cars and houses”.
Motherfucker, interest has nothing to do with it. We can’t afford it!
Well interest does come into it. Y’all can’t afford the interest payments on the loans you’d need. Can’t even find a decently priced used car.
Oooh, cool word play! I like it.
Also, I find it funny* that we somehow can afford rent but are not qualified to pay a mortgage with monthly payments that costs the same.
*enraging
I think this is a huge part of the problem. Rental property owners are just a liability buffer for the banks. There should be mortgages at a 1% down payment for first time buyers with a proven track record of making rent payments on time. Maybe the rates are a little higher, with the extra interest giving the banks motivation for taking on the extra risk. Then after the first term the owner can renew with a normal rate.
Doesn’t help with the demand issue, but maybe all the rentals will flood the market after nobody is being punished for not having $100k laying around because they’re busy paying someone else’s carrying costs.
We can afford rent?
The article talks about millenials not being able to afford houses…
I know… I read about it on other sources too and mixed the headlines too. Sorry for the confusion.
Right, like the majority of my millennial friends also work to live, not live to work, it’s just that living is so damn expensive that after we’re done working enough to pay rent, there’s not many hours left in the week to live.
I’m incredibly privileged. I have no debt, no loans, and housemates to split bills with. I only do 20 hours of paid work per week, and my hourly rate is pretty damn decent for my industry (I’m a coordinator in a community centre, I make $32AUD an hour).
I enjoy my work life balance and I wouldn’t have it any other way, I have time to care for my chronic illness properly, and time for friends, and family, and to volunteer in my community for passion projects that could never in a million years pay the bills.
But being in your mid thirties and splitting rent with other people is tough, I fortunately don’t want marriage or kids, but I can’t see how I’d make it work if I did, babies can’t help me split the rent, and most housemates don’t want to live with a crying baby that isn’t theirs.
So when my friend leaves his fun job for a grind company we know sucks our your soul, but it pays 8x as much and it’s “just for 2 years until the deposit is saved for and the baby is born” then it’s completely understandable why the next 24 months of my friends life is consumed with work. Because he needs that work now, so that he can live later.
But 2 years becomes 5 years becomes 10 years because first it’s the GFC, then it’s the housing bubble, then it’s the mini recession, then it’s covid, now it’s whatever the fuck times were living in.
And at some point for millennials (and many younger Gen X’ers) living became surviving and we work to survive, we don’t even know what thriving looks like.
I’m a milennial. I live in a country where we try not to work ourselves to death. Even my employer encourages an active separation between work and personal life. I do not remember what my monthly or yearly salary is, but I am able to have a good personal life with alot of spare time and money for my hobbies.
When I talk to my friends over the pond to the west, I’m always shocked about what I hear. 40+ hour workweeks, hardly any time off from work, etc. I also have a couple of friends in Japan, and their stories are actually worse compared to across the western pond.
Me and my girlfriend rent, which is somewhat unheard of around here. After the war, the economy was based on owning your own home. I made a few stupid choices when I was in my 20s, and I’m paying for them now by renting. The prices of homes are skyrocketing, so that every time I save some money, the prices increase and I have to save more to get a loan. Tough luck, but that’s the way it is. I do not want to get a side hustle just to kill my self getting enough money to buy my home.
I’m curious about how different Gen Z is from Millennials here, because everyone in my age range that I know seems to share this sentiment with them?
I feel like millennials have a “It is what it is, guess ill work til I die” attitude whereas Gen Z have more of a Bartleby the Scrivener “I’d rather not” energy.
Gen x here and we seen it coming as well but no options for us at the time. I don’t blame any of you. Corporate greed and the great 401k lie is bullshit. They want us to work till we’re dead. Screw them.
The great 401k lie?
Can’t speak for OP, but I don’t look at the 401k as a stable retirement vehicle. It’s a vehicle to pump “dumb money” (read: casino chips) into the stock market. If the stock market downturns just before you retire, if the firm managing your 401k makes bad investments, if another 2008-style real estate collapse happens, your retirement fund suddenly has less money in it than you hoped, so you’re gonna have to work longer.
if the firm managing your 401k makes a bad investment
The administrator of your accounts has zero control over most of the funds available in them, their rise or fall, and your funds are separate from any investments that financial institution may or may not have made.
If you have a 401k with fidelity, or ADP or Schwab or Trowe Price or whoever, some of those are banks, soke finance companies, some payroll, anyway, the point is for each, the money in your account is yours to allot and invest as you wish based on yhe invesrment options your company chose or negotiating with them to administer your company’s plan. The admin makes money by admin fees, not by taking your money and reinvesting it in something you don’t know about. Granted, yes if there is a stock market crash, most financial companies will similarly overall struggle, but they have lots of arms and operations (mortgage loans, commercial, consumer banking, investment banking, etc.) and they are 100% all disconnected from the money in your 401k.
That said, 401ks are awful and a sham that were pushed on an uninformed public and we’ve only just begun to see the effects as the first generation reaches end of work age…and can’t stop working. It’ll continue. Props to anyone fighting and organizing against it or trying to avoid as much as possible. System fully bought and broken by greed.
What’s the point of your first two paragraphs? The person you responded to is 100% right. The point is to pump money in to the fuckin stock market so the wealthiest people can profit off that “investment”
The point was is the plan administrator has no control over whether the value of his account goes up and down, which Op said they did. I agree with everything else Op said but think it’s important since most people don’t understand the mechanics to learn about them so added the correct info.
