our Gen Z employees want to be coddled and are struggling with the realities of work

by Alison Green on April 16, 2025

A reader writes:

As a millennial (I’m 40) who spent years being mocked and maligned for enjoying avocado toast, I’m averse to generational generalizations.

That said, I’m a manager in a large finance company struggling with how to motivate and manage our youngest employees. Our company is typical for finance; buttoned up, long-ish hours, high expectations. We have thousands of employees who range in age from early 20s to 70s. The early career employees we’ve hired since the pandemic are … different. Our company was quick to recognize that, because these employees started their careers when everything was remote (and in some cases had a remote college education), they would be behind the curve in terms of professionalism and business norms, and we tried to adapt by providing more training and more support. But we’re now five years out, and a significant segment of this cohort continues to struggle.

In the last year, I found myself managing seven employees between the ages of 20 and 27. They are chronically disgruntled. I work hard to be fair, compassionate, and supportive while also maintaining the high standard of performance common to our company. But members of this group always seem to be grumbling about how they are treated unfairly. I have been accused of “humiliating” someone by asking a routine follow-up question to a report they gave to a meeting. They have a group chat where they complain about myself and my higher-ups being cruel and inhumane because we ask them to arrive at the office by 8 am (standard expectation in our field), correct their mistakes, and ask them to take on new challenges. I’m mean because I ask them to redo work that was below par. They talk constantly of quitting. One of them applied for a mental health leave because the job was too stressful (I hasten to add that this person had the fewest responsibilities and the easiest job on the team, never worked late, and is one of the higher paid people at her level). Sometimes they complain to management, but more often they complain to each other, and the venting turns into an echo chamber of toxicity that drags morale. We are paid VERY well for our industry, but they frequently complain they aren’t being paid enough. Because I have no power to give them money, I often ask what else I can do to make their jobs more fulfilling and help them to do their jobs well. They don’t know.

I feel that we’ve coddled this group of employees too much. They are less productive than their older peers and yet ask for much more. The person responsible for recruiting them has aggressively encouraged managers to treat this cohort with kid gloves because the pandemic stunted their development. But what I’m seeing is that some of these people will simply not last in this organization unless they adapt to our culture, and may not have thriving careers in this industry at all.

What can we do differently with employees we hire from here on out, and is there a way to change the course for the ones who are already here but unhappy and struggling? ( I should add that they are, for the most part, smart and well qualified to do their jobs. They have lots of potential, but are just deeply unhappy and seemingly unwillingly to adapt to the conventions working world.)

The best thing you can do is to be very, very up-front about the norms of the working world, the norms of your field, and what will and won’t change if they choose to stay in their jobs.

That means conversations like:

* “I’m sorry to hear you felt humiliated when I asked you about X in the Y meeting. My intent is never to make you feel that way. I want to be up-front with you that it’s a core expectation in this role that when you present at meetings, you will be asked follow-up questions and need to be prepared to answer them. We can definitely work on those skills together and can talk about things like how to handle it if you’re asked a question that you’re not sure of the answer to. I’d be happy to do that kind of coaching with you! But it will always be an expectation of this job, and of most jobs in our fields (as well as many outside of it), so it’s something you need to decide if you’re up for.”

* “Our team is paid very well for our industry, well above the field’s average, and I want to be up-front with you that our salary ranges aren’t going to go any higher. If there are other ideas you have for rewarding good work, I’m very open to hearing them. But I also want you to have the info you need to make good decisions for yourself and, realistically, if you’re seeking a raise to $X, that’s not something that will happen in this job. I of course understand if that means you decide it’s not the right position for you.”

* “An 8 am start time is standard in our industry because of ___ (reasons). I want to be up-front with you that it’s not going to change; it’s an expectation you’ll continue to be held to while you’re here. If that means it’s not the right job for you, I of course understand.”

* “You’ve sounded upset when I’ve sent you edits recently. It’s very normal in our jobs, and in most jobs, to receive feedback on your work, and you should always expect that will happen when you turn in work. That feedback is part of how you’ll get better and better at what you do, and how you’ll gain the skills to move into higher-level work. I want to be transparent that handling feedback professionally is essential to succeeding in your job here.” You could add, “That will almost certainly be the case anywhere you go.”

* “You’ve brought up X repeatedly, and I’ve told you what you realistically can and can’t expect. Continuing to raise it is becoming disruptive to our work, so at this point I need you to decide whether you can stay reasonably happily under these circumstances or can’t. If you can’t, I of course understand and we can plan for a transition out. But we can’t keep having this debate over and over.”

In other words … stop coddling. Don’t be unkind, but be direct. Direct is kinder in the long-run anyway.

You could also look at whether there are ways to pair some of them one-on-one with more experienced colleagues so that they’re not just being exposed to their peer group echo chamber. Can you find opportunities for them to work more closely with senior coworkers so they’re exposed to different perspectives, priorities, and norms? (I’d look particularly at pairing them with people just a little ahead of them in their careers, who they’ll likely be more able to relate to than someone much further along.) The group chat is almost certainly making this all far worse than it would be otherwise, but you can’t prohibit that without looking (and being) wildly heavy-handed, so instead be very deliberate about finding ways to broaden the perspectives they’re exposed to.

There’s also a conversation that needs to be had with the person who’s recruiting them and encouraging managers to treat them so delicately. Ideally, you and other managers should be pointing out to that person that the best way to support this cohort is to (kindly) help them adjust to the work world, not to let them go on believing it’s something it’s not. (I’d also look at how much power, if any, that person has to dictate how you manage your team. If they don’t have any, it’s still worth pointing this stuff out, but then you should feel free to simply proceed the way you want — but it will also help to get other managers on board with that plan.)

There also might be some meaningful work you can do on this when employees in this age group are first hired. I’d be interested to see if it would help to spell out to new hires very explicitly, “We’ve found recent grads have struggled with X and Y, and we want to be candid about the norms in this field and the working world generally, so that you’re not coming in expecting things to work one way and then being blindsided by it being different.”

But really, the kindest action here is to lay out how things work, without judgment on them for wanting something different. The basic stance is, “Let me tell you what you can and can’t expect from this job so you can make good decisions for yourself about whether it’s right for you.”

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  1. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

    I’m going to extend Alison’s comment about who is recruiting them. In your industry, it’s very common to rely on a pretty narrow range of universities as your primary recruiting pool – ie, Ivy League, “public Ivys” like Virginia, and similar brand-name institutions. You may be able to find more self-sufficient and self-aware new hires if you go looking in other places.

    1. TotesMaGoats*

      Yes, please look at your non-flagship, nontraditional state institutions for recent college grads who have work experience or military experience. Who’ve been working multiple jobs for years. This is me, look at mine. My undergrad average age is 28. They all have work experience and reached a ceiling without a degree or wanted to move up. T

      1. Ellis Bell*

        Yeah, this isn’t a generational issue, it’s a first ever job issue and no experience being in situations where it’s actually about the work, not about me.

        1. fhqwhgads*

          I think the only maybe generational aspect is this generation is saying the stuff outloud – which isn’t inherently a bad thing, but is different.
          New grads being clueless is evergreen.
          New grads who state their needs rather than trying to read the room first is a shift. Sure, there have always been people who do either and somewhere in between, but there’s definitely been a slide in one direction in the last 5 years.
          As with most “new and clueless” situations, it’s about the nuance they don’t have yet.

          1. Angela Zeigler*

            I agree with this. My friends who work in service industries with Gen Z find they’re extremely open about what they want and how they feel- often in awkward ways, such as offloading severe emotional trauma on coworkers who they only really know in passing, and on the job.

            1. LaminarFlow*

              The oversharing is so strange to me. I have talked about this with friends and colleagues from a variety of cultures and generations, and we can’t seem to find a reason behind it beyond possibly wanting attention?

              Maybe some of the oversharing is a cry for help, but that can’t be true for all of it.

              1. MarfisaTheLibrarian*

                This isn’t a “social media messed everything up *shakes fist at cloud*” thing, but genuinely, I think social media culture doesn’t have the same boundaries of “this is work” “this is friends” “this is strangers” etc. What you share, you share equally with everyone. So it’s not a huge jump that some people are acting with the same emotional transparency in the workplace as they do when talking to the entire world.

                2. JustaTech*

                  Yes! I will be honest, I’ve been *way* more honest here about some of my feelings about work than I have been with my coworkers.
                  (Because none of y’all are my coworkers, and you can easily ignore me without social penalty.)
                  But that’s also the anonymity.

                3. Socialelle*

                  Social media is here to stay. If your theory is true it is the older generations that will need to adapt, not the digital natives.

                4. Nebula*

                  Yes, absolutely. I think that also results in people saying things to strangers, or basically strangers, that would obviously be a joke if you said it to a friend, but this person isn’t your friend. I see this all the time actually on social media, but also sometimes irl, and it’s always embarrassing and awkward.

                5. Jules the 3rd*

                  Accurate! My Gen Z son barely differentiates between his friends and random people he meets playing Roblox or Fortnite. The only difference seems to be that he’ll voice chat with friends. But he found a server he liked with a lot of people from Germany and England and now he’s friends with them.

                6. So Tired*

                  Yeah, I think you’re on to something here.

                  I met a guy in a smallish Twitch (video game/streaming platform) community. He’s about a decade younger than my friends and I and will message all of us privately about his mental/physical health issues, random things going wrong that day/etc. He clearly thinks there’s nothing wrong with this, but we’re all annoyed and uncomfortable (don’t trauma dump on random strangers, people!!) I’ve managed to mostly shut it down by taking a day+ to respond or respond with one or two word answers. Because while being direct is obviously a kindness, I haven’t yet come up with a good way to say “sorry, but we’re not friends and I don’t care about this.” I do feel sympathy that he’s struggling, but I do not consider him a friend. Doesn’t stop him from oversharing with so many members of the community.

                  I don’t like generational generalizations and I don’t think they hold much merit, but like I said he is a decade younger than I am, and squarely in that early/mid 20s group, and I have noticed a lack of division between friend/online acquaintance/person I just met.

              2. sb51*

                I think it’s a steady progression from a past state of “everyone is stoic, therapy doesn’t exist, your choices are toughen up or drink yourself to death” to a healthier (societally) place where people don’t feel their only option is to shut up and take abuse, and then onward to “any discomfort is a problem that must be addressed by talking about it”.

                (And there’s still people who need to start down the process of talking through things more, but more and more people are coming out the other end where they’re expecting this to be the solution for everything.)

                1. Education Mic*

                  This is my view/guess as well. I’m 36 and I grew up being constantly berated for showing any emotion and when I tried to tell my parents I was having real mental health struggles and having suicidal thoughts as a teenager they called me dramatic. When a friend killed himself later, they called him selfish and talked about how awful it was he did that to his parents. They talked about mental illness as something very shameful and refused to acknowledge their very obvious mental health issues.

                  I think gen-z is doing it way better! They’re focused on not stigmatizing mental health struggles. I think they’re also figuring out what that looks like since it’s a new concept and the result is some awkward oversharing. I hope things shift more to the middle as people find the difference between “it’s nothing to be ashamed of” and “it’s an appropriate conversation topic for work”, but I’m glad these conversations are at least more normal.

              3. MigraineMonth*

                I think that there’s a trend to be more open about one’s identity and struggles in general than in the past. Some things are less stigmatized (e.g. sexual and gender identity, therapy, mental health struggles, neurodiversity) than they were in the past. Also, have you read a college essay recently? It’s practically an entry into the trauma Olympics.

                I know I overshared at some of my first jobs; it was tricky to figure out what my manager needed to know to help me succeed vs. what I should hide from them for my own career. Especially for young adults who just went through the global trauma of the pandemic and lockdowns, I’m not surprised oversharing or attempts at trauma-bonding are common.

                1. Spaypets*

                  There are fewer people more self absorbed than a person in their early 20s. They also see the world in black and white and haven’t learned nuance. I remember being that way myself.

          2. StarTrek Nutcase*

            I do think there’s been another change that has occurred gradually over the last couple of generations. That is, that a company “cares” or even should care what most, especially entry-level, employees think regarding work norms. Ultimately, a company adjusts to suit its own benefit – when there’s a value in the change for the company which may or may not be of value to the employees. Just as HR is there first & foremost to aid the company, a company exists first & foremost to make a profit or fulfill it’s mission. A company wants satisfied employees as much as feasible because that ultimately benefits the company – but beyond that “feelings” are for family & friends.

            1. Numbersmouse*

              Actually, the exact opposite shift has occurred. In the 1980s, employees have stopped being considered stakeholders in a company, and the “shareholder value” model became the norm, leading to massive downsizing just for slight increases in share prices. Will post links in a separate comment.

          3. StarTrek Nutcase*

            I do think there’s been another change that has occurred gradually over the last couple of generations. That is, that a company “cares” or even should care what most, especially entry-level, employees think regarding work norms. Ultimately, a company adjusts to suit its own benefit – when there’s a value in the change for the company which may or may not be of value to the employees. Just as HR is there first & foremost to aid the company, a company exists first & foremost to make a profit or fulfill it’s mission. A company wants satisfied employees as much as feasible because that ultimately benefits the company – but beyond that “feelings” are for family & friends.

          4. MM*

            I don’t know. There is a level of immunity to feedback that I don’t recognize from my own peer group growing up, and I’m basing this both on my college students from mostly lower-middle-class backgrounds as well as the subordinates of a good friend of mine who works in high finance where a lot of rich kids end up (so very different parts of the class spectrum). I can’t fathom having your boss send your report back to you saying it’s unusable and simply sending him the same one again over and over, or being told in bold and all caps not to make X trade and then doing it anyway.

            I can’t understand being told multiple times that any use of ChatGPT must be disclosed, a failure to disclose will result in a 0, and that while normally you have the opportunity to redo it for a better grade, there are no second chances on exams–and then emailing your professor to argue that you deserve credit on an exam question because, despite not disclosing your use of ChatGPT, the ideas were yours. It’s not even about “entitlement” or even “coddling” to me (at least not in all cases), it’s like whatever feedback they get simply does not penetrate. I’m not saying this is every person in this age group, but it seems widespread and in that way novel.

            1. ElleK*

              Junior colleague at my place of work was given some (fair, reasonable) feedback by one of the Directors and stated she would “rather you didn’t give me that feedback” – not something we’d heard before! I agree it’s not every single member of the entire cohort, all the time; but I also agree it’s distinctive to this group.

        2. TechWorker*

          I disagree, we have always hired new grads without work experience (someone has to!) and there is a definite difference the past few years.

          I don’t think I’ve seen exactly the same as this LW, but there’s definitely higher rates of people struggling their mental health, or of sharing things I to be frank, wouldn’t expect most people to share with a manager. (Like ‘I’m just really struggling to care about the work’.. type vibes.. that is infact what you are paid to do :p)

          1. Lana Kane*

            Yeah, I don’t think there is anything wrong with noticing that different generations are different. I was a different 20something as a Gen Xer than my Boomer mom was.

            I believe this generation of young adults have been heavily shaped by social media and of course we will see that reflected in that generational group. With social media being full of memes and articles about mental health, I think they might just not consider that they still need to code-switch at work. (To a certain extent – I don’t believe earlier generations have exactly the right idea about ignoring your mental health at work. We might be in the middle of the pendulum swinging the opposite way before it settle somewhere in the middle)

            1. Csevet Aisava*

              Your point about being shaped by social media use is an interesting one. The book The Anxious Generation by Haidt talks about the rewiring of the brain that happens to those who have been raised with smartphone social media access (those who were preteen in 2010 and forward). There’s a defensive mental stance that is often engaged that makes it harder to be receptive to correction, new things, etc. Perhaps that could play into young people coming into the workforce and having a hard time, not just because of pandemic timing.

              2. Arrietty*

                I think social media is a huge part of it. Anyone in their 20s did their formative growing post-9/11 and has lived through multiple global recessions and a pandemic, all while receiving a firehose of never-ending panic-stricken information via the internet. Those of us who were alive before the millennium got at least some time establishing healthy emotional functioning before the onslaught started.

              3. First time long time*

                I agree that social media is changing people and our society, but would not recommend this book. It has a bit of interesting research (from the pre-pandemic, pre-Instagram era that is not actually applicable to the rest of the book) at the beginning, but I found the book to be mostly unsupported fuel for the current moral panic about young people and the ills of social media, with a side of Haidt reminiscing about his favorite playground equipment. His arguments are non sequiturs: for example, because trees need wind to develop roots, children need adversity to thrive— whether or not the latter claim is true, children are not, in fact, trees, and if you’re publishing a book on this, your argument should be based in research, not opinions and empty rhetoric that appeals to people’s anxieties. Further, one of his chapters is transphobic: it claims that social media harms girls because he claims makes them more likely to identify as trans, and cites no sources except problematic “research” on “rapid onset gender dysphoria” (essentially, surveys of parents conducted by anti-trans websites). I am not an avid social media user (this is even the first time I’ve commented here after about ten years of reading the blog, which is how I know many AAM readers would want to know about the conservative and transphobic thread in this book) and I agree that the impact of social media on people and our society is an important conversation to have, but Jonathan Haidt is *not* the person to guide us through it.

                3. MM*

                  I read a book of his decades ago and drew a similar conclusion. There are pop science writers who are great communicators and there are pop science writers who are full of hot air, and he is the latter.

                4. thedude*

                  It is not transphobic to note these societal changes. You should read the book by Abigail Schrier. It is most definitely fueled by social media.

                5. Owl Cat*

                  @thedude oh, the “trans epidemic” writer who thinks that people are transitioning because it’s just so cool to be crushed beneath the boot heel of an incredibly transphobic society that’s becoming more so by the day? Yeah that’s someone worth taking seriously /s

                6. C*

                  Thedude: You’re right, all this transphobia is most definitely being fueled by social media.

                  The fact that people identifying as transgender or nonbinary has increased in this cohort from perhaps 2% to perhaps 5% of the population – with the biggest increase being nonbinary peeps – is probably influenced by people being more knowledgeable or feeling safer coming out, which may be influenced by social media, but that does not make it a bad thing.

              4. Owl Cat*

                I would strongly recommend anyone who has read Anxious Generation to listen to the If Books Could Kill podcast episode on it. TL;DR there’s a lot more nuance than Haidt allows, he holds the view that social media is making kids too leftist and as such has an incentive to present it as unequivocally bad, and he is not the one who should be leading a conversation as complicated as this one.

                1. Corporate Lawyer*

                  YES! I immediately thought of the If Books Could Kill episode on Anxious Generation, which I highly recommend to anyone who read, is reading, or is considering reading the book. Or anyone who just wants to listen to a great podcast.

                2. WeinerDog*

                  Love IBCK! You probably already know, but if you like Mike, Maintenance Phase is also great.

            2. sb51*

              (And I will note: my grandfather chose alcohol; that wasn’t flippant/mocking, that was serious.)

              1. Filosofickle*

                On Reddit I see so many “how do people work full time?” posts. To be fair, I personally have managed to build a career where I don’t have to work full-time because I burn out so I certainly sympathize with the feeling. But work has always been awful for many folks, most don’t have the the luxury of working less demanding jobs or working fewer hours. And as a result, modern history has included a lot of alcoholism, a lot of domestic abuse, and a lot of physical and mental suffering. Welcome to capitalism! I genuinely hope that we find a better way someday.

                1. Socialelle*

                  Capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than at any time in human history.

                  Besides, wait until you get a load of
                  “subnotniks,” pitching in with the harvest, and other customs that prevailed in the communist bloc.

          2. Ellis Bell*

            Even then, the previous ‘never had a job’ grads had alternative stuff to do, which the pandemic wiped out. If you didn’t have a Saturday job, or a college job, you were part of teams or clubs. If you went to college, you went to the physical college and had to navigate a whole new world, to give and take with roommates, instead of logging on to classes remotely. I’ve always found people with no work experience (or equivalent) at all to be behind the curve, but it is also true that the ‘too busy with academic excellence to work’ tribe also had their ways to break young people into adulthood that were equally affected by the pandemic.

            2. Resentful Oreos*

              Yes: except for all the most helicoptered and home-schooled teens and young adults, there were extracurriculars, clubs, classes and so on. I still am fuddy-duddy enough to think “everyone ought to have a job or an internship as teenagers” because those low-stakes type jobs/internships are a great way to introduce people to the workplace without any long-lasting damage should they mess up. But extracurriculars and dorm life at least enable the touching of the grass and the reading of the room.

              Pandemic-isolated, terminally-online young people being pitched headfirst into the work world is a tough introduction to “adulting.”

            3. Jessastory*

              yes, and I think there’s less social support for job readiness these days. There’s a heavy push for folks to stick to groups of their own age and a dearth of third places for everyone but especially teens. this makes it difficult for young people to hear a lot of different perspectives on employment and adult life. The pandemic exacerbated this already existing issue for the current crop of new grads.

              1. Bird names*

                Yep, absolutely. Cross-generational learning is so useful for cases of “let me tell you about a mistake I made in my youth, so you don’t have to.”
                While I certainly did make some of my own in my first couple of short work stints, I also had the stories from adult aquaintances to fall back on, which meant that I got to avoid some mistakes the others made first and shared with me.
                A lot of these conversations happen fairly organically if you get to volunteer, have a shared hobby or do some kind of sport together with a wide range of ages involved. Can’t say it would’ve had occurred to me to seek these conversations out independently at that age otherwise.

                1. Resentful Oreos*

                  I agree. There is way too much age silo-ing these days, and within a very narrow range, at that. I think that leaves a lot of younger people suspicious or contemptuous of older adults (see the “OK Boomer” meme). Without getting to interact, organically and without relationships of authority, with people of all ages, what often results are young people who have only seen adults as parents or paid authority figures (teachers, doctors, etc.). And these authority figures are supposed to care for them and protect them. So they start seeing all adults as Mom or Teacher, or else a vague menace who are out to berate them or take advantage of them.

                  Fearing and resenting older adults is not a good way of going through the world, not just because you are going to have to work with them, but because you WILL become one of them one day. Nobody wakes up a different race, or gender, or sexuality, through the processes of nature. But, unless we live fast and die young, we all age. Every one of us. And I see today’s young people as *utterly terrified* of that. I think some age integration is badly needed!

            4. nonprofit llama groomer*

              I was coming here to say this! The pandemic affected so much, and I understand the people who think new employees from this generation should be more coddled because of it. I have two daughters who experienced school during the pandemic, one was a senior ready to graduate in May 2020 and one was a sophomore that year. I don’t think either of them expect to be coddled because of the pandemic because the oldest had part-time work experience prior to the pandemic. Her favorite activity was marching band and that was heavily adversely impacted by Hurricane Florence in 2018. My kids were out of school for almost a month because of that when online learning wasn’t even a thing.

              My oldest tried primarily online college for 2 years from Fall 2020 to Spring 2022. We are solidly middle class and my kiddo had a lot of mental health issues during that time. Her roommates that second year were all upper middle class kids who are much more like the new employees described above. My oldest has an impeccable work ethic and has worked in food service or retail since she was 16. She has plans to go back to college next year. She would be a fantastic employee to any employer, but would never get the jobs mentioned by the OP because she will graduate from a non-prestigious school with a degree that will immediately allow her to work in a healthcare field (similar to ultrasound tech or nurse).

              I would find it incredible if my youngest would have these expectations either. She has also had part-time jobs since she was 16, at least during the summer. However, she might struggle a little with some workplace expectations.

              It looks like OP’s company thinks prestigious schools are where to get the best entry level employees. If they want hard workers, they need to look outside of elite colleges and universities.

          3. Trotwood*

            I think a lot of this generation has been encouraged to view a little bit too much of the world through the lens of their own “mental health.” I really noticed when interviewing college students for internships this year how when we asked them normal behavioral interview questions, so many of them drew examples from their own internal struggles…trying to overcome imposter syndrome, struggling to get out of bed on time…things that aren’t really job-related. It was like a lot of these students were seeing themselves not as someone who is capable, confident, and resilient, but as someone who is trapped in a constant struggle against their true self, who is an anxious loser. With some of these students I just wanted to say “please answer that question again, but this time answer it like you’re someone who believes in himself/herself.”

            1. deesse877*

              This is extremely valid: ” It was like a lot of these students were seeing themselves not as someone who is capable, confident, and resilient, but as someone who is trapped in a constant struggle against their true self, who is an anxious loser.”

              They value authenticity, but also value conformity, and it’s an intense psychich catch-22.

              1. Magnolia Clyde*

                “They value authenticity, but also value conformity” — what you said here is spot-on!

                I think that the conformity side of things has made the LW’s employees’ group chat a comfortable place to commiserate. Instead of trying to come up with potential solutions for their workplace-related issues, they just get stuck in a cycle of sharing/matching complaints.

                1. Resentful Oreos*

                  And it’s an endless cycle of negativity, as well. Which, speaking of mental health, affects that in a very bad way. Endless dooming and complaining is bad for the psyche, bad for your self-efficacy, and bad for how you interact with others.

                2. Jill Swinburne*

                  Oh, I’ve got into that cycle with a colleague at a job (which, in hindsight, wasn’t that bad) before. It’s toxic.

            2. Rainy*

              This is not by any means all students or parents, but I have worked with a number of students over the last 3-4 years whose self-confidence was really impacted by being sent back home to live with their parents mid-semester during the 19/20 and 20/21 AYs especially. That sort of lapse back into childhood where their parents were enforcing their schedules, curfews, class attendance, homework, studying, etc (even when it wasn’t necessary and the students had it under control) really did a number on some students’ confidence, and some parents went super overboard when they were given a chance to control their students’ lives again after they’d reluctantly loosened their grip.

              When you have someone in your life refusing to let you fumble your way through external struggles, internal struggles might be all you have.

            3. MigraineMonth*

              I wonder if the issue isn’t so much that the candidates have changed, it’s that they’re giving honest answers instead of the more rehearsed/confident/expected ones. I know a lot of successful professionals who privately consider themselves “someone who is trapped in a constant struggle against their true self, who is an anxious loser” but are good at lying/masking (especially early in their careers).

              I wonder if there’s a way you could rephrase the question to solicit the kind of work-related examples you actually want, or if the candidates just need more interview coaching from someone who knows how the game is supposed to be played.

              1. Trotwood*

                I do think we might need to be more clear that we want to hear examples that come from a professional context rather than a personal one. Not every 20-year-old has a ton of professional context to draw from, which we totally understand. But “conquering my inner demons” just doesn’t make for a good interview answer.

                1. CoffeeTime*

                  It seems odd to me that someone would go into a job interview and expect to speak about personal experiences instead of professional ones.

                  Maybe I’m just cranky but the notion that we need to be clearer about expecting professional context in a job interview is wild.

              2. Sodastreammm*

                I was about to say this – I (35) have a successful career so far in a medium-demanding field but if I’m being honest, I always have and always will consider my true self to be an anxious loser and one of my actually serious challenges is to constantly fight that true self to put up a socially acceptable “front.” I think this is probably very common and most of my friends will privately agree; the difference is that we know not to admit as much in an interview or to our boss (or for that matter, to many of our peers – for the record, NOTHING is less helpful for a person who is physically incapable of generating self-esteem than to get a well-intentioned lecture on Why You Need To Have Self-Esteem, followed by pressure to perform some type of personal transformation)

                1. nonprofit llama groomer*

                  I see you Sodastreammm and have never thought about it that way. It explains so much of my internal struggle that I’ve never found the words for. On paper, I’m an extremely accomplished person. In my head I’m an anxious loser.

                2. J Jonah Jameson*

                  I saw a beautiful description of this the other day: ‘Nothing that I’d accomplished seemed of particular significance, since it had been accomplished by me’

            4. Baunilha*

              That’s very interesting. One of my (Gen Z) interns often misses deadlines or asks to skip meetings, all because of her mental health.
              That was a tough conversation to have, because I do pride myself in being understanding and trying to meet people halfway, but there’s only some much I can do, and we still have a job to do. She was very understanding, though, and is doing a lot better.

              1. Momma Bear*

                Managing your mental health is very important. But so is having a good gauge for what’s discomfort and what’s burnout. I’m in the thick of raising a human and there seem to be a lot of parents who don’t let their kids be uncomfortable, bored, at all stressed, etc. and rather than teach them how to handle things, they just bulldoze the problem away. This is to their child’s detriment, IMO.

          4. YetAnotherAnalyst*

            To be fair, the last decade or so has taken a pretty serious toll on everyone’s mental health. I’m in my 40s and I’ve certainly told my manager a few times these last few months that I’m struggling to care about work!

            1. Long time reader*

              yeahhhhhhh… figuring out ways to help a company increase profits feels a heck of a lot less compelling than it did even just a few months ago frankly. It feels like the house is burning down and I’m being asked to determine which wallpaper we should buy.

          5. Can't get the hang of Thursdays*

            I think there’s also been a shift away from high schoolers and college kids having jobs as well, so there are more young workers with a lot less work experience.

          6. These Boots*

            I work in higher ed managing student workers and I’m sorry to report there’s no relief on the horizon. My workers are mad at me this week because I “yelled at them” when I told them our expectation is that they respond to email communication within 24 hours. This is completely different than groups of students I managed even 2 years ago who saw this job as an opportunity few people get in their young careers. I’m considering leaving in spite of the fact that I generally love my job and am proud of the program I built. I just can’t spend the next 10 years begging people to do their jobs.

            1. Momma Bear*

              Teachers report that students are much more willing than prior to take a zero and not turn in any work. It’s not just you, unfortunately. Gen X is apathetic but more in a “down with the man” kind of way. This is different.