When the plan administrator is picking the stocks in their “Target Retirement 2055” account, I’d say they have a large amount of control.
Now the S&P 500? Probably no control. But is it truly the S&P 500 or some bull shirt index fund from the 401k provider that’s not 100% following the S&P 500?
Thanks for the informed take.
the money in your account is yours to allot and invest as you wish
While true, I’m not an investor, I’m a software engineer. I don’t know good investments from bad, so if I tried to invest myself as an uninformed person, odds are good I will lose a lot of money very quickly. And becoming an informed investor is a lot of time and effort I don’t have. I rely on the managed plan because I know there are professionals handling it.
based on the investment options your company chose or negotiating with them to administer your company’s plan.
My employer actually switched our 401k’s from ML to John Hancock. I had no say in this, I don’t know if JH is more or less competent as a firm than ML. So if I have fewer choices because I don’t know how to invest and would prefer someone to manage it, I have even fewer choices because I don’t even get to choose who manages it.
That said, 401ks are awful and a sham that were pushed on an uninformed public
This is where we most agree. Most people don’t know how to invest, so they either let the retirement funds handle it, or they try it themselves. If they try it themselves, they either have to learn how to invest, or they have to get lucky. If the funds handle it, they can be lured in by “stable, lucrative” investments that turn out to be bad, like Mortgage-Backed Securities. Even informed investors can lose money. No matter which path we follow, it all becomes gambling in the end. It’s unacceptable that retirement funds are treated as such.
The 401k replaced the pension. It used to be that a company would pay for your retirement, now you pay for your own by being forced to pay into the stock market, and it doesn’t go nearly as far as the pensions used to. People are working well into their 60s or older, because 401k’s often don’t pay out enough to live on. It’s another way that companies have figured out to avoid having to pay their employees while pumping up the value of the stock market at the same time.
In the late 80s and early 90s, all the badly managed companies went bankrupt and convinced business friendly judges to delete pensions, too expensive, you see. This left a lot of boomers and their parents with nothing all of a sudden.
The 401k problem is that you are now responsible for managing things and all the liability that brings. Pensions were managed by professionals.
As a millennial: I think it’s the dichotomy between “I play the game even though I hate it because it genuinely feels like the only viable option to have a remotely satisfying life” and “fuck the game”.
As an older Gen Z I concur. Even those of us who aren’t completely fucked are extremely anti-corporate with little loyalty to any job. There’s a guy named Jordan Howlett who I feel sums up the average Gen Z attitude towards all the bullshit in the world really well.
Don’t get me wrong I still work hard and try to do well at my job, but the second I hit my time for the day I’m gone. Work is strictly transactional. No one expects their employer to give them money for time they didn’t work, so I ain’t about to give my employer time for money they didn’t give me. They’ll also fire my ass the second they need a stock bump, so I’ll be damned if I’m gonna stick around if I find something better.
I’m a millennial too, and I see some of this but it only seems to be some industries. I’m a programmer and my coworkers are like 90% about “the grindset”, but people I meet who are in health and wellness are 90% the other way. I also feel like cities and large metros tend to be more focused on work, and less urban areas are more focused on living.
I would say a lot of millenials are this way too, and it’s not fair to say it’s just a gem z thing, but it’s far from the majority… At least around me. There seem to at least be pockets of it, but overall I feel like it’s closer to 20%.
With gen z, I feel like the people are way more heavily skewed the other way. I’ve had gen z general contractors and such just cut the bullshit, tell it like it is, and show that they value ME more than THEIR BOSS. It seems much more universal in their generation.
But that’s just my experience. I dunno which is more universal.
So you’re saying that Gen Z just lay the truth out and finish their statement with “no cap”?
It’s a gradient.
Actually the biggest difference I’ve seen isn’t in effort but ability. I work with everyone from Boomers to Gen Z and by far my Gen Z coworkers have the hardest time with being given a general task and completing it without detailed instructions. Even with detailed instructions, I often have to repeat the instructions due to mistakes and check my younger colleagues’ work more closely.
I think this is, in part, because Gen Z grew up with things that just worked or that they needed to go to a third party to fix if there were issues. Boomers fixed their own cars and did a lot of DIY home repair, Gen X and Millenials both learned to navigate computers and the internet before there were any real instructional guides or helpful UIs. Shit, we used to program games on our calculators for fun. I think many in Gen Z just never had that because many of those DIY elements require proprietary tools now. A smartphone just works and is designed to be so intuitive a baby can figure it out. It’s not their fault, but it does mean that some critical thinking skills are absent because they’re used to outsourcing the solutions to those problems.
But, again, I have never perceived that they’re not hard workers. On the contrary, I’d argue my Gen Z coworkers, when they’re on their game, are way more efficient than everyone else and definitely work smarter, not harder, which I try to learn from them.
I manage teams at a university. Gen Z types tend to be very motivated but won’t easily do useless busy work just cuz you think they should. You need to motivate them. That’s the boss’ job, though.
The real problem was the previous generations who happily devoted themselves to their bosses getting richer.
That’s pretty true of every generation. If you give anyone a seemingly boring task with no explanation why it matters, they’re going to suck at it. What I’m saying is I can’t give my Gen Z coworkers an open ended task without detailed instructions, even when I explain why it’s important.