              1. OHCFO*

                Yes! I teach an upper class/grad seminar and am always shocked by the number of bright, articulate kids who will participate in class brilliantly but take zeros on inconvenient assignments. It’s completely foreign to me and recent within the last 4 years.

        3. Seashell*

          It may be the first full-time job that they expect to stay with long-term, but I would hope they aren’t hiring people with zero work experience ever. A previous summer job as a fast food worker might make them appreciate showing up at the office.

          1. Jan Levinson Gould*

            When I interview early career candidates or those straight out of college, I ask about previous non-resume worthy jobs (food service, retail, etc.). I give more points to those who slung french fries or dealt with cranky customers versus those that did expensive volunteer trips to exotic locations in high school then strolled right into prestigious internships in college. Those who have worked lousy jobs appreciate the work environment my employer offers. Those who held early career phone-based customer service or help desk roles also have an increased level of appreciation. I paid my dues in hell desk getting yelled at regularly the first few years of my career.

            I had one Harvard grad in my group. Total prima donna but meh performer – he made sure everyone knew he went to Harvard. No effort made to retain him when he put in his two weeks. One of the best performers in my group worked in food service while paying their way through community college and a state university. Their first professional job was doing phone customer service.

            1. Resentful Oreos*

              If nothing else, dealing with cranky customers teaches empathy (hopefully), resilience, and people skills. I don’t think customer service jobs HAVE to be awful, and I think customer service people should be paid and treated better. But, these are low barrier to entry jobs that have paid many a rent and power bill, and put many people through school. People in these jobs are not handled with kid gloves the way well-off young people in prestigious volunteer positions and internships often are.

              Even if you’re standing over a fryer all day or mopping floors, you’re being paid, however poorly, to: show up on time, get work done, take directions from a boss, interact with coworkers, and often interact with the public. These are all very valuable skills that not everyone learns! (Reading the AAM archives, it seems there are people who glide through life never learning any of this.)

              I’m glad to see you giving points to young people who have done grunt-work jobs; too many jobs fill up with well-off nepo baby types when they desperately need diverse perspectives. (Journalism, looking right at you.)

              1. MigraineMonth*

                Most people who have started their careers in fast-food aren’t going to risk their solid careers just to lose their shirts in journalism. If we want working-class people in journalism, social work, etc then they need to pay at least as well as McDonald’s.

              2. nonprofit llama groomer*

                1000% I’m sick of seeing perspectives from nepo-baby journalists or even all the white mediocre dudes who have an excess of confidence but no degree getting cast as anchor no matter how awful their behaviour is (looking at you Matt Lauer and others) compared to people who worked their tails off but weren’t sufficiently white or male getting fired (Ann Curry).

            2. JustaTech*

              One of the best resumes I ever saw was from an undergrad who had worked at a Subway in high school.
              The student didn’t use any flowery language or oversell themselves, but they made working at Subway sound interesting and showed how they applied the things they had learned on the job. I was super bummed they took a job at a more interesting lab than ours, but I didn’t blame them.

          2. Not Mork's Mindy*

            It was kind of shocking to me when I would interview candidates (all over 21 for my former industry) who literally had zero work experience. I started with part time jobs when I was 14, I held my daughter off on working until she was 17 so she could focus on grades/school/extra curricular activities until college but then she held several part time jobs of different types (including working for me off and on). Unfortunately I’ve watched so many of her classmates (HS and college) struggle because the NEVER worked at all during school or even summers. I know parents want “better” for their kids than they had/had to deal with but I really feel like this is a major disservice to our upcoming generations in so many ways.

            1. Arrietty*

              Current early 20s are Quaranteenagers. How were they meant to get a Saturday job when they weren’t allowed to leave the house?

              1. Not Mork's Mindy*

                Totally get that for sure. I was thinking back about 10 years ago when my daughter was barely 21 and up through when she and her peers were mid 20’s.

              2. Parent of Gen Z kids*

                I absolutely did one of my currently twenty-something children a disservice by asking him not to work in 2020/2021 (he’s class of ’21). I needed someone to help care for his younger siblings who was taking masking/vaccinations/avoiding illness with the same seriousness we were, and I didn’t want to drop him into another germ pool and have it come home, so I offered to just pay him to babysit. He ended up in the military with zero life experience/job experience, and it made for a much harder transition than was absolutely necessary.

                1. Not Mork's Mindy*

                  I can’t begin to imagine having to really fully parent in 2020-2023ish. We all really did the best we could with what we had to work with.

                2. MigraineMonth*

                  I think there should be a general clemency for a lot of fuckups 2020-2023. We were all under tremendous pressure with most of our usual supports removed. You did the best you could for the health and safety of all of your children.

                3. Joron Twiner*

                  idk sounds like you made the right choice to me. In an alternate timeline where you encouraged him to work, maybe the younger siblings got sick and died. When you look at the stakes we were up against in the early pandemic, weighing “get sick and die vs. struggle to readapt to society”, struggling to readapt doesn’t sound so bad.

                4. AF Vet*

                  If it makes you feel any better, one thing the US military has pretty consistently excelled at is teaching young folks how to adult. You get so many people from all walks of life (even an occasional rich brat) who get shoved into barracks or dorms for basic and tech school, so they’re given 3 square meals, a room, and spending money (or paying off student loans from the semester majoring in partying or falling prey to the butthole car dealership who just suckered a young troop into buying an expensive Mustang or.. or.. or). Once they’re done with basic and tech school, if they aren’t married, they live in military dorms. They’re surrounded by supervisors who’ve BTDT and can help them learn how to budget or wash clothes or make a meal if they’re tired of the chow hall. If they want to live off-base (in my old units), they had to provide a budget and a plan, then a supervisor sat down with them to go over a lease and explain different “gotchas.” We’re used to turning 18 year old kids into 19-20 year old somewhat competent, mostly functional adults. :)

                  In all seriousness, congrats to your kids for seeking out a structured way to learn how to adult. I hope they fare well, learn a lot, and come out the other end with at least a few stories that start, “So there I was…”

              3. Disappointed with the Staff*

                There’s also the economic effect that a lot of jobs formerly available to teenagers are now taken by adults desperate for any source of income. Even in Australia where there’s a lower “child minimum wage” it’s often better to pay a little more and get someone more competent (interestingly it’s often US corporations that focus on the lower wage and stop employing each individual when that goes up)

                1. Zephy*

                  Even in the US, a lot of quote-unquote “teen jobs” are taken by older people, even including people who’ve reached retirement age but can’t actually afford to stop working entirely. The older people have “more experience” (read: more open schedules, and they know how to Be A Working Adult).

              4. nonprofit llama groomer*

                My 22yo Quaranteenager had a part-time job in a retail store from 2018-2019. She had a summer job in 2018 and 2019. She was a camp counselor the summer of 2017. She graduated in 2020 and it sucked and couldn’t find a part-time job in her college town during 2020 because grocery stores, restaurants, etc., weren’t hiring in the college town, whose population shrunk during that time.

                My 20yo Quaranteenager had a summer job the summer of 2018 and 2019 and then again the summer of 2023 and 2024.

                My husband and I aren’t rich and if they wanted extra money, our kids worked. They also did a bunch of extracurricular activities, which we paid for. We always told our kids that good career employers expect some work experience. Employers who recruit solely from Ivy League and similar schools just want to hire high-level grads because of the prestige of the school. If those employers want hard workers, they should try to recruit from non-Ivy schools.

            2. Cat*

              I am the parent of two teenagers. I have been relentless about the necessity of having a job. I have also been shocked at how difficult it has been for them to get one! They both have jobs now, but they both spent months applying for jobs. I don’t know what that is about, but why would it be so difficult to get entry-level jobs? They tried in person, they tried job boards, they tried places they wanted to work online…seriously difficult. I am talking about grocery stores, ice cream, shops, movie theater. Some of this is that places won’t hire anyone until they turn 18 because of insurance. Some of it is that we live in an area that is kind of hip so draws a lot of people in their 20s who work jobs that a teenager could possibly work. Some of it is AI combing through resumes. I’m thankful they both have jobs now, but it still continues to be a struggle because neither of them is 18 yet. I wanted one of them to get a second job because her job was primarily in the summer and my other daughter hates her job, but hasn’t been able to find a new one.

              1. Hi*

                yeah, the job market is horrific right now. it took my girlfriend seven months to find a new job after she was laid off, and that’s as a 27-year-old with over a decade of warehouse/retail/food service on her resume. there’s also a trend of businesses posting jobs that don’t actually exist so they can build a pool of resumes.

                I don’t know how it is everywhere, obviously, but the job market just keeps getting worse.

          3. March*

            Hoo boy, do I hear THAT. I’m a year into my first office job ever and before this I worked exclusively in retail and tutoring for sixteen years. OFFICE CHILL. OFFICE LUXURIOUS.
            …office also difficult because have to dress like proper adult but no matter! Chill and luxurious!

        4. not nice, don't care*

          It actually is a generational issue. I’ve been working with college students for 20 years, and there is absolutely a pandemic-related difference.

          1. Zona the Great*

            I agree and I have no idea how these people (the youth impacted by pandemic) will navigate this. How hard.

          2. Lee*

            I work with interns and have noted this difference, and my professor father of 35 years absolutely agrees.

            There are just some life skills gaps showing up. It helps to remember (when, like the OP notes, they can’t handle basic feedback) that it’s not their fault, but that they are products of a lot of structural and social issues converging on them. They are so online by default, they were even more online and isolated during the pandemic, therapy speak has invaded some of those online spaces in unproductive ways, etc.

            I am regularly grateful I did not have to handle what they have had to handle growing up. They need extra support.

            1. Na$ty Larry*

              This is really kind and thoughtful and I think we will continue to see gaps for quite a while. There are a lot of “make it or break it” stages during adolescence that kind of rely on community that the kids and young adults who hit those stages during the pandemic will never get back.

              A friend of mine teaches middle school math and she’s commented that the kids who were in 3rd grade during the first year of the pandemic were so much further behind not only in math but behavioral and social skills because 3rd grade is one of those make it or break it years.

              1. Resentful Oreos*

                There was an article in one of the big papers, from a high school teacher, noting that her “pandemic kids” were more like middle schoolers, academically, socially, and emotionally. They were *really* stunted through no fault of their own, because of having to be in lockdown, and not everyone was lucky enough to have a “Covid pod.” They had to settle for being online, which, as we are learning, is not the same as socializing in person.

          3. Alpacas Are Not Dairy Animals*

            I mean, this up and coming generation has had it shoved right in their face that doing everything ‘right’ is not only not a guarantee, it barely makes it likely that they’ll be able to do something meaningful or live in relative comfort, and that disaster could strike at any time and no savings or connections will save them.

            Of course they don’t care about work.

            1. Kay*

              I agree with this.

              I think every younger generation has had “opinions” about how the older generation did things and the BS it all was, but it was also kinda a “but this BS is what you have to do to get where they are” since there was always a little bit of hope. With each generation there has been more and more evidence it is BS (see loss of pensions, less long term jobs, social security not quite covering what it used to, need to job hop to get a raise) but now it is not only blatantly “the company is happy to actively screw you over” but “and you may not live long enough to actually have anything TO enjoy” that the guise of hope is gone.

              1. JustaTech*

                Would any Gen Xers who grew up in the darkest days of the Cold War want to weigh in on if they experienced something similar and if this might be why, as a generation, Gen X is considered jaded and cynical?

                1. Teach*

                  Yes! Cold War teen here – went to a public high school that was populated by the nearby military base, and we had a tv with CNN on in the commons during the Gulf War. I grew up literally in the shadow of the threat of nukes, and we knew how far from base people would be instantly killed by one. (That was preferable to a slow death by radiation sickness.) Heathers was my favorite movie. I definitely believed that college and career planning was a little dumb, because we probably wouldn’t be around that long.

                3. The Prettiest Curse*

                  I am Gen X (on the younger side of my generation) and do remember the Cold War. However, I grew up in the UK so didn’t get exposed to quite as much doom-laden anti-communist propaganda as people in the US probably were, though Thatcher and Reagan were ideological twins. I also don’t remember that much nuclear war doom-mongering (I managed to miss watching When The Wind Blows or Threads), though I do remember being aware of the CND and the protests at Greenham Common.

                  I remember being fairly cynical in my late teens/early 20s even though I was a young teenager when the Berlin Wall fell. I think that may be because we had a tremendous sense of hope after seeing the beginning of the end of the Cold War and then seeing that a lot of the new democratic governments in Eastern Europe turned out to be corrupt, just in a different way than under communism. (Also, the IMF screwing over all the former communist countries.)

                  Another thing which contributed to my cynicism was (later on) seeing the break-up of the former Yugoslavia and the international community failing to prevent ethnic cleansing and genocide. The fact that this was happening a short flight away from the UK was incredible to me and I remember it very vividly.

                  This is probably a somewhat different answer than you’d get from a Gen Xer who was living in the US during that time, but yeah, it did seem like things were going completely to crap back then too, which did make me cynical then (and in some ways ever since.) And things have continued going to crap ever since, just in different and terrifying ways.

                4. Jules the 3rd*

                  Short answer:
                  GenX trauma was nuclear war threat.
                  GenZ trauma is COVID and Climate change realities.

                  It’s hard to care about a job when the world is ending.

                  They know we’re at 2C and that we’re now trying to hold it to 3C, and that human life is going to be profoundly impacted, and they know we’re seeing that impact right now. They don’t expect to have grandkids.

                  Longer answer:
                  My experience was remarkably similar to Teach, down to knowing how far away from (and which direction, due to prevailing area winds) base you had to be to survive the initial blast / maybe *not* die of radiation poisoning. We had tornado, fire, and nuclear bomb drills. A significant chunk of my friends / neighbors went to Kuwait in ’91. Social security? As if!

                  “I just killed my best friend!”
                  “And your worst enemy”
                  “Same difference!”
                  – Heathers

                  But Super Big Events for us (US based) came maybe a couple of times a decade.
                  – 1979’s hostage crisis
                  – 1984ish Cold War surge
                  – 1987 Challenger explosion
                  – 1991 Gulf War 1
                  – 2001, 9/11; bled into 2003’s Gulf War 2
                  – 2008 – 2010ish Great Recession

                  Big events for this generation are happening every few months:
                  2020: COVID, BLM
                  2021: Jan 6, more COVID / schools still closed, more BLM
                  2022: Russia invades Ukraine (=legit fear of WW3), COVID hits 1M deaths in the US; Roe v Wade overturned; 600+ mass shootings.
                  2023: Oct 7th (Hamas attack on Israel), Only 500+ mass shootings, but record-breaking wildfires hammer home climate change impact, which is a *huge* issue for these kids.
                  2024: Wildfires, Hurricane Helene, the presidential campaign and election. My kid was furious about the climate change denial in Project 2025.

                  These kids know that a lot of the drama comes from climate change: mass migrations / US ‘southern border’ immigration flood and resulting racial tensions driving political shift towards authoritarian / conservative regimes; wildfires; more destructive hurricanes & tornadoes. They know the predictions about what happens at 2.5C and 3C. They know we’re not doing what needs to happen to stop at 3C.