Man, I barely graduated from high school because I saw the entire thing as busy work.
My grade in any class was dependant on how much the tests were weighed versus any class or homework. Sleeping or reading through class was my usual.
Now that I’m older I see the value in building the discipline needed to do that sort of busy work because if I don’t my house falls apart and such, so there’s that.
I wish it didn’t take me so long to learn it though.
The other half that a lot of kids (me included when I was younger) miss is the stuff that seems useless is still building a base of knowledge and shaping how you think critically. Just knowing more stuff allows you to connect more things in your head, enabling you to problem solve in completely unrelated areas better. It’s not obvious how helpful that knowledge foundation is until you have more life experience.
And hey, at least you got the discipline now.
Half of genx too but nobody ever mentions us.
I want to put the effort I give earning money to be put towards bettering my life. All my lemons are being juiced for someone else’s lemonade.
I agree. And I got extreme with it. because when it comes to making sure all the money we earn goes to ourselves and to our own betterment, the biggest obstacle in the way is the egregious cost of housing. In order to get on top of that hurdle, we either have to become part of the real estate industry, or entirely opt out of it. Well I entirely opted out of it.
VanLife. Yup I’ve been doing van life for the last 3 years. Complete with Solar panels, plumbing, climate control, bedroom, kitchen, storage space. I am in my van right now in one of my membership gym’s parking lot. Every dime I earn goes to me and to whatever I choose, NOT to the extortionate housing industry.
I’ve lost all trust in employers. From large corporations to non-profits to mom and pop to tech startups- I’ve been in it all and I learned businesses do 2 things to their employees:
- They lie to you
- They underpay you
I’m now freelance musician and teacher and I’m on track to make more than any employer paid me. I’m still in debt after having the rug pulled from under me from my last job, but I’m digging my way out on my own. I will never let one person be in control of my income ever again.
I’m now freelance musician and teacher and I’m on track to make more than any employer paid me.
That’s great! Is there some part of this that you think doesn’t fit into free market capitalism? Seems like you’re living the original american dream there.
Is there some part of this that you think doesn’t fit into free market capitalism?
This might be the most passive aggressive comment I’ve ever read.
The answer of course would be “not working for someone else.”
This you?No. There is a classy way to do it. I’m doing it the classy way.
Right. Which is why I found this photo:
Yeah no…So every communist either: !) Figures out how to not be a worker and then abandons the thought 2)Actually manages to be in the revolutionary council but may get assassinated later on 3)Never had any motivation at all, writes articles like this.
Bro, stop saying “communist” you are just embarrassing yourself.
Can I put forward a motion that we start treating this cringe McCarthist shit like the edgelord fodder it properly is and make those who use Communist scarecrows the laughingstock they deserve to be ? Like these idiots can’t grasp Market Socialism to save their life and are still high on gas lighting from the 1980’s.
I’m not American or a fan of market socialism, because I understand it perfectly well, not because of a lack of understanding. Socialism always leads to greater restrictions on the person, and you can’t deny that, your cronies literally advocate for it. Take socialized medicine, politicians immediately start passing laws and regulations to restrict your choices in order to keep costs down, and present it as ethical because “we’re all in this together”. Next thing you know, a workers compensation board has reached the level of petty that a carpenter can be fined for wearing a sleeveless shirt in July, a rule passed because of the risk of sunburn to the shoulder. I am not making this up, I was the carpenter.
Oh Baby cakes! I know socialism passes restrictions on people but are you seriously so petty that you blame workers protections nipping you for wearing a light shirt on sunny day as the height of your problems? Courting sunstroke on a worksite isn’t fucking smart.
And I am sorry but if your government is cutting costs to your healthcare you should probably organize because even a good system needs occasional correction. It’s a long fucking way from letting people be swamped with debt to keep their loved ones alive just a little bit longer. I know people in perpetual fear that a spate of unemployment will destroy their long term health because they can’t afford the insurance themselves. No system is perfect but you can whine about it not meeting your standards but private healthcare is only so great as you keep working. You get fucked up at work and all those “choices” you’re so proud of are just gone.
It was an example how fast they can start micromanaging the smallest details, and you knew that. You don’t think a government had time to make rules like that is an issue? You’re intentionally missing the point, they’ve done this to all aspects of society. I want the fucking guns back too, and any semblance of national pride. You organize anything effectively, the current federal government invokes the war measures act and rescinds it immediately as soon as the review process starts, because there was a glaring loophole left in the old legislation, that it doesn’t get reviewed to see if it was necessary, if they quit using the power in time. We literally have zero rights in Canada because of this
… The War Measures Act? The one that was repealed in like the 80’s?
Wait, are you griping about the Emergencies act? The one that requires the sign off of two levels of democraticly elected government Provincial and Federal and a full independantly run inquest every time it is enacted? Ohhhh you’re a Convoy cocksucker! It all makes sense now.
There are exactly two places in the world out of the host of existing democracies that have a constitutional right to firearms with zero public safety checks requiring limitations like licencing and and if you like the US or Guatemala’s gun policy and private healthcare system that much you can just move there instead of ruining this country by trying to turn us into America’s mini-me.
And really? No protections? You really REALLY don’t understand Canadian law at all do you? You know… You could actually read the results of the inquest right? It’s been out for a year.https://web.archive.org/web/20230217232958/https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/final-report/
Or maybe you just think even the most soft touch of the protective measures a government makes to protect the welfare of the people and infrastructure key to it’s it’s ability to operate is too harsh ? No wonder you’re so upset, you just can’t handle a democratically elected body telling you that you can’t do absolutely anything you want because you are an entitled whiny baby. Grow up.
So you don’t remember the government claiming it needed a 30 day extension and then suddenly deciding it didn’t need it at all, when the Senate made it clear they were actually going to review whether it was needed? That the two levels you’re talking about? Cause they dodged that you authoritarian clown.
“Many of us built, whether it’s bought homes or whatever, based on this promise of stability,” Jesuthasan said. “There was this expectation that the tail was bigger. And we took on liabilities and obligations early on because of that tail. I think this generation has seen that tail dissipate.”
In other words, when millennials did what their parents did and assumed if they worked hard they’d get to live a decent life. Then they got fucked by companies whose priorities became getting as much out of their employees as possible while investing in those employees as little as possible.
As a millennial, I hated the idea of debt. As a result, I’ve had no debt beyond college loans despite being able to afford a lower middle class lifestyle. It took me never living alone (roommates, SOs) but I did it. The education was bullshit and the loans were obscene but I got a piece of paper that helped me keep my job. After working in the public sector for 20+ years I actually had my loans forgiven… and now rent is going through the roof to compensate. Still, I might actually own a home before I’m 50, assuming current and future landlords don’t decide to take me for all I’m worth.
When I finally own a home, I’m sure it’ll get washed away by the thirteenth “century flood” that year or some other bullshit thanks to climate change. So fucking glad I decided not to have kids. Fuck this world.
If it makes you feel any better, the rent was going to skyrocket regardless of the loan forgiveness. That’s just the generations before us people trying to make sure they get to the top so they can pull the ladder up behind them.
We have no loan forgiveness here in Canada and rent is still going up faster than anyone can afford. It doesn’t help that all of the politicians are landlords.
I just saw the other month that only like 46% of Millennials own a house, compared to the 65% average of other generations. And of those who don’t, 52% of them aren’t saving for a down payment, often because of how shitty wages and even finding a job are. On top of that, only 20% of houses are currently affordable for the average American worker, down from 60% in 2016. And people wonder why we have no faith in the system.
Gen Z saw what happened to Gen X and to us Millennials, and don’t expect it to get any better for them either.
My only hope for owning a home is my parents dying at this point
A perfect example of why is, my dad used to work at Boeing, made $30/hr in the 90s
I have a friend (of my generation) who also signed on at Boeing, they’re paying him $26/hr, 30 years later
That extra $4 pays for the CEO’s superyacht.
It pays for the amazing views out the side of your depressurized 737, those don’t come cheap you know
Millennial here. I was talking to my mom about this recently. We worked out the math of what I earn vs my dad at my age. Then we looked at what I laid for my house vs what they paid for theirs. For context, my parents still live in the same house I grew up in, and my house is in the same neighborhood and roughly the same size.
Their house in 1983 dollars would be about $165k today. My house was $275k in 2019, and that was well below most reasonable comps at the time. Now it’s supposedly worth $400k. At least that’s what my taxes and insurance are based on.
My dad had a solid white collar job. Not c suite, but firmly middle class at the time. I’m finally in a similar position after the 2008 and 2020 bullshit.
His salary when he was about 40 would be $140k in today dollars. I earn nowhere near that and have way more house debt.
Putting it in those terms was really eye opening for both of us. Most of my friends don’t have kids and don’t own a house. Shit, some still even live at home with their parents. We’re definitely not doing better than our baby boomer parents. The American dream died a generation or two before mine.
That sounds like a horrible Kafkaesque nightmare. I fear my country is heading in the same direction. I’m saddened that it got so bad in the US, and that the “obvious steps in the right direction” were simply voted against. I’m reminded of the Community episode where they explore the alternative realities. We’re in the “Bernie lost to HIllary” one. Before that happened, I told a friend “Well… if Bernie loses, it’s all going to shit”. Sucks to have been right, although it started some time ago with Reagan gutting the middle class.
We either figure out how to redistribute wealth in the society in the next 30 years, or… “going to shit” will be the least of our problems.
X’er here. Been doing this my entire life. Fuck the corporate overlords. Everyone should prioritize life over work. Unfortunately for most the world is against them in this regard.
Yeah I mean mad magazine was talking about gen x like this back in the 90s. But the media needs to pretend everything today is new or they’d have nothing to print.
Also, if you see some of the articles and movies from the 60s/70s, they were saying all this stuff about baby boomers too.
I saw somewhere where they gathered examples of “people in their 20s don’t want to work the same way the folks in their 40s did at their age” dating back to at least the mid nineteenth century.
I’ve also seen the point made that a lot of the assumptions about the boomers having it nice and easy comes from media products that strategically wanted to frame things as doing great, as they thought that’s what drove media consumption, folks wanting to feel good about the world. Now the general understanding is keeping people in an eternal state of panic and dread will keep those eyeballs glued to the product. Bad stuff happened back then too, and plenty of it should have been a more prominent source of dread by today’s standards.