                  They don’t expect to have grandkids.

                5. JustaTech*

                  Thank you all!
                  I am an elder Millennial (high school class of ’01), and get the strong impression that my age cohort got an unusual sweet spot in low international/national crises for many of our formative years (children, entering the workforce).
                  I was talking with a cousin about how 9/11 was our freshman year of college, and a very traumatic and formative event, but for our younger cousins who had COVID for their freshman year of college – COVID just kept going and going, where 9/11 was a singular shock, and so we couldn’t really compare our experiences.

                6. Media Monkey*

                  i’m a young GenX and grew up 5 miles away from a nuclear submarine base in West Scotland. We were very aware of the threat of nuclear war and the thought that we would likely be an early target if it happened. we had a peace camp of protesters who lived outside the base. they were a major local employer and we had a lot of Navy people (of course) and they moved around a lot so we got used to our friends not being around for long (my best friend moved to Hawaii when we were 10). i think those things made us cynical about life in general rather than about work.

              2. Aunttora*

                Agree wholeheartedly. Even on this blog it’s hammered into us that management can pretty much do anything, even abusive BS, and our options are severely limited if we want to keep getting a paycheck. My generation (boomer) internalized that and accepted it as just the way it is, and expected a reward at the end of forty years of eating crap. But younger people can see that’s no longer the “contract”. I applaud young disgruntled workers! If there’s no pension or gold watch at the end, or even a house and retirement savings, all that BS you’re expected to swallow is a lot less tasty.
                In the case of the OP’s industry there may very well be appropriate financial reward, but if I were 40 years younger and starting out, and saw the writing that is CLEARLY on the wall, I might be less interested in pretending to be gruntled.

          4. BKB*

            I agree that it is a generational issue. Students who went through college during covid didn’t learn the coping skills that other students learn. They were not held to the same standards.

            I’m a college instructor and this year has been ok. The last two years before this were really rough. The students were unprepared in so many non-academic ways. How to ask for help without crying, how to take no for an answer, how to manage life when you don’t get your way, how to handle mistakes and learn from them without falling apart.

            I do think that young people are learning the things they missed and catching up, they’re just getting there a little later than they would have if it hadn’t been for covid–the students I have this semester have been pretty great, and they also went through years of covid. It may just take everyone time.

            1. londonedit*

              I do agree. Here in the UK we have nationally administered exams at 16 and 18, and for people who were 16 or 18 during the pandemic, they never got to sit their exams, and their grades were decided by their teachers. And that filtered down to younger students, too – you sit the GCSE and A level exams in the school hall, at a little individual desk, total silence, and because they’re national exams everyone doing the same paper sits that paper on the same day at the same time, and the exams are 2-3 hours long. In usual times students would have lots of practice at doing that sort of thing, because you’d have mock exams under exam conditions, which would not only give teachers an idea of students’ predicted grades but would also give the students exam experience before the ‘real thing’. But then we had several years’ worth of students without that experience, who find the whole thing very stressful, and even now the number of students asking to sit their exams in a separate room, or asking for extra support, is increasing every year. I don’t want to be all ‘we had to go through this and so should they’, but it’s an example of how young people these days react very strongly to any sort of stress, and can’t cope with it. And I think that does have a lot to do with the pandemic and the time they missed being physically at school – no matter how old they were at the time. Kids are arriving at secondary school (aged 11) less able to cope, because their primary school experience was shaped by Covid.

        5. NotAnotherManager!*

          I have to disagree on this one. I’ve been working for more than 20 years, and I’ve been hiring and supervising in the new college graduate space for over a decade now. The difference in expectations, support needs, and coachability between the new grads I hired in 2015 and the ones I’m hiring now is massive, primarily around ability (or even attempt) to problem solve, level of instruction required to complete basic tasks, expectation of compensation and flexibility regardless of business needs, and, as others have noted, oversharing and having unreasonable expectations about accommodations.

          Previously, I could do a training and provide a handout with a high-level checklist and where to go to get specific information for the variables that our processes typically entail (so, let’s say you want to incorporate, which follows a basic process, but how you perform the steps for incorporating in Delaware v. Texas differs). They could use the info, do some internet research on the agency websites, look at prior examples, and draft documents and a plan. Now, I have to provide step-by-step details for each specific jurisdiction, provide them links to exemplar documents, and very closely QC their work.

          Our standard practice (explained during orientation and interviews as part of how we train) is to give feedback after each assignment – both positive and needed improvements – to help them learn. It’s fifty-fifty as to whether or not giving any sort of constructive feedback is going to result in tears. I am accustomed to new hires crying at some point as they adjust from grades as feedback to verbal/written feedback on a more granular level, but it’s really not personal, I just need you to spell the registrant’s name correctly on official documents!

        6. Quill*

          It’s also likely a demographics in hiring issue – some majors in some schools will very much select for people who have never had long term, non-adjustable full day responsibilities for. (School does not count for this: if you are an OK student you can spend a decent amount of school expected to only be there physically, not put in continuous effort.)

      2. EngineeringFun*

        My friend is a professor at a top school for the last 20 years. He has students crying in his class when they get bad feedback. This is new. However his pay is tied to student evaluations so he is not as able to set boundaries and norms as he was in the past. I’ll be interest in an update

        1. Academic spouse*

          Similar experience for my husband, who is a professor. Especially relate to the comment about fear over poor student evaluations meaning he has to put up with far more than a manager in a company would. Hence the students graduate with unrealistic expectations of how accommodating and flexible the typical professional job can be.

          2. Csevet Aisava*

            My husband as a professor just read The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt to try to wrap his head around the changes he’s seen while teaching. It is a fascinating read as it talks about the huge shift that society has seen in those who were raised with smartphone social media access (preteen age at 2010 or later), as it is hugely affecting mental health and professionally, the ability to tackle big projects and feedback. And it calls society to make some changes for the sake of our young ones.

            1. Bike Walk Bake Books*

              I hope you saw the comment from First time long time above about the cautions around this book, its lack of a research basis for some of his assertions, and the anti-trans element.

            2. Owl Cat*

              Again, highly recommend listening to the If Books Could Kill episode on Anxious Generation. It deeply frustrates me how uncritically many people have embraced that book.

          3. AVP*

            Oh this is really interesting! Has the student eval process always been set up this way (and tied to his pay), or did that change at some point?

            2. Academic spouse*

              I think it’s a reflection of how competitive academia has become. Too many hopeful academics, not enough jobs to go around. Unless you already have tenure, you really try to maximize every aspect of what your university will judge you on, whether it be quantity of publications (rather than quality) or student evaluation scores. Can’t afford to have disgruntled students giving you a low score, as it impacts the chance of getting reappointed or getting tenure.

        2. Lee*

          My dad was recently accused of being a toxic bully for allowing a student a re-do on their paper that did not meet basic criteria the first time because he was mean in explaining that it needed to be redone. Don’t even get him started on ChatGPT.

          The tone and tenor of his classes has changed significantly.

        3. deesse877*

          The evaluations issue is very real, and probably much more so for secondary-level teachers.

          My higher-ed union successfully negotiated to limit how much effect student feedback has on rehire decisions. We have to fight it anew every time, though, because admin really, really wants to have that stick to beat us with. To be clear, I do not think they want students to have their complaints validated, or even to be taught well. They just want faculty to have an adversarial relationship with students, because it serves their managerial interests.

        4. Marcella*

          I’m not in academia, but I have supervised creatives for many years now. Even before the pandemic, I saw a change in junior creatives being 1) unable to accept any feedback at all and 2) convinced of their own genius and the inferiority of everyone else. They also have outlandish expectations of fame and recognition. It started with younger Millennials and has just gotten worse.

        5. Old Lawyer*

          Eh, I went to a top law school in the 1990s and had a white male married professor wiht at least one young son who took pride in making students cry. This is not new. He was also a disgusting human who racially profiled one of the few black law students studying at the library by asking for his school ID and propositioned a young 1L who was model gorgeous and ended up dropping out afterward.

          1. Old Lawyer*

            To clarify, I’m a woman from a solidly middle class background who was terrified to speak up during this time, contemplated dropping out my first year, only to be tormented by the sociopathic male dean of students that I’d need to make enough money to immediately start paying the student loans I’d already incurred for one semester.

        6. sb51*

          The massively spiraling cost of higher ed also plays into this in a bad way — students/parents who are paying so much for it want “value for their dollar” in a way previous generations didn’t. If college is supposed to be mortgaging your future for a piece of paper that doubles your salary so you can pay off that mortgage, anything that jeopardizes getting that piece of paper means that you spent all that money for NOTHING. So a good GPA and a degree becomes a commodity rather than an accomplishment.

          (I went to school in between when it was easy to put yourself through school with summer jobs and part-time campus jobs (my parents) and when it became ridiculous (the past ten years or so at least) — it was expensive, and I came out with loans, but they weren’t crippling, and they wouldn’t have been even if I’d gone into a less lucrative field, though I would have had to budget carefully.)

      3. Art grad*

        I also think we need to recognize that after multiple economic crashes a lot of these typical teen jobs are being taken by adults – I’ve worked several of them and lost track of the number of coworkers I know with collage degrees (including me) and years of experience under their belts. And frankly a lot of them were making more money on commission than they would have in their fields. That and not having to work around school schedules, employers don’t have much of an incentive to hire kids as they once did

    2. MsM*

      I don’t even know if that’s the problem. We’ve had several interns from the local Ivy/Ivy equivalent (not intentionally; it just shakes out that way). Other than occasionally failing to provide sufficient advance notice when they want to take personal days (which may have more to do with them being interns than anything generational), they’re perfectly professional and motivated and take feedback well. I think there’s something wrong with the recruiting process here, whether that’s in terms of who the recruiter is pursuing or what they’re communicating to them or things they’re failing to ask during the hiring process, and OP or OP’s company should dig into that.

      1. Strive to Excel*

        It’s possible that there’s just something off with this specific cohort, or this specific school. By the time you get to your junior/senior/Masters year of business school, you’re running with the same 100-120 people all the time because you’re all taking the same set of core advanced classes. And that’s before you get into situations where a school deliberately has a cohort program – ie, everyone is taking the same classes on the same schedule. I agree that it’s worthwhile checking in on the recruiting process.

      2. Bird names*

        If I compare two different workplaces I experienced during the pandemic – I guess recruitment could be part of it. I’m not in the US, but Covid affected our newest colleagues in broadly similar ways. We have had some that seemed impervious to corrections about professional norms and did end up being let go or strongly encouraged to seek employment elsewhere. Others were perfectly happy to adjust though.
        The, let’s say, less stringent of the two places certainly saw more unprofessional behavior in general, though among the youngest cohort the complaints were pretty similar to what LW cited. Even then it seemed to level of when not encouraged after a few months.

    3. Anonymouse617*

      Can confirm. My last DR was an Ivy-adjacent graduate who could not follow directions, take constructive feedback, or keep to regular working hours and tasks. We ended up having to let them go after months of trying to get them to work at the bare minimum of their job description.

      My new DR is a state school graduate, but worked all four years of their degree in a campus office adjacent to our work. In the interview, they used examples from their retail experience to describe working with difficult consituencies, which was a breath of fresh air considering who else applied. They are three years younger than their predecessor, but much more mature and professional.

      1. not nice, don't care*

        Seeing this too. some of the youngest students are surprisingly resilient and proactive compared to just a couple of years earlier.

      2. XX*

        Retail/service work is such a usefull experience for any young adult, but especially the ones who go to really prestigious colleges and have high expectations for the workplace.

        I worked a few summer jobs in high school and on the weekends in college, and ended up ahead of a lot of my peers in professional social skills. They were some of the most informal, laid back jobs you could think of, but they did wonders. I do wonder if a lot of the challenges Gen Z have come down to not having any work experience before finishing their education. They go to school, do club activities, and go home where they futz around online and avoid doing their homework. Just…lots of idle time.

    4. constant_craving*

      I think this is as problematic of a generalization as generational ones. Self-sufficient, self-aware hires aren’t only from certain types of schools.

      1. Kate*

        Maybe so, but it’s a documented preference of big finance firms like LW describes their context to only hire from the so-called top 20 schools. In general, if you’re struggling with the talent you’ve recruited, broadening the pool is a common recommendation and in this case quite easy to make it broader.

        1. MassMatt*

          The “only hire from the top 20 schools” is often even narrower than that, and the Venn diagram of “people from X schools” and “people who happen to look like me” has a very high degree of overlap.

          Old job recruited heavily from a well-regarded religious school at which a certain ethnicity was also extremely prominent. Surprise surprise, the stranglehold these alumni had on our executive suite was… not good.

    5. not neurotypical*

      Yes! This may be a class thing, too. I’ve not experienced these problems with Gen Z folks from working-class backgrounds but have faced almost the exact same scenario (the whining about normal aspects of work, the perception of feedback or even questions as bullying, the out-sized expectations about compensation) with younger millennials from more affluent backgrounds. So, even if you need college graduates, look at folks who attended state schools or even community college rather than private/elite colleges and universities.

    6. Iheartcats*

      While I think Alison’s advice is all good, I also wonder if maybe the fundamental problem here is less with these employees and more with the fact that work as we know it (at least in the USA) is simply a straight-up terrible system.

      It’s full of often arbitrary norms specifically geared toward keeping the balance of power in the hands of corporate bigwigs, and operates under the expectation that workers should be grateful for the chance to spend the bulk of their adult lives making money for people who couldn’t care less about them as human beings.

      1. SocialistEditor*

        YES. Not to say that there are no brats out there, but I think a huge part of this is that Gen Z recognizes how little is in it for them in the traditional corporate world, or any work. Just because long hours are “normal” for your industry doesn’t mean they’re not problematic.

        So yeah, the best thing is to be upfront about what the reality is and help them figure out where to direct their energy – but there’s nothing wrong with seeing the system as flawed and having feelings about that.

        1. IT Manager*

          I agree. This is the first generation who have been fully raised by people not expecting a pension and really understanding that you have to watch out for yourself and the company will let you go the minute stock prices drop for a day. Like, I didn’t raise my kids to value corporate vaies and loyalty. I myself have been a salaryman for 27 years now but I made sure to tell my kids all the downsides too, whereas my parents generation told us to show up early and work weekends with a smile.

          1. Cat*

            I know some people don’t believe in generational differences and it is really about people being new to the work world, but I disagree. I have been a high school teacher for over 30 years, so I’m always interacting with people at the same age in life. Generational differences are very obvious to me.

            I think much of what I see in Gen Z is they are a particularly tolerant and compassionate generation. That is incredibly endearing, but it also issues. They do expect people to be incredibly tolerant of mental health issues. I have learned to tell students that anxiety is their body telling them to pay attention. If they have anxiety about a test they did not study for, the lesson is not that they’re anxious, but that they need to study. They need to learn from this for next time. They tend to see anxiety as a bad thing rather than just part of being human. Of course there are people who are incredibly anxious and it is a true mental health issue, but I think many people don’t work through the anxiety and use it to correct behavior.

            1. Anon 4 this*

              Just out of curiosity, what do you say to the students who are incredibly anxious about a test… that you know dang good and well that they studied their hearts out for and could ace in their sleep? My kids school is full of anxious overachievers. I don’t think any of them is anxious because they haven’t studied enough…

              1. Cat*

                I tell them that anxiety is a good thing. It’s their body helping them understand something. If you have studied a lot and are super anxious about it, that means you probably think the test is Uber important so you cannot fail. Then I talk about what the scenarios look like if you do poorly (emphasizing that poorly here probably means a B or maybe a C). This does not work nearly as well, but it does work for some kids. I spend a lot of time talking about how life goes in directions you don’t expect and that that is something to embrace rather than be afraid of. I also say how you perform one day on a test is not nearly as important as the relationships you have in your life or the jobs you will have, etc. yes, you might not kill the ACT like you wish you would, but also there are 1 million paths to happiness, and they are not determined when you are 17. I don’t know how much of an impact this has but I do think it helps a little. It has definitely helped with my own kids, but obviously as a parent I am teaching this kind of all the time.

      2. Orora*

        Very true, but it’s important to know the norms before you try to break them. I’ve heard “I can contribute so much more than this” from some recent entry-level hires after 3 months on the job. I need to know they can do the job they were hired for because 1) it needs to be done and 2) you haven’t earned my trust yet. Sometimes you have to do the grunt work well to show you can handle more.

        It’s not arbitrary to ask people to receive constructive feedback professionally and be on time. It’s what makes you a professional that people feel confident giving opportunities to.

      3. Grimalkin*

        This occurred to me too, especially given the wording of “8 AM is the industry standard because (reasons).” in one of Alison’s suggested lines. That’s fine, IF there are actual reasons to put in that space… but the only reason may be “because that’s how we’ve always done it in this field”, and that’s not really good enough!

        1. LaminarFlow*

          It is a legitimate response for decisions that are above a manager’s responsibilities. A line manager who has to enforce an 8am start time (or whatever rule) due to that rule being implemented by senior leadership/CEO might also not love the 8am start time, and they might hate enforcing it. But, since this is a company mandate, they are tasked with keeping their direct reports informed and abiding by this rule.

          Sure, the line manager can bubble up the need for flexibility and change to the people who implement the decision, but that’s not a guarantee that it will happen.

        2. I Have RBF*

          I hate 8 am start. When I was commuting it was the worst commute time, and I had to get up at 6 am to make it on time. I’m 63.

          Some industries have it because of tradition, but other have it because that’s when business hours start, and the company is oriented around business-to-business activities. Even if you are just office staff, in B2B you need to be there for business hours.

          But most software companies in the development area? Naah. In-house roles that are asynchronous? Naah.

          IMO, flexible start time with “core hours” is the way of the future. When done well it expands the duration of coverage for critical issues, and helps the night owls of the world actually contribute instead of being semi-zombies for the first three hours of the day. Some people enjoy being bright and eager at 7 am, others are not much use until 10 am.

          But for early career, when the job says “everybody must be here by 8 am”, that’s the job, and there isn’t much use trying to push back. It sucks, but some companies just aren’t flexible, or can’t be because of the nature of the business.

      4. Lenora Rose*

        Not being able to take any feedback without crying, and taking (ordinary, everyday) follow-up questions as “humiliating” goes a bit beyond “America sucks”, though.

      5. strategysphinx*

        From personal experience, I’ve also found that companies with bad recruitment processes (sounds like this place is one of them) also have bad onboarding or role definition.

        An 8am start time should be communicated during the interview stage. Accepting feedback should be an interview question etc. the whole point is to weed out candidates that can’t hack these requirements. For young employees, instead of hand holding they need mentorship. I think that’s a contributing factor to OP’s issue.

        1. Momma Bear*

          Agreed on all fronts. I was fortunate to have an unofficial mentor who kindly but firmly guided me in my first post-grad job. Even though I had other jobs, they were a lot less structured than that role and I had some bad habits. My mentor friend was instrumental in my professional growth. Maybe these young hires need to get out of their echo chamber. Kind of like how kids don’t always listen to their parents but they might listen to a coach – it could be like that.

    7. Kate*

      Came here to say this and it’s the first comment! Yes, recruit young folks who spent the pandemic juggling school and family/community needs without the money to make their problems go away, and they’ll think they won the lottery for a BigFinance job.

    9. learnedthehardway*

      Agreed – kids who have had to struggle some to get decent educations may be your best bet.

    10. NotAnotherManager!*

      This, so much. My very best folks tend to be the ones who had to have a part-time job to pay their rent during school or the ones who started out at community college and transferred to a four-year. We do get some very good recruits out of the best schools, but we also get some of the worst who are still in the ivory tower and unprepared for a professional environment. (And some who’ve never been told no or provided anything but glowing feedback.)

    11. Kids these days*

      I am a Gen Z recent Harvard grad (age 25, class of ’22), and y’all are being pretty uncharitable here. (Not the comment I’m replying to, necessarily, just this whole thread.) All my college friends have had minimum wage jobs. None of us are fighting our work start times or relentlessly oversharing in the break room. Of course my friends aren’t a random sample, but neither is whatever subset of Gen Z you all are interacting with!

      I’m open to the idea that generations have differences, and that the pandemic plus a shifting mental health culture has impacted my peer group. But this comment thread is diagnosing malaise in a way that feels overgeneralized and, honestly, kind of mean spirited. Some of the kids are ok! My college social circle (of FGLI humanities majors) are now all teachers, journalists, and nonprofit workers. We might agitate for more pay, but we also like our jobs and work really hard at them. Young elite college grads aren’t SO bad, I swear! :)

      1. Joron Twiner*

        Agreed, there are lots of older adults who do the same things complained about on this thread. Some things have fundamentally changed for all people, like mental health culture, online socializing, lack of resilience, caring less about traditional work norms after seeing the work social contract break down…

      2. TeaCoziesRUs*

        I’m glad you found humane buddies! Can you tell me with a straight face that you never met the grads folks here are complaining about?

        My 12 year old was moping that a Nuclear Science merit badge had a minimum age of 14. I looked at her and said, “Would you trust some of the kids at your school not to act a fool in a nuclear lab?” She stopped moping. :) Congrats on being the responsible kid/ young adult in the room!

        1. Sparky*

          I’m not the person you replied to but as someone who’s a Zillennial, I’ve also never met the grads people here are whining about, and I can say that with a perfectly straight face. The younger students in my former master’s program (who are all about the age of the employees in this letter) have their fair share of drama, but I haven’t really observed any of the problems described here. My field is tech rather than finance, so there is a combination of different people being motivated to go into it and a much more flexible working culture, of course, but I haven’t ever personally encountered the degree of entitlement described in this letter.

        2. kids these days*

          Sure, of course I know obnoxious young Harvard grads. I’m advocating against harsh over-generalizations, not for the idea that my peer group is perfect! I just didn’t love reading an entire thread of “my Ivy intern was a stupid prima donna (so most of them are)/kids these days don’t know hard work/the pandemic broke young people and now they’re all annoying.” It’s demoralizing. I mostly posted to say that this is the internet, and the people you’re talking about can hear you.

      3. Good Lord Ratty*

        Won’t someone think of the elite college grads!

        Being honest, I was with you until that. I really don’t think graduates of elite schools need any more of my regard than they already have on the basis of their alma maters (almas mater? not sure, I didn’t go to an elite school).

        1. kids these days (shakes fist at sky)*

          Ha, I know how it sounds! I’m so grateful for the privilege Harvard has given me.

          Remember the context of my original comment, though: I’m asking for thread posters to stay empathetic toward young adults who attended college through the pandemic, regardless of where they went to school. I don’t think elite college grads deserve special regard–but they also don’t deserve special disregard. “Don’t hire elite college grads because they’re categorically worse than public university grads” is a silly argument, just like the reverse would be.

    12. Momma Bear*

      Could be both the pool of schools/applicants and what resonates with the hiring manager. The company can expand their pool of recruitment but also maybe change the way they hire. Our company does a panel of three – typically someone they’ll report to, someone at a higher level, and a peer – so maybe a fellow Engineer, the Team Lead, and the Department Manager. If the person will work across teams, then we might also include someone from that department. This seems to work to filter out one person’s gut feel for an applicant who may not really fit the team. I’d also look at the onboarding – what could the managers and/or HR do differently to set expectations like be at work at 8AM?

    13. tamarack etc.*

      I think this is an underestimated comment on this kind of complaint. One thing that COVID did was not just to scramble in-person education but also to change *where* people went to school.

      I know anecdotally of a lot of college students who eschewed a more prestigious school and went for a local public college because they didn’t consider that studying remotely at $(public)ivy$ was worth it compared to the connection and education they could experience when going to a cheaper and otherwise more convenient school. This means that if you keep recruiting from the same schools you don’t have the same pool of students any longer. If you want more independent-minded graduates you may have to figure out where to find them – the old criteria may not be giving you the same results.

      This sort of thing may explain why employers seem to be so extraordinarily negative about current new grads. Having worked with undergraduates, I don’t really see that level of deficiencies that would justify the catastrophism. (I’m in a place that attracts independent-minded, adventurous students and students with breaks in their educational trajectories.) Sure, there are always cultural shifts.

  2. Just a Pile of Oranges*

    I’d be curious how many, if any, of these younger workers had retail or part time jobs while in school. I was an unprofessional hot mess when I started working, but also I was 15.

    Regardless of age though, I grew a lot as a result of managers telling me to cut it out with my nonsense (and once or twice, my parents also), and that’s what new workers sometimes need to hear to get over themselves a bit. Being kind and using kid gloves isn’t benefitting anyone.

    1. Sylvia Fisher*

      In my role in higher ed, I’ve noticed that students who’ve had entry-level jobs in restaurants or retail come with a much more sophisticated set of interpersonal skills and better expectations about what it is to work. I wonder if the hiring managers might be over-weighting school performance and under-weighting some of the real-life “soft” skills.

      1. Sarah*

        I completely agree. One of my kids is graduating from college next month, and the other will graduate next year.

        Both of them started working as teens and have built up solid, stable work experience along the way. One has been with the same grocery chain since they were 16 and has worked their way up to team lead while attending college. The other has worked in restaurants since age 16 and is now a shift lead at their current restaurant while also attending school.

        Neither of their majors has anything to do with grocery or restaurant work, but the soft skills they’ve developed – like communication, time management, and dealing with workplace dynamics – have been absolutely invaluable.

        Some of their friends are graduating college without ever having had a job of any sort, and they’re about to face the learning curve of navigating bosses and workplace expectations that my kids already tackled back in high school!

      2. Anonenomenon*

        That’s really interesting, I wonder if there’s any connection with the fact that a certain age range didn’t really have the opportunity to take those kinds of high school summer jobs because so many of those places were either closed completely or on minimal staffing. Even after full lockdown ended, parents might have been less likely to encourage their kids to get those entry-level customer-facing jobs just because of the higher risks associated with being around that many people.

        1. Area Woman*

          Yes! I think people have been so focused on remote learning that they may have forgotten what else stunted them- probably living at home with parents and not having to negotiate with bosses and roommates etc. It’s not that parents coddled them but they were not exposed to enough other perspectives in their lives.

          1. Cascadia*

            Yes – and even for younger kids – no play dates, no swim class, no sports, no going out in public, no traveling to see family or other parts of the world, excessive amounts of screen time, doing fully online school, which means minimal interaction with peers and the teachers, and all through a screen. There are so many things that they might not even be able to point to, but that greatly affected students. I work in a high school and I see the differences between the pre- and post-pandemic students.

          2. bamcheeks*

            We talk all lot about all the “firsts” different age groups missed because of covid and the different types of skills and resilience you build from figuring it out. Missing the bus back from town and having to figure out how to get home. Supporting your friend through a doctor’s visit they can’t tell their parents about. Going camping with your peers and burning the only food you brought with you. Failing at an extracurricular activity. Getting fired for being late to a part-time job, or being sent home because you were at a party until 3am the night before. Having a huge falling out with a friend over something extremely stupid. There are just so many different layers of skills and types of independence and resilience that you learn through a diverse and busy teen years and young adulthood, and each successive generation of brand new adults until about 2030 will have missed a different layer. It’s going to take years to figure out what they all are.

          3. Bird names*

            Wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest. It has been interesting to see confidence in young kids grow that mostly experienced lockdowns as their “normal” for all living memory. While a year or two ago a noticeable amount seemed baffled or uncomfortable being in social situations outside their family-unit, I’ve seen this less and less lately.
            We learn through experience and observation, which is why I really like Alison’s suggestion about pairing these employees with slightly older colleagues.

            1. Shan Whelan*

              I liked that suggestion too. I work with young children as part of my job and simply the shift in something like storytime behavior and parenting around it took a huge hit with the pandemic that we’re only beginning to see heal in younger kids.

              I think getting out of the perspective bubble their in is a huge thing. And working with older colleagues might be a way to do that.

        2. not nice, don't care*

          Hence the generational issue. That age group (generation) experienced the pandemic when they should have been developing social/employment skills.

        3. Oh No You Didn't*

          I think that’s some of it. And yes, as a loud and proud Gen Xer I remember when there were Very Serious discussions that we would crash the economy because we wouldn’t work. I’ve had mostly wonderful iGen colleagues but my hubby in a higher paying industry has been through Hell with many of them. One went to HR bc he politely and calmly told her that she can’t continually miss deadlines. He gave up trying to mentor or interact unless he has to, for many of the reasons the LW mentions.

        4. bomm*

          My impression is that work experience is no longer an asset for admissions at highly selective colleges and might even be a disadvantage. Plus the number of AP classes and “meaningful” extracurricular activities that high-school students are expected to amass before applying is crazy (IMHO). Not much time or incentive to work if you don’t have to.

          1. Sar*

            I have spent a couple application cycles doing admissions interviews for Yale (alum) and I will say that this is not my impression. The swanky schools are still interested in self-starters, “grit,” the Huck Finns of the applicant pool. One of the three admitted kids I’ve interviewed worked at his parents’ Chinese restaurant (which was how he learned English at age 7-8). One of my husband’s students wrote her application essay (also Yale) about hunting birds at her dad’s cranberry farm (student lived in rural southern NJ and went to a moderately swank private school on scholarship).

            There’s a stereotype that schools want swank, high-level extracurriculars but I think they mostly want to see that from affluent students with good grades/scores/academic bona fides. For the interesting life experiences students, the good grades/scores are also mandatory, but they don’t also need to be varsity squash players.

        5. GreenApplePie*

          LW didn’t add any specific ages but if they’re in their early 20s they would have been 18-21 during lockdown, so not high school age.