Further, to the extent it was true, it was mostly a USA thing coming from a couple of phenomenon: -Every other major industrial economy had been severely impacted by World Wars I && II, with USA barely having a scratch. So for a good while, most of the economic activity favored the USA across the globe. -Factors like racism where huge swaths of the USA population ‘didn’t count’ when people were thinking how good things were going.
Checking in. We’re some of the few who didn’t adopt the boomer dream.
But we’re also demographically a lot smaller than boomers, millennials or zoomers, so we kind of flew under the radar.
Yep. Gen X didn’t really exist.
For you what does prioritizing life over work look like exactly? Genuinely curious.
It means only working as hard as you’re paid to. If the multi-billion dollar megacorp you’re working for is only paying you $18/hr, you only put in an $18/hr effort; i.e. Work just barely hard enough to not get fired.
Yeah, this is generally an ok attitude.
The only exception I think is worth thinking about is “Don’t minimum-ass it in a way that makes it suck for your peers.” Like, don’t work nights and weekends to hit unrealistic goals, agreed. But like I won’t push up half-assed untested code that you’re going to have to maintain. I’m having trouble coming up with good examples off the top of my head.
The Corp is giving you the bare minimum they are legally required to give you, so you should do the same. This means clocking out at 5 sharp, and not picking up extra responsibilities without a pay increase.
But it also means you still have to put in the minimum required, show up on time, do all of the work. But keep in mind the Corp is the enemy here, not your coworkers. Don’t leave them waiting on you for a deadline if you can bust it out in a few minutes
That’s the style I generally strive for. I take pride in doing my job well, living up to standards that I set for myself. I also don’t do anything extra and will leave a job site if a job is designed in a way that has me sitting around waiting on other people. I say no to employers/clients all the time and will happily/tactfully explain why, if asked. My employers/clients know that it’s a two way street with me, and I will not be exploited or let anyone on my team (on a given day) be exploited. Unfortunately, I had to spend over a decade being exploited to get to the point in my career were I’m valuable enough to be able to put my foot down. So there’s that…
That’s a great point and actually a perfect example of how I really feel when I say “work hard enough to not get fired”. Should also add, “so long as it’s not at the expense of your coworkers” to that saying.
I was curious about Perhapsjustsniffit but thanks for your input as well
For one of my friends, who I respect greatly, it means coming to terms with the fact that it’s not plausible for them to get a job that they’re passionate, in their field of study. They have less identity based attachment to the job they do have, and whilst they do generally like their job, they see it as a means to an end.
They know they probably could find a better job, perhaps even one in their field, but they’re happy with the balance of priorities they have now because it’s mostly working.
I’m 50 now. I’ve never held a job more than 5-6 years my entire life and I have changed professions many many times. I never bought into that work till you die life. I only worked to be able to afford the things I actually wanted and I prioritized adventure over stability. I moved all around the country (Canada) and travelled internationally by holding a job long enough to get to the next place and so on. I’ve recently learned I probably have ADHD which could account for some of my lifestyle choices.
After I was married my wife and I decided to start working toward a zero bill goal. We paid off all of our bills and eliminated wherever we could. We prioritized getting in nature and our own form of travel over keeping up with the Jones’. We saved everything else and invested what seemed a meager $500 into canadian cannabis just prior to legalization. Mostly on a whim. I personally learned to trade and moved that until it was enough to buy a house and some land where no one else wanted to live. We put some minor infrastructure in to help us grow food and invested in our land. All other investments, savings and any so called retirement went towards being mortgage free with enough space and the infrastructure to grow our own food. We have zero savings and less need for even a bank account than most. We recognise we were and are fortunate to get to where we are now. There was a lot of luck along the way.
Now we have a family. Our house bills include yearly taxes, internet and unfortunately power. Our truck is 16 years old and paid for. We forage, fish and hunt and grow pretty much all our own veg. I don’t work due to serious illnesses (yay Canada that I’m not way in debt there) and my spouse works about 5 months out of the year at a seasonal job so I don’t drive her crazy. We make less than $35,000/ Canadian a year and that’s enough. Our three kids wear second hand clothes except for outerwear because being dry and warm is important, they know how to pirate and adblock and they can grow food and cook. Our wants are few which makes our needs even less.
The old way was to convince people to devote their lives to the company, only to be laid off when convenient. The new way is to treat a job like a job and live your own life.
Job keeps me fed, housed, sane, and puts some fun money in my pocket. The second it fails at any one of those, start looking.
For me, it’s shutting out work correspondence right at 5pm. Working from home most of the time. If some life circumstance vaguely demands my time in a way that conflicts with work, the life circumstance will win.
It’s not horribly absolute. I did connect when I got a request to help some customers in Ukraine, figuring the very least I could do was help them out. Another customer that generally represents 30-40 million a year of revenue needed help off hours in December, and I obliged. In the event of a genuine emergency I’ll be flexible (but in a hurry to get it over with, even if it means “slap flex tape on it and it should hold things over” sort of approach).
Keep in mind this is grading on a curve. A close colleague works in person at the office 6 or 7 days a week, generally for 9 or 10 hours, and on top of that spends much of his home time remotely working on things too. He complains that if not everyone matches his work ethic that we won’t hit “the schedule”, and I respond if that’s the case, then there’s a problem with “the schedule”, not with people failing to work enough. Eternally poor planning with arbitrarily declared deadlines are not a legitimate source of emergency, and I won’t play along with that.
Also genX, I went hard in corporate life for a long time, survived many rounds of layoffs and watched good friends go for reasons that are bad ones- until one fine day I was laid off with 18,000 others. Meanwhile they kept hiring H1B workers and issuing stock dividends and doing mass-layoffs every 2 years to keep the regional labor market full of competition and wages depressed. Knowing that they’re not interested in keeping their promises of stability and prosperity goes a long ways towards me never going above and beyond
Agreed, , basically what the article here is saying that the kids were watching us and they don’t trust anybody. Hell, I never heard my Grand dad yell louder about what I am making. He worked union construction in the 80’s in the city I live in now and though I make more than a lot of construction guys I know on a similar docket I’m only making about 3$ more than what he did back then. He ranted for an hour when I told him what the standard rents and apartment sizes in my area. There is nothing so satisfying as having an stenetorian 86 year old positively enraged on behalf of the kids about their pay, working conditions and quality of life.
It’s been my personal mental balm to the placid incuriousity and damn near sociopathic lack of empathy I catch off some of the boomers and the elder millenials who picked up trades work immediately after highschool.
Also GenX. Not being able to afford treatment for mental illness robbed me of 20 years of living. I had better insurance in the 90s than I do now. Never thought I would miss my HMO from then.
“If you like your plan you can keep it”
Everyone should prioritize life over work.
I agree. But also: nobody should expect others to carry them. You have to balance these two things in your life.
Since many people here are American, I feel like I need to clarify a bit. I live in a country where almost nobody works over 7,5h per day. And when they do, every hour is compensated for, sometimes with 150%/200% surcharge. I find it extremely weird that some people in a 1st world country work overtime for free, or generally speaking work over 8 hours per day on a regular basis.
Meanwhile, celebrities including Whoopi Goldberg have dismissed their economic struggles. She said they couldn’t afford to buy a house because they’re lazy and “only want to work four hours” a day.
Is every single host of The View a giant piece of shit, or what? We saw this exact same bullshit just the other day from one of the other ones. They should change the name to The Karen.
The problem, or at least one of them, is that those words resonate so well with her viewers. I am not excusing her, but if she did not say them then someone else would - so yeah it’s more the game than the playa.
People in Gen-Z just don’t work hard as often. Ofc there are reasons: why should they, when their work isn’t valued/rewarded properly? So then to the self-ish/-centered crowd, all they see is that they get served less well by their Gen-Z
slavesworkers than the Millennials who put in more of an effort, but rather than take ownership of that and like go somewhere else that pays their workers better, they instead blame the victim. Like, “I paid a whole dollar for this burger - why aren’t you smiling at me harder as you walk out in the rain to hand-deliver it to me?”Like if you have to live with your parents or roommates anyway, and have little to no hope of ever owning your own home, or possibly even car, and also can’t afford health insurance, to get married, and after over-turning of Roe v. Wade to have sex (even if you were married), etc. then why should you work more than the bare minimum to survive?
If you kick a dog often enough, it stops being happy to see you.:-( Boomers solution: it must need to be kicked harder, until it complies and wags its tail enthusiastically whenever you come home. I am sorry if it breaks your heart to read that sentence… but fwiw, at least it proves you have one:-).
People in Gen-Z just don’t work hard as often.
Is that really true though? I’m Gen-X and they said the same thing about us, and then the Millennials, and now the current gen. I think quit quitting is largely a myth and plenty of GenZ are working their asses off. They’re not getting the same rewards. But I can also understand if some them do choose to opt out. But the fact that they can’t afford to buy homes is not proof that they are lazy.
That cycle will continue until we’re extinct, because almost without exception, we conflate generations with age ranges… so every generation will think the one behind it is lazy because they judge that next generation when it’s made up of a bunch of kids.
And no shit, kids aren’t great workers :shockedpikachu:
The kids grow up, but the reputation lingers… until the next batch of kids enters the stage, and wouldn’t ya know it, them kids are absolutely shit workers! :shockedpikachu:
Rinse and repeat until the oxygen concentration in our atmosphere is no longer sufficient to support human life… so… couple more decades? /shrug
That’s a good point but… I honestly do not know. We used to have access to “reporting” that would tell us “facts”, but now everything is commercialized to sell us whatever story seems most appealing to us (positively or negatively, whatever you will click on really: sex sells, fear even better, anger best of all) - so I’m sure you can find reports on all possible sides telling different stories, all with short-changed selections of facts and virtually no analysis to speak of. Unless a highly-trusted source chooses to take on a precise topic and you happen to have consumed it already (and remember it), you are basically SOL. Like, how do people even buy things anymore, either online or in physical stores, except by just gambling and hoping for the best from a purchase? Clothes just flat disintegrate, … okay, I better keep focus here:-).
I tend to think that Gen-Z likely do work less hard - as a trend if not individually ofc - b/c of the reasons behind it, after all why would they work equally as hard, when they are being offered a fraction of the compensation? BTW I never said that they were lazy, and I tried to go to some trouble to explain why it is understandable how they are reacting - e.g. in the kick the dog example, it’s not the dog’s fault for not liking the master that kicked it so very, very often?
As one example, something that enticed previous generations to work hard was to own a home. But now, if that is off the table… (or maybe, if they think it is? I’m not certain of this aspect) then they don’t need to work as hard, to own something that they can never own anyway?