          That being said, in my experience even these “low-level” service jobs have become intensely competitive/networking-heavy so it’s not that easy for a random teenager to get a server position over the manager’s girlfriend, maitre d’s sister, etc.

      3. Beth**

        I recruit for my employer’s graduate scheme and I am always happier to see a candidate who has fast food or retail experience than one who did a short but prestigious internship somewhere more obviously relevant to our work. They are much more likely to have a work ethic and know how to deal with colleague’s.

        Even in recent years, I remember a candidate who had worked in a supermarket stacking shelves during the pandemic.

        1. Jan Levinson Gould*

          Just replied to another post that I have the same preference when interviewing applicants right out of college.

      4. Reluctant Mezzo*

        I might add that a summer job at a medical facility is often even more enlightening than one in retail or at a phone center. Sudden crises and rapid changes in schedules happen even if you’re a janitor or kitchen worker, and those with patient-facing responsibilities see the full panorama of human personalities. After that, working in a nice, clean office looks *good*. Plus, the new worker will have a raft of stories to dine out on (though not always welcome while actually dining in many cases).

    2. No Longer Gig-less Data Analyst*

      My daughter was able to get a job in the banking industry where they normally do not hire anyone without a degree in finance or prior banking experience. She has been working in retail and restaurants since she was 16, and her customer service skills are impeccable. They did one mock call/roleplay with her and hired her on the spot. She’s been promoted 3 times with pay increases, and is one of the best and most valued employees on her team.

      They have since (she’s been there nearly 4 years) stopped focusing on recruiting finance majors and folks with banking experience and instead looking at candidates with past experience in customer/client service, and they have been much more successful retaining talent.

      I think the best way to prepare your kids for a career in the future is to let them work a part-time job in high school and college. School and extracurriculars just does not prepare people for the realities of working for a living.

      1. Peon*

        Absolutely agree with you on this. Working food service and retail as a teenager gave me a lot of customer service skills that I still fall back on 20+ years later; I’ve already told my 12 year old that he’ll be expected to have some type of job once he’s 16ish. Maybe summers only, but something.

        1. Reluctant Mezzo*

          Though it’s hard to do a summer job and still do the volunteering necessary to get good scholarships. A lot of students need a long record of unpaid accomplishments to get into a lot of colleges as well. Why, yes, it’s totally classist, just as it was meant to be.

      2. Texan in Exile*

        The guy in charge of customer service at an engineering company where I worked had switched from looking for engineers who knew the machines involved to engineers who had good people skills.

        When a customer is screaming because a line is down and it’s costing them thousands of dollars a minute, they need someone who won’t get rattled. The CS manager said he could teach people the technical stuff but couldn’t teach them to stay calm.

        (I told him he should hire adult children of alcoholics – they have spent their lives dealing with drama.)

        1. knitcrazybooknut*

          Being raised by a narcissist definitely helped me work in payroll! If you want me to crumble when you yell, CFO, you’re going to have to work a lot harder. And all I’m going to do is get nicer and more professional until you stomp away and I can roll my eyes in peace.

        2. Addie*

          This made me laugh, but it’s absolutely true (said as the adult child of an alcoholic). My parents figured my summer job during college would be working for my dad. I’d done that before… it was a miserable experience. So, I got a job in the college library and basically ran the circulation desk for three summers (and worked 10 hours a week during the school year). It was definitely a good grounding for the work world and was way better for me than working for my dad. My first job out of college was HR related and honestly, back in the day, the customer service desk there wasn’t much different from the library. To this day, it takes a lot to really phase me.

          1. Reluctant Mezzo*

            My friend got a customer facing help desk position with software because she had worked at a plant nursery diagnosing root rot over the phone, along with dealing with irate customers who had overwatered their plants.

        3. Jackie Daytona, Regular Human Bartender*

          Reminds me of how my spouse got his job in IT support. He had limited experience in that realm using a different platform, but he had lots of customer service experience. Apparently, prior to my spouse, people with the specific platform IT skills but no customer service experience were disaster hires. Boss decided the technical skills were easier to train on than the customer service skills and prioritized hiring for the customer service skills. Spouse has been doing a great job for years with raves from folks who’ve needed the IT support.

          1. LabSnep*

            I have coworkers who are amazed at how fast I can calm a cranky doctor down on the phone while being direct and calm and firm.

            Like.

            I worked retail AND food service AND graphic design before healthcare. I have so many transferrable skills.

      3. LaminarFlow*

        Big +1 to this! I encounter many GenZ employees who really haven’t ever solved any of their own problems – big or small. Critical feedback or questions about a presentation are referred to as “being yelled at”, when there were no raised voices or disrespectful tones/words used in the conversation.

        I also notice that many GenZ employees are quite self-centered. While mental health has thankfully been de-stigmatized over the last few years, many GenZ folks act like the only mental health that needs to be cared about is their own.

        I frequently use Alison’s verbiage of “I want to be up-front with you that X is an expectation/normal thing you will encounter” with GenZ employees, and for everything ranging from being on time for scheduled meetings to explaining that the company isn’t going to re-decorate the entire office to accommodate any employee’s desired color or style, even if they get a petition going.

          1. LaminarFlow*

            I heard rumblings of redecorating, so I brought it up at the next team meeting – with the thought that folks wanted to decorate our team’s area with stuff from a party supply store like glitter curtains, fake flowers, yard flamingos, etc. I thought the conversation would be something like “Do we go with a tropical theme or 70s disco vibes? Unicorns & narwhals?”

            I was wrong. A group of folks had decided that the office was boring and uninspiring (which was absolutely correct). So, to make the environment more hospitable, we should redecorate. There was a Pinterest board with color swatches and furniture for inspo, and they pitched it as something that I should bubble up to senior leadership.

            I was genuinely shocked with this situation. I had to explain that while the office was boring, I would not be passing the proposal/Pinterest for redecorating/renovations up through the chain of management at our global tech company.

            I also had to take stock of my own actions in all of this – I realized that I had joked with the team about how boring the office was. However, I also know it was a short comment here and there about “oh yes, the beige wall next to the other beige wall” kind of thing. I privately asked a few team members if I had led the team to believe that major redecorating was a possibility. All of them said no, which was a bit of a relief.

            My manager thought I was trolling her when I relayed all of this to her, and I don’t blame her!

      4. NotAnotherManager!*

        When I worked in legal, I had multiple supervisors who pulled the resumes of people who’d worked food service or retail to the top of the stack and interviewed them first for 0-2 years of experience positions. One of them told me, “If they can deal with the general public, lawyers will not be a problem for them.”

    3. Adriano*

      I don’t see anything wrong with being kind. Being too nice and using kid gloves, on the other hand…

      And, on the third hand, the treatment retail workers often receive from employers and customers is appalling and preposterous. I would hope people could understand work norms without having to go through actual hell.

      1. anononon*

        I didn’t actually have a job besides occasional babysitting and one brief summer internship where I was basically cleaning up an organizational mess left by a person who got fired while a temp did that person’s actual day-to-day job, and I think I managed to pick up stuff like “critical feedback is not always fun but it is useful and not personal” from a hobby I did rather than either of these experiences. I don’t know that that was ideal either (critical feedback was normal, but so was bullying disguised as critical feedback; unasked-for critical feedback is now considered rude in that hobby but bullying is still normal, it’s just disguised as something else now) and I think more prior work experience would’ve been useful to me for other reasons, but it’s definitely possible to learn these norms without going through the hell that is retail/food service work.

      2. AvonLady Barksdale*

        This is a very narrow view of retail work. Yes, it’s not great and dealing with the public is difficult. But customer service and retail experience can be invaluable– plus you learn how to deal with the difficult public in a way that will almost always serve you in future jobs. I have been in the corporate world for 25 years and did several retail stints before that (and, shoot, during, when I was between jobs), and while I had some legitimately terrible experiences at times, overall I had great retail jobs with great coworkers and interesting customer situations.

        1. bananners*

          Completely agree. My high school jobs: cashier at McDonald’s, retail at a major department store, busser at a steakhouse, deli at a supermarket. Honestly, I liked all the jobs! Some terrible experiences at times, but I learned so much that made me a better employee (and human being/community member in general).

          1. Clisby*

            I agree, too. I had jobs babysitting, teaching swimming to little kids, waitressing, holding down the office at a flooring company while the owner was out bidding jobs. I didn’t have any terrible experiences – I also wasn’t inspired to do any of those things for a living, but that’s not what entry-level jobs are for.

            My son started out with a job in Charleston, SC’s tourist district, working for a cookie company (selling, not baking). He loved the people he worked with. The public, not so much. I had told him over and over I firmly believe everybody should have some kind of customer-service job before they graduate from college, because lots of jobs (not just retail) require dealing with the public and he should learn about that. At one point he said, “You told me I should learn about dealing with the public. I’m finding out the public sucks.” Yes, son, that’s kind of how the public is, no matter what job you end up in.

          2. UKDancer*

            Same. I worked in shops and as a tour guide which I enjoyed quite a lot some of the time (except for the public). Some of the small shops were a bit dysfunctional which made me decide I prefer working for larger companies with more structure.

            I worked in a small solicitors’ offices filing paper (I was a law student so being paid minimum wage to file papers and being allowed to read them which was bliss). Two law firms had merged and they needed a lot of papers putting in filing cabinets and sorting. I spent 3 weeks of my summer vacation doing that and it was a great job. No people and really routine work but quite a lot of fun.

            I learnt a lot that helped me in the work place when I graduated and got a full time white collar job.

          3. Quill*

            Same. I babysat, tutored elementary school math, worked at a renaissance faire, and shelved books at the school library. I didn’t end up getting a standard retail job until i was 18, but I definitely learned.

          1. AvonLady Barksdale*

            I’m sharing my own lived experiences. Are those invalid because I didn’t send in a story to Not Always Right? No one is saying retail jobs are OMG AMAZING, we’re saying they’re valuable. To say they’re blanketly hell is not only incorrect, it’s cruel to people who are working retail right now for whatever reason– it is so condescending to tell a retail worker that their job is hell and therefore no one should work retail, but oh, it’s ok if YOU do.

            Also, if you’re basing your impression of retail work solely on the stories at NAR, then I urge you to get out more.

            1. UKDancer*

              Yeah I had bad days working in retail, grumpy customers, people wanting to return stuff we didn’t sell or complaining when we wouldn’t let them bring dogs in to a shop with a lot of china ornaments. My feet ached at the end of the day.

              It wasn’t perfect and I soon worked out I didn’t want to do it when I graduated, but I enjoyed parts of the work especially things like arranging shop windows and helping people find a perfect gift.

            2. Reb*

              I wish I’d heard this earlier. Between the horror stories on that site and controlling parents who checked all the jobs I wanted to apply to to make sure I could “handle” them, the idea of a minimum wage job was Not Pleasant. Ended up in one anyway, was genuinely surprised when the guy training me didn’t yell at me for a small mistake I made on my first shift.

            3. MigraineMonth*

              Yeah, I worked several near-minimum-wage jobs (server, retail, take-out place) and I wouldn’t say I really hated any of the work itself. I’m just a prima donna who wants shelter *and* healthcare, so it never really worked out financially.

        3. shrinking violet*

          This! Dealing with difficult customers can translate into just about any job. I was devastated when the retail company I’d worked at for 16 years went under, I thought I didn’t know how to do anything else. Wrong! If you can deal with people, you can learn the other stuff.

        4. MassMatt*

          Of course retail jobs vary, but they are good training for dealing with adversity and learning the basics of working–show up on time, etc–and those at entry level are plentiful, so young people are more likely to be able to get experience there than in something like accounting.

          I would put entry-level restaurant jobs in that category as well.

        5. allathian*

          Yes, this. I got my first job in retail at 17 and worked mostly in retail or call center jobs until my early 30s. I’m not saying it was always fun, but I learned a lot and the lessons have served me well in my 20+ years of working in office jobs ever since.

          My son will soon be 16 and he started to apply to retail jobs for the summer in January, no luck so far.

      3. Just a Pile of Oranges*

        It varies. A lot of people do go through hell in retail, but not all retail is built the same. I never had any problems at the hardware store I worked in, or the deli.

        Poor treatment from customers happened occasionally but honestly as long as it doesn’t go too far, that’s valuable experience too. Since that’s definitely not isolated to retail work.

        It’s also good for kids to get experience judging whether a place is good to work or not through interviews.

      4. Ellis Bell*

        Retail experiences vary a great deal. Some establishments treat you how to recognise jerk managers and avoid toxic soups, but there are plenty who just teach you how to solve legitimate customer issues.

        1. MigraineMonth*

          Yeah, my first non-babysitting was as a server, and it was very professional. I got a retail job, and no one ever raised their voice at me, even the poor woman whose special order was at least a year overdue.

          My first white-collar professional job, the CEO threatened to sue me when I asked to be paid for my work. My second white-collar professional job was at a company that has a “noncompete” policy that you aren’t allowed to work in the industry for a year after leaving them, even if they fire you.

          Good management and toxic soups can happen in any industry.

      5. GreenApplePie*

        My first job ever was as a lab assistant. It was physically gross but the researchers were all pleasant and professional, and I learned a lot about workplace norms that way.

        1. I Have RBF*

          Mine too. Part time in college. Washed lots of glassware, but also did low level testing and equipment maintenance. I was very green, socially awkward, and learned a lot about dealing with people, expectations, professionalism, etc.

    4. aebhel*

      Yeah, I think the insistence on treating these employees with kid gloves is just exacerbating the problem, as is the peer group echo chamber of aggrievement that they’ve got going on

    5. Texan in Exile*

      For years, I interviewed high school students applying to my college. (A personal interview was part of the official application process.) I think out of maybe 50 students in all, two had ever had a job. I always wondered how they got the money to go to the movies or do anything with their friends.

      1. Richard Hershberger*

        Yabbut, my high schooler was very interested in getting a part time job but found most to be incompatible with any sort of extracurriculars. By “incompatible” I mean many employers would not hire a student with extracurriculars, due to the scheduling conflicts that inevitably arise. Given that colleges like extracurriculars, this is a dilemma. In my kid’s case he got an extremely part time job as a tech at the local arts council. The work is irregular, depending on what is showing. Available shifts are posted monthly, and he signs up for whatever works with his schedule. This brings him pocket money, and presumably will look good on a college application, but I mean it when I say it is “extremely part time.”

        1. Rara Avis*

          My high schooler can only work in the summer because they do a sport and performing arts. But they did learn a lot working as a camp counselor last summer!

          1. Richard Hershberger*

            There are jobs that work well as purely summer, but the bread and butter restaurant and retail jobs do not. Your and my kids found niches that work, but these are niches nonetheless.

          2. L. Miller*

            That’s a great job to learn alot of skills. Patience, scheduling, learning to think on your feet. And how to handle the unexpected. Not to mention dealing with parents and the children as well as logistical and environmental snafus like weather and health emergencies.