Another thing that enticed previous generations to work hard for was to get a college degree. But now, with that costing >5x as much, and it being worth sth like 1/10th of what it was to previous generations (where are these magical “jobs” that offer things like “benefits” - and “stability” and “pensions” are pretty much flat gone, as too are the social security along with medicare/medicaid safety nets, etc.), plus colleges themselves are fairly predatory, many just don’t bother. But there’s a whole spectrum here: if they do go, they often don’t work hard in them - not that colleges demand that anymore, b/c again, they are predatory, and their purpose is to pump either the kids or their parents (or loans, whoever signed them) for as much money as they can get out of them, which doesn’t happen if they flunk out too awfully early…
Still another thing used to be to get married, have kids, and independent of whether owning a home or not, to raise a family. This we can directly measure: isn’t Gen-Z doing much less of any of this?
Boomers worked hard b/c they saw value ahead in doing so. Gen-Z is getting their quality of life now, while the getting is good, b/c that is all that is left for them to be able to do.:-( No matter our age, we will all die sooner, and in much greater levels of pain and misery (if only second-hand by hearing stories of the exploitation going on around us) than our parents’ generation - the Republicans have already seen to that and will most definitely continue to push much harder on that front still. :-(
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Precisely my point. Like when you kick a dog, why would it say “thank you”, or “please sir, but could you kick me again some more, and this time harder”? THAT WOULD NOT HAPPEN!
The younger generations have given up, hence they do not work as hard, but it wasn’t their choice - they simply reacted to what was offered them. From a pure game-theoretical standpoint even, it is the right call to maximize gains and minimize losses, given the rules under which they are “playing”.
But the people blaming the younger generations… it is like blaming that dog, rather than the one who kicked it - it makes no sense?
The cost of living crisis in western countries at the moment feels like a stand off between boomers and gen Z over exactly this. One one hand you have the boomers expecting the same service and quality while paying less and less, on the other you have gen Z who refuse to do it for the pittance. So the cost of living is now skyrocketing in an attempt to strong-arm gen Z into compliance.
I understand that it looks that way from the outside, but that is far too simplistic - i.e., correlation is not causation, especially where the latter is already known. What is CAUSING so much pain right now is corporate greed, and what ALLOWS that is primarily voting Democrat vs. Republican, with the heaviest voting block being evangelical Christian vs. not. A complicating factor is that baby boomers are somewhat insulated from the worst effects, plus their retirement savings are often tied up into the stock market that is what rich people want to succeed, plus they don’t do themselves much credit by being remarkably unsympathetic to the plight of how the younger generations are being sold into corporate near-slavery, plus on top of it all they do trend more towards voting conservative to begin with, etc. But e.g. a young Republican does far more harm than an old Democrat, i.e. age is one of the more minor correlating effects.
An illustration may help: right now if a 10-year old girl is raped by her very own father and gets pregnant, the primary discriminator of whether she will live or is consigned to have a VERY good chance of dying (in agony) is whether she lives in an area that votes primarily Democratic or one that votes primarily Republican. This is the stuff that is literally life and death.
Beyond that, the effects of inflation, the availability of jobs, whether the government of the state that you are in is bankrupt, and/or has any/no competent/sufficient firefighters/police/teachers/medical staff/etc. all correlate with Republican vs. Democrat. Look at COVID death rates to see which area is which, especially after the vaccine existed.
In short, there are two different Americas right now, one being mostly third-world (except still has internet and TV and cars and stuff, but I still would not call it second-world when the child mortality rate is somewhere between Rwanda and Uganda, and has been about that level for decades) and the other first-world. And they are tearing at each other, one being never happy with the way things are and wanting to go still further back in time, floating such thoughts as whether women should still be allowed to vote, plus literally calling for a “national divorce” (with prejudice - i.e. a literal, murderous, bloody Civil War part 2), and the other also wanting basically not that. So similar to Brexit, we are basically ready for Amexit? Except from ourselves. Which will affect the entire fucking world b/c if Biden loses and Trump comes in again, what are the chances that this time he discovers that he can control nukes?
Anyway, yes old people helped bring this about, but mostly by inaction and while I am not saying that mistakes were not made, I am saying that much of the media rhetoric about the generations being at each others’ throats is… if not entirely false, then at least mostly so. i.e., it is not old people attacking the younger ones, it is corporations attacking us all (but who would like it very much if we would simply pretend that they were not involved? thus they bought up all the media, and now good luck hearing a story that ever says that they are complicit in anything).
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They all belong to a specific economic class.
Money rots your brain.
Promise of what? I think the major change with millennials and gen z is that we see through the dogmatism that is corporate culture. Even if the promise was that of the “American dream” 50 years ago it’s quite clearly not worth it to sacrifice your youth and 1/3 of your life (another third being sleep) to afford to sit around in a house and squeeze in stagnant social obligations for the rest of your life.
Life is what you make of it, and familial loyalty to a company that doesn’t care about me just doesn’t cut it.
A corporate ‘promise’ is a verbal unenforceable contract. What do you even do with the promise of a habitual liar?
A house? In this economy?
A tent in the designated homelessness zone is more apt
A homeless zone? In this society?
Hmm yeah you’re right. I guess I will just scuttle around the sewers on all fours and eat trash
You can order pizza according to the cartoons I grew up watching. It didn’t ever cover how the teenage turtles and their rat mentor made money. Try to find a reporter in a jumpsuit she might be able to help.