        2. MusicWithRocksIn*

          It’s shocking how much more time, money and energy extracurriculars and sports take up these days. When I was a kid you took a dance class or whatever and went to class once a week and then did a recital at the end and that was that. Now your kid is in dance and has class three times a week and you go to dance competitions every weekend and have to travel to them and stay in a hotel, and do extensive hair and makeup and it sucks up all your kids extra time so that it’s a struggle to get homework done. Or sports, I work with a woman who’s seven year old is on a travel hockey team and they are driving all around the state every weekend to go to these travel games. I’m sure it’s all more intense when they are in high school – I can’t imagine they have time for a job. It’s like everyone is prepping their kid for the Olympics when they are six and the idea of playing a sport for fun as a kid is gone.

          1. Texas Teacher*

            Truly recreational sports teams are disappearing in my community. There is no real place for a 10 year old beginner in many team sports. If you didn’t start by age 6, get serious by 8, too bad.
            My daughter wanted to try volleyball at age 10, so I found a league at the Y. Her team was made of beginners, and the other teams were all private school clubs who practiced at their school 3 times a week, with experienced coaches. We got our butts kicked in every game, the kids were so discouraged. That was the last sport my daughter tried.

            1. Tokei*

              Yeah, the lack of opportunities for kids to participate in recreational genuinely-for-fun exercise is a huge bummer to me. A coworker was griping once about how her kid’s dance team wasn’t going to be able to win whatever competition they were going to because of the “slackers” and it’s like… I’m sympathetic to the kids who are really serious for not being able to get the results they want because not everyone on their team is the same way, but also, god forbid a kid want to dance for fun and exercise without making it their whole personality, right? None of the dance studios I’ve looked at even allow casual participation– if you’re taking classes, you have to compete. It’s so unfortunate because it’s a bad set-up for both types of kids!

              1. MigraineMonth*

                Seriously! I really liked cross-country skiing, but once I hit 3rd grade the only way to participate was the racing teams and I am really bad at racing.

                I ended up dropping out in Junior year because there was so much pressure for me to leave school at 10am one day a week to take a 3-hour bus ride to watch the Varsity team warm up and prep their gear and compete, and then for the rest of us to compete before full dark (not that I ever mattered, because they don’t count anyone past the first 3 finishers). Then 3 hours back, then try to catch up on homework and whatever you missed at school.

                The vast majority of kids we put through this aren’t going to end up competing professionally. Why can’t we just let them do it casually, have fun, and focus on the kinds of exercise/sports/etc that can be continued long after you turn 20?

            2. NotAnotherManager!*

              We are fortunate to have a good youth sports program in our area, and they have both a recreational and a competitive league. The high school teams are highly competitive and, even fielding varsity, JV, and sometimes a freshmen-only team, there are not enough spots for every kid who wants to play. The youth sports program gets those kids.

              My kid plays in the rec league because they just want to play for fun and to be with their friends. It drives me nuts when there are parents coaching from the sidelines and getting overly competitive about it – if my kid wanted intense competition, I’d do travel sports or the competitive league. We have two kids on our team that have never played before, and I honestly think the veterans are having fun teaching them the finer points of the game.

              Mine volunteered to play with another team a few weeks ago because the team was short players and needed two more to avoid a forfeit. The coach complained to his wife right in front of me that, when he asked for a kid who played mine’s position, he really wanted A or B kid, not mine. So many things – (1) if you want a particular kid, ask them and don’t put out an open call for help, (2) look around for parents you don’t recognize before running your mouth or save it for the car on the way home, and (3) most importantly, it’s rec league, dude.

            3. Tiger Snake*

              It’s so frustrating to hear that, because it’s not like it’s the other kids’ fault that they found a sport they liked and practiced at much sooner than your daughter either. They shouldn’t be made to feel bad for giving it their all any more than your daughter should for trying. When there’s only one league option, it’s set up for the children on both ends of the spectrum to be made to feel they’re doing it wrong.

            4. Media Monkey*

              in the UK too. my niece gave up gymnastics as about 14 because there was nowhere for her to go if she didn’t want to be at competitions every weekend.

          2. Shan*

            I’ve had this conversation with so many of my friends – why are seven year olds in dance five days a week? Why is soccer now year round? And don’t get me started on the backstabbing politics between the soccer clubs (at least in my city). It’s so high pressure, so expensive, and absolutely unstainable for many families.

          3. Reluctant Mezzo*

            But you have to have them to get into good colleges and to get scholarships. Yes, it’s classist. Why is this any surprise?

          4. Filosofickle*

            The travel team thing — man, what a PITA. Too intense, too expensive.

            FWIW my sports commitments in the 80s were not insignificant — practice 6 days a week, and in one sport it was twice a day. Plus weekly meets/games and a moderate number of invitationals/championships. Having something every day after school meant made working during the school year hard (and I didn’t want or need to work) but I was able to have a summer job in high school/college.

        3. Texas Teacher*

          That’s been my kids’ experience, as well. Also, with many places taking online apps only, there’s not as much opportunity to make a good in person impression applying in a store itself – and who knows if the application systems are automatically kicking out ones that have zero experience?
          My current advice to them is, ask around. Who of your friends have jobs? How’d they get them? Is their place hiring?

    6. Strive to Excel*

      Part time job work would help, but at least in our area it’s getting incredibly hard to get a job if you’re under 18. Retail/food service are increasingly wanting people who can be available for dang near any shift, so if you’re in high school and have low availability you are a lot less desirable. It’s anecdata, not significant studies, but I have 3 siblings and we all job-hunted. None of us had any luck until we hit college.

      1. Oh No You Didn't*

        I’m hearing that from younger people too. And yet these employers are constantly “hiring” and complaining that they’re understaffed.

        1. Anonmenomenon*

          I worked at a big box retail store where they were required to have the “we’re hiring” posters up at all times, even when that location didn’t have any openings. the logic was that if someone applied for that store, they might be persuaded to take an open position at a different store in the district that did have openings. it’s why the “nobody wants to work, Target/McDonald’s/Walmart/wherever is always looking for people” narrative makes me so mad–they aren’t actually looking for people! they’re cutting staffing and payroll at every opportunity and keep the signs up to staff other stores, maintain the illusion of growth, and remind the current staff that they’re replacable

          that same store had a lot of high school employees the first time I worked there in 2014, but when I went back in 2021 it was exclusively 18 and up because they required open availability at least 5 days/week, and your shifts could vary significantly from week to week. employers aren’t willing to deal with the schedule limitations of high schoolers, and in places that sell alcohol it also limits their ability to ring out certain orders, and they don’t have the same kind of support staff to help. the position of the person who would complete an alcohol transaction for a high school cashier doesn’t exist anymore, it’s been condensed into one lower-level employee who oversees customer service, self-checkout, AND all of the front lanes, so they just don’t hire teenagers anymore to save time

          1. ursula*

            I did not know about this practice re the “We’re Hiring” signs – thanks for sharing.

          2. MigraineMonth*

            I saw “We’re Hiring” signs at a restaurant I just went to that had announced it was closing in 3 weeks. Bit of a head scratcher.

      2. Mom2ASD*

        This has been our experience, as well. We’re lucky that my husband’s company has hired both of our kids to do retail and inventory work. It’s not nearly enough hours for them, but at least they have some job experience – particularly important for my oldest, who is on the autism spectrum. He put SO MUCH effort into finding jobs, and couldn’t get hired anywhere last year. Not sure he’s going to have much luck this year, either.

      3. GreenApplePie*

        I grew up in California so the only way I got any work experience as a teenager was with businesses that were willing to play it fast and loose with the law. And those are not places you want to work at, regardless of age.

      4. MigraineMonth*

        Not to worry if you’re in Florida, where they’re working to repeal child labor laws so your child *can* work 8-hour overnight shifts on school nights without mandated breaks! (Senate Bill 918)

      5. Reluctant Mezzo*

        Should work in Florida, they want 14-year-olds to work full time now. That is still a bad idea, don’t get me started.

    7. Hello Dolly*

      Really great point! I don’t know if it was my idea or my parents, but I had lots of jobs in high school and college (ski instructor, worked in three restaurants, tutored, receptionist at a real estate agency, worked at a waterpark). These jobs taught me so many things about the work world – how to work for stupid bosses, importance of showing up on time (even when you’d really rather be in bed), payroll taxes, backstabby coworkers, how to be bossed around like a little underling, importance of paying attention to what your company teaches you, how to gracefully do things you’d really rather not do (some of my jobs involved some pretty gross cleaning), how to handle boredom in your job, how to build workplace friendships.

      Invaluable experiences! They also make you just a more competent adult.

    8. BatManDan*

      “Clear is kind.” What you’re referring to is called “being nice,” and it’s counter-productive to being kind/clear.

  3. Strive to Excel*

    I have to believe that it’s either the group chat or some other specific commonality between this specific group (same college? Same city?) because this is not consistent with what I’ve seen of my age mates.

    Struggling, yes – full remote starts were…not great then. But not the level of whining OP is describing.

    Is it possible that the group chat is snarky, rather than serious? It’s definitely an “in” fashion to complain snarkily about annoying realities. An extension of the “ugh, Mondays” mentality. But otherwise, oof

    1. Sloanicota*

      I do think there’s an *overall* trend post-pandemic of everyone re-evaluating the importance of workplace norms and work-life balance in light of how everyone almost died, and I can certainly imagine going from “doing well at school is the most important thing in your life” to “actually school is cancelled for an unknown amount of time, do your best online but whatever, there’s a bigger crisis going on” could cause whiplash in the people affected particularly.

        1. Elitist Semicolon*

          Isn’t hindsight wonderful? The terror a lot of us felt as something new and unknown worked its way around the world was real, regardless of what we’ve since memory-holed.

        2. The Unspeakable Queen Lisa*

          Since we’re pulling numbers out of our butts, 100% of people nearly died in an extremely contagious fast-moving worldwide viral pandemic. And over 7 million people did die. I guess that’s your 0.1% acknowledgment of reality.

        3. Arrietty*

          We didn’t know that at the time, not did anyone know if they’d be the one that did.

        4. Tiger Snake*

          People are very bad at measuring the times they don’t die.

          If America’s air quality was still the way it was before the laws to clean it up were changed, more than 2000 more people a year would die from the increased air pollution alone. But you don’t think about that. And you don’t think about how if the air pollution was worse and we didn’t start taxing cigarettes, that number would be so much higher than the either-or.

          The pandemic was a very stressful time, with many small areas that didn’t work perfectly and felt they personally suffered because of. But so many parts of the process did work exactly as they were intended, reducing each element which, if all combined, would have killed many people.

          Humans are so, so awful at actually measuring how defence in depth all add together, and how many lives were saved not because of one heroic moment, but because of each puzzle piece we put down as a mundanity.

          1. mysterious and important*

            Thank you. It’s wild to me how many people look back on that time with a “well not many people got wet, so clearly the umbrellas were overkill” attitude when they were in the public health equivalent of a torrential thunderstorm. When the “rain” isn’t visible, it’s hard to get people to understand that successful precautions will always look unnecessary in hindsight.

          2. Bird names*

            Pretty much the same with vaccinations. I don’t know how many times I avoided severe, live-threatening illnesses that are simply commonly vaccinated against nowadays.
            Like most kids, I got a lot of minor scrapes being outside. However with precisely zero of them anyone needed to worry about me getting a tetanus infection as well.

      2. Ellis Bell*

        Yeah, I’m thinking of students in difficult situations who pre-pandemic struggled with schools who didn’t give them any credit for overcoming x, y and z to get school. Then all of a sudden they don’t have to go to school at all, nobody does, and it’s suddenly easier to keep all the other parts of their life from falling off the wagon. Then, there’s a click of the fingers and it’s back to “school is everything”. I don’t have a problem with what we had to do to keep students safe, but it’s hard to keep the message of school being sacred alive to the kids who had so much time off.

        1. Strive to Excel*

          We are.

          The illness is here and here to stay, along with all the other potentially dangerous illnesses we can be exposed to. But the world is no longer operating under pandemic restrictions and it’s not spreading the way it was. It’s endemic now. When people say “we are post pandemic” we’re not saying “the problem is gone and no one should ever worry again”. We’re saying that it’s gone from being a one-off problem we only need to worry about for a short time to another in the list of daily, weekly, or monthly concerns that we keep in mind.

    2. FricketyFrack*

      I suspect a lot of it is that they’re feeding off of each other. There’s no one to hit pause and point out when one of them is being unreasonable, so they’ve created a sort of insular community where all of their feelings are valid and there are no reality checks. Combined with management dropping the ball a little bit on being blunt about expectations, I’d guess it’s created an environment for that kind of behavior to thrive.

      1. Annie2*

        This is my thought. If the whole group is close and complaining together all the time, that kind of negativity can really seep in.

      2. slim_pickins*

        yeah, i’ve seen people of all age ranges fall into this trap. once you have the “i’m being treated unfairly and everyone is out to get me” groupthink it’s hard to get out of that rut.

          1. Dolphins*

            Ugh yeah, that area and a few related places are absolutely doing more harm than good in my opinion (like its cousin, r/recruitinghell). Props to MANY of the r/whatever groups for taking a stand against reposting twitter/facebook/instagram links (because said websites support nazism and facsism), props to said website because those groups all have very clear rules about not posting hate speech, etc. But I’m still not going on r/antiwork for my own mental health.

            1. Sloanicota*

              Same reason I didn’t read that book B*llshit Jobs. I’m sure it’s a great book, but I already kind of have an attitude problem, so I think I’ll skip the stuff that’s going to for sure reinforce my own jaded cynicism and bad habits …

              1. Dolphins*

                I checked it out from the library. You did not miss anything. The author is one of those, “I am SO smart and discovered something groundbreaking!!! Oh actually I am just a condescending, pretentious ass” types.

              2. Fnordpress*

                It’s a pretty good book. I don’t think it gave me an attitude problem; it helped me understand that some types of jobs are more exploitative than others, and helped to codify that. He doesn’t say it’s bad to do bullshit work (think of being a customer service rep, which I was in college) but I think there’s value in saying, I’m not bad at this job, the premise of this job is flawed

                He’s not saying all work is bullshit or something like that

        2. bananners*

          Now that you mention it, there’s an entire subsection of specialists at my employer that’s in this trap. They’re not new to the workforce; in fact, it’s mostly led by people who have Seen Some Shit. I have tried six ways to Sunday to include them, help them, appease them, but they are like cats. They’ll tell you they want you to pet them and then bite you when you do. Thankfully, I don’t have to deal with them if I don’t want to.

      3. MigraineMonth*

        It sounds like LW has access to the group chat, and I wonder if their perspective on their reports would change any if they stopped looking at it. Unless you’re able to sift the cruft for actionable feedback, it’s probably not a good idea to read your reports’ gripe/vent sessions. (I’m a reasonably professional adult, and I know I’d be moaning to peers about an 8am start time or wanting to leave early on Friday even if I knew those were never going to change.)