Surely you overestimate their chances.
Too bad the Force isn’t with us.
Some of us gen x saw this in high school but were surrounded by angry boomers who treated us like we were idiots.
Then don’t work at a corporation. There are plenty of startups / small businesses out there who are in dire need of talented people.
In my experience, small businesses can be even worse, because they’re run by the kind of middle management that everybody hates in a big company. Except now they’re the boss and have final say over everything that happens in the company.
My brother works for a small business. They got him in the door by being his buddy, just fun-loving fellow millennials who love to have a great time at work while having plenty of opportunities to move up within the company!
…he hasn’t gotten a raise in three years, and has had myriad issues unfairly pinned on him (legitimately) so he can’t move up in the ranks.
They’re just young boomers doing the same boomer shit, but they’re a little younger and cooler, bro!
Yes, but there’s a ping pong table and open bar dontchaknow?
Yep, worked for a small business as a teen. My experience was that the boss was decent at giving us raises every year, but got pissed when people gave us tips, never had enough people on hand to account for kids going on vacation or getting sick, and, as my buddy would say, “he’s the first person to tell you that there’s more than one way to skin a cat - but his way is the right way.” Dude couldn’t understand why kids on their summer vacation wouldn’t want to work 45 hours a week.
My experience agrees with this 100%.
The single most toxic place to work is a startup. The people who make it there tend to be entitled narcissists.
Start ups are still corps bud.
Not gen z, but God bless 'em. I came to the same conclusion after the first round of layoffs at my first job. They laid off the experts because they had higher salaries and kept the lower paid, less skilled workers. It was completely absurd. Then it happened again, and again. Why would I ever expect my work to treat me with any loyalty or concern when no employer has even shown me or mine any?
Companies were never loyal to worker not in 80s and not now. They are loyal to profit 😁
You mean they saw what happened to their parents.
You get what you pay for, pay your employees shit and get shit. Completely remove all rewards for hard work and no ones going to be incentivized to do more than the bare minnimum.
At the last big boy firm I worked at, they set the metrics for getting a bonus so unrealistically high that it disincentived staff from even trying. It had a negative effect where everybody purposely did just enough to not get fired rather than killing themselves to come up short and get nothing.
They wanted something stupid like 2,500 billable hours which do not include meetings, continuing education, mandatory volunteer time, etc etc etc.
The biggest rock stars in the industry struggle to hit 2,000.
So we all dropped down to the 1,500 range because fuck that shit.
2500 / 40 = 62.5
They expected you to work an additional 10.5 weeks, and didn’t count half your duties? No wonder you guys didn’t even try.
What was their reaction the next period? Did they lower the goal or double down and keep it high?
Double down. I’m not sure what happened after. I left about six months later.
The few people who stuck it out have since ascended to great heights. At the time, our regional had been absorbed by a national. I think the regional guys were trying to play tough to show off to their new overlords.
I don’t know, but I suspect that the national was the lesser of those soul crushing forces.
Regardless, you’ve got to be a ruthless sociopath to make it big in that industry. Step on your mother’s grave in Jack boots to get one rung higher type of stuff.
I’ve been playing down in the minors for five years now for about one third the money I could’ve had by now if I had stayed. I regret nothing.
I’m currently a manager but I’m sending in a proposal this week to take a pay cut and work remotely in a non-manager role so I can move way north and get an acreage. Less responsibility, less money but better life. I like the company but I want a life not a career.
It’s shocking how much bare minimum work happens, or how much tossing over the fence and “yeah we’re aware we’ll fix it later” style approaches happen at my job. We can’t hire the right level of expertise because we won’t pay for it. I’ve got a foot out the door and it really doesn’t matter where I go because it will be a raise for the same stupid kind of environment, but at least it’ll be a raise.
The internet is the reason they get to grow up with tons of details about how and why these promises are bullshit and vapor.
I’m immediately click bait suspicious of any reporting that’s generation says this.
This generation says they’re not falling for your clickbait headlines!
Yeah and a “future-of-work expert”? 🤣
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“for more money than I need” - that’s the real trick, employers aren’t exactly looking to give people more money than they need, it’s sort of the exact opposite typically
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I’d say your doing better than many if you have surplus money! But to your point, I do agree slaving away all day to make someone else rich sucks
This is GenZ we’re talking about, I’m from a fairly LCOL area, so most people I know, don’t have many responsibilities and rent and food aren’t too high. So I don’t think for my situation it’s that uncommon.
Lol I’m just about to ask my boss about raises this year. Let’s see what happens… 100% of my pay is going into cost of living right now
Edit: no idea as she hasn’t heard anything from HR. lmao I doubt we’ll be seeing much of anything even though we increased profits by 4 million a year this year.
And yet most of us are making way less than we need
dem bosses tho
To add, what you need NOW is not what you need over your lifetime. Health insurance is needed regardless of your pay (outside most folks’ 20’s) and retirement savings are exactly what you don’t need now, but eventually will.
In GenZ?
I want to earn enough to live, and not work more than is required for that.
Management couldn’t fathom this at my first job. They’d tell us that everyone couldn’t be CEO but there were still great careers, and they didn’t understand when we asked about jobs where we wouldn’t climb the ladder necessarily, just do meaningful work.
Corporate America is a shit lifestyle and double digit iq is enough to realize that.