        1. aebhel*

          Yeah, that’s a good point. Focus on the way they actually behave at work (where it sounds like there ARE issues) and maybe remove yourself from the ‘UGH I HATE MORNINGS THIS IS BS’ vent sessions

      4. Alan*

        Came here to say exactly this. It sounds to me like they’re bonding over complaining. I’ve seen a little bit of what OP describes but usually a direct conversation resolves it. My experience is that Gen Z employees *want* to do a good job and fit in. They just have uncalibrated expectations, so they rely on peers, and that’s when you get the echo chamber.

      5. WeirdChemist*

        Yes, I’ve been in work situations that weren’t… perfect…. But my opinions on the job were made 1000x worse by the constant excessive vent sessions with coworkers (well, mostly one). Once that person left, the vent sessions still existed but were less often, less repetitive, and less hyperbolic, and my overall happiness in that job improved by a bit!

        Obviously the LW can’t get them to stop venting in a group chat, but I do like Alison’s suggestion of pairing them up with more established mentors. Might break up the feedback loop a bit!

        1. Oh No You Didn't*

          I think you’re right and it’s worth a try. But they’ll have to be careful not the burn out the more established employee on teaching people basic skills when they already have their own job to do. Like if the whiners don’t turn around quickly, don’t let them drag on the productive workers. Thinking of an intern I had who wouldn’t ever be on time.

        2. Dolphins*

          WeirdChemist, you described a previous job to a T. Once a particularly ridiculous sourpuss left (who was also a bully) overall team morale improved considerably. Yeah there were still problems but her CONSTANT kvetching (even about stuff that was honestly nothing to whine about) did not help at all.

      6. Waffles*

        This is exactly what I’m thinking too. The company has a culture issue as much as anything.

      7. NobodyHasTimeForThis*

        This is very prevalent in what I see in higher education right now. Someone has a vent and the next thing you know the entire cohort is up in arms about it being an issue. It is a growing norm.

    3. Cat Tree*

      Yeah, this doesn’t align with my experience. I wonder if LW’s hiring process is lacking. I frequently hire entry-level employees. Sure there are a few who flounder but most of them do very well. They occasionally ask unexpected questions like how to schedule meetings in Outlook, but I remember having to ask how to dial out on a company phone in 2005. I’ve had a successful career in spite of that, and most of my employees will too.

    4. JP*

      The group chat is immediately where my mind went. They have an echo chamber going and they’re winding each other up. They need to work with different people and see different perspectives. I would bet that at least some individuals might gain more self awareness and improve their behavior.

    5. WheresMyPen*

      I wonder if some of their language is hyperbole. I’m a young millennial and use a lot of hyperbole with my friends and on social media, like “oh god I’m dying” or “this is the worst thing ever”, “8am starts are inhumane” etc. It’s like a kind of sarcasm that we’ve just grown up using with each other. This doesn’t explain all their issues but could explain some of the reactions you noticed.

  4. Fluffy Fish*

    I’d go even farther – it sounds like there’s a lot of instances where “it’s a core expectation in this role” should really be “it’s a core expectation at almost all employers”.

    1. Kat*

      Or at the very least, “it’s a core expectation at almost all employers in this field.” I work in what sounds like a similar business to the LW’s, and yes, there will be no getting around any of this. High pay for high standards and high stakes.

    2. Don’t know what to call myself*

      Yes, I agree. A lot of the things LW describes their employees complaining about aren’t specific to their company or even their industry, they’re really common things about having any kind of professional job. I struggled with a few of those things in my first year working as a full time professional as well, but the prevailing mindset at the time was that this is how jobs are and you just have to deal with it.

      I do think our current cohort of 20-somethings was brought up more with a mindset of being able to advocate for themselves, which can be good in some cases and detrimental in others. What they need to develop now is the discernment to tell when they should advocate for themselves and when they should suck it up and deal. I think Alison’s scripts do a good job of laying that out, but as mentioned above, I’d make it clear that these expectations exist in a pretty high percentage of full time jobs and they’re probably not going to change.

      1. Storm in a teacup*

        A lot of the Gen Zs I work with are keen to learn, articulate and have more of an awareness of how to advocate than I did at their age. Understanding what any job would expect reasonably and where you can advocate as expectations are not reasonable is a key skill we all need to develop and not everyone has parents or mentors to guide them in this.
        I do see a minority of Gen Zs in my workplace who have a real sense of entitlement (of course in other ages too but seems more prevalent here) and when paired with a lack of understanding of workplace norms and a group chat where it’s an amplifying echo chamber….
        Not a good mix. It sounds like that is what is going on here. I think Alison’s advice to be blunt and clear about how work works is spot on.

  5. Eldritch Office Worker*

    This is something that I am also finding very, very difficult with recent grads or people who had a meaningful part of their first jobs interrupted by the pandemic. It’s challenging in a way that I have not experienced previously. I am also a millenial but I’m in my early 30s – and I’m seeing this in people who are even just a few years younger than me.

    One thing I wonder if people are also experiencing/have found ways to address is a lack of critical thinking skills. I have so many people who need things step by step explained to them, in great detail, or they absolutely freeze. And I don’t mean “build this process from the ground up”, I mean things like “make a slide that summarizes your findings and we can look at it together”. Doesn’t have to be perfect, there’s no penalty for needing coaching or edits, they just cannot make the first move themselves. If given examples they can’t adapt the information they have in front of them to the examples.

    Working with people 1:1 is all I’ve been able to do but I wonder if there’s a larger overhaul that anyone has successfully implemented.

    1. Sloanicota*

      Just my two cents, but I’ve always found that in very new entry level employees, including before the pandemic when the people in question would have been young millennials not Gen Z.

      1. Tea Monk*

        It’s because it takes time to build your thinking toolkit and also observe how your employer deals with mistakes. Are you coached, are you berated? Risk tolerance will improve as they gain confidence.

      2. Eldritch Office Worker*

        I’m sure that’s true in some fields, jobs, disciplines, etc. There’s not a one-size-fits-all experience. But I see a night and day difference in the employees I hired in 2017-2020 and the employees I’ve been hiring since 2022.

        1. WeirdChemist*

          I do think that the pandemic for sure exacerbated this issue. But I’m also seeing a difference between coworkers of the same age/had the same pandemic interruptions who are still with us for their first jobs vs on their second jobs

    2. Parenthesis Guy*

      I’m running into that also. People can do tasks on their own but when it comes to larger things they’re just stuck.

      To some extent, I think it is something that needs to be developed and comes with experience. But I didn’t have the type of hand-holding I’m trying to implement for others when I was starting out.

    3. Strive to Excel*

      I’d argue that the overhaul needs to come at the school age level, and it’s this: critical thinking needs to be taught. As an actual classroom subject. The last remnants of it in our school curricula are formal proofs in geometry.

      Hard to apply any sort of critical thinking framework when no one teaches you that it even exists.

      2. Tired STEM Prof*

        As a former HS teacher, and current professor, I don’t know a single educator who would disagree with you about the necessity of teaching critical thinking skills. However, before you can develop critical thinking, you have to learn and understand things to build a knowledge base from which to work. The thing is, truly learning something means that you start from a place of ignorance and build up to a place of understanding, and that journey is not always smooth sailing. You are going to struggle, you are going to fail sometimes, and that’s an important lesson for kids to learn early on.

        Unfortunately, many parents are resistant to the idea that their precious children should struggle with anything. They apply pressure to admins and teachers to try to ensure that their child will never experience any setbacks or negative feedback, or have to expend any effort to get a good grade. The parents are generally the ones who push the hand-holding, coddling mentality for their children, which does them a disservice. Teachers and professors are desperate to help students learn and grow and develop into functional adults who can be successful in our society.

        I don’t think the problem really lies with the students/young employees. There has been a shift in parenting over the past 15 years that I’ve been in education, which correlates with the shift in attitudes and mindsets that I’ve seen in my students. It’s those mindsets that are setting this generation up for failure, both in school and in the workplace.

        1. Perihelion*

          A colleague of mine in education pointed out to me recently that folks who are now in their early-mid 20s were the ones who had all of their schooling under No Child Left Behind, and had most of their early foundational years in the period where everyone was panicking that they’d lose funding and “teaching to the test” in order to avoid that. She thought it explained a lot about how college students have changed in the past ten years. Having highly stressed teachers who were focusing on getting the right/prescribed answer (as a matter of survival, I’m not blaming the teachers) instead of teaching how to fail and recover, critical thinking, etc.

          1. AnReAr*

            Yep, this has been my observation. And I think the lack of critical thinking and inability to do independent work can be traced to the lack of projects in school.

            I only had my first few years without No Child Left Behind, but it was a slightly slower phase out in my district. But I only had one science fair in my entire school career, and they stopped doing it after my year (and they barely did it my year, they didn’t actually tell us the research projects we were studying and getting ready to present to classmates were actually science fair projects presented to everyone not just our class until the week of. I still feel cheated out of making some kind of cool experiment because I thought it was a different type of assignment). School projects just stopped being a thing, even reports, and everything a student took home all became homework. My younger sibling had even fewer projects than me. It was just all about memorizing the curriculum and doing well on the tests. There was very little work to be created by the student to evaluate understanding, only worksheets with definite answers.

            And again, not the teachers’ fault– a lot of my family were actually teachers. The worksheets are much easier to grade, which matters when you literally spend six hours a night grading. But man we did our younger generations dirty by focusing on test scores rather than assessing actual comprehension.

      3. Katie*

        As an English teacher, critical thinking is the core of the subject! All I do is work with kids on how to think critically, analyze other ideas, and craft arguments, and the same can be said for any English teacher I’ve worked with. Whether or not it’s being taught well or retained is another matter, but it IS part of standard school curricula.

        1. Strive to Excel*

          I’m not denying that it’s being taught, but you’re teaching kids to think critically *as part of your subject* rather than as its own standalone course. You and all the other teachers working to get young minds taught are doing a tremendous amount of work and I’m not trying to dismiss it.

          1. coffee*

            I’ve always found the analytic and critical thinking skills I learned in English and History to be very useful and applicable to my work.

            Formal proofs in Geometry, not so much.

            1. Academic Physics*

              I agree with you, learning how to read a text for a bias or viewpoint has served me more in my physics career than the logic of formal proofs. But I’m glad it was useful for someone else!

              I never can tell what is going to be the right approach for some students, which is why I love that the person you’re responding to called out geometry of all subjects!

      4. BatManDan*

        It seems a lot of people are drawing a causality link to the pandemic, when I think it’s just coincidental. The causality is the appearance and catastrophic increase in “screen time.” IMHO.

        1. The Unspeakable Queen Lisa*

          That’s also correlation. “Screen time” has been around for 100 years. The same handwringing happened over the “boob tube”. It’s not screens.

          Read the comment from the teacher above you. It’s a refusal to have children ever have any negative feedback about anything. You have to fail to learn, but parents don’t want their children to feel bad.

          2. Wayward Sun*

            The bulldozer parents are a real issue. I worked in a college department and we had the parents of undergrads calling in to contest grades on their behalf, or to negotiate different hours for student workers. We had parents who wanted to sit in on their kids’ professors’ office hours.

        2. Anony*

          Hello, I’m a teacher. Kids learn important developmental skills (like reading and social skills) at different stages of childhood. Kids whose 1st and 2nd grade years were disrupted are behind in reading. Kids whose kindergarten years were disrupted have to learn how to play with other kids. Kids whose middle school years were disrupted have a hard time with executive functioning skills. High school and college kids are missing crucial life skills.

          Certainly screen time doesn’t help. But it would look very different had the pandemic not disrupted those years of schooling.

          1. dz*

            Tell the recruiter to prioritize applicants who have had a job, ANY job. Preferably retail or hospitality.

      5. Eukomos*

        It is notoriously difficult to teach people to generalize critical thinking skills. We teach students to do it in specific situations, but they’ll never have an easy time applying those skills they learned in a new one. I’ve found it useful to call it out explicitly and say something like “think of how you solved a similar problem in a situation you handle frequently, can you apply those steps here?”

    4. Librararian*

      I just worked with my first recent grad and was constantly asking my fellow Gen X/Elder Millennial friends if their actions and questions were a generational thing or a just-them thing. I’m all for someone asking for help, but their inability to do ANYthing (well) without assistance was surprising. No searching for an answer before asking and their formal email writing skills were nonexistent.

      If this is what the High Schools and Colleges are graduating, we need a revision on common sense and writing skills. (Now I’m off to go yell at some clouds.)

      1. Anonnn*

        I’m a professor (graduate students) in college. My students really struggle with using their critical thinking skills to reason through an activity. And often ask me a zillion questions rather than figuring it out themselves or using a logical deduction.

    5. deesse877*

      This is very real to those of us who teach in universities: people who had significant pandemic schooling often lack the skills of planning independently, problem-solving, deriving generalizations from a set of data, and inferring unspoken social rules from context. They also often shut down dramatically at the first bump in the road.

      But I think the same thing as the main answer applies: be very direct, and a little rules-oriented. One has to say things like “you have to look for solutions by Googling [or whatever else is appropriate to the context] before you ask for help; that step is required, not optional.” One does this, not to shame, but because they literally do not know it is the right thing to do.

      Even those who had all of high school in person still show the same behaviors, perhaps because of structural changes to secondary schooling. It feels irrational and even frightening!

      1. Ellis Bell*

        I remember posters in one school I worked at (way before the pandemic) which said “Ask three before me” which basically meant the students had to ask each other, look things up, and seek examples before going to the teacher.

    6. I'm A Little Teapot*

      I’ve been struggling with this as well, and last year asked for ideas on the interwebs, including here. My options are limited based on my role, but a fair amount of what I’m doing is throwing new hires into the deep end. They don’t know how to problem solve? Guess what, that’s what you’re going to be doing EVERY SINGLE TASK. Obviously I start with little stuff and I’m double checking and giving them resources and guidance, but I am making it clear that I expect them to figure it out. Or at least, make a legit attempt to figure it out.

      I also make it clear that I do not expect perfection, but I do expect progress. Mistakes happen, its ok and its not the end of the world. If you’re learning and improving, I’m going to be satisfied with that.

      But honestly, it’s not the same as being taught from a young age how to be a critical thinker.

    7. Buffy will save us*

      I have found that problem solving, that was sometimes hit or miss for interns and new grads pre pandemic, is now very low as is emotional competence

    8. Ellis Bell*

      So industry is quite unused to teaching after a certain level, but I think it’s reasonable to institute a few teaching culture basics which may help. I would probably focus on creating a culture where mistakes are okay and not responded to punitively, or at least training occasions were people are encouraged to take risks, make mistakes and try figuring it out on their own. Allowing people to confer in these exercises is reassuring that they’re not the only ones muddling through. I would definitely ensure their confidence in low stakes situations before high stakes, and have a progression of risk. Examples of how to do it well are great, but don’t forget examples of badly created versions or how a “first draft” should look are important ways to get people on the ramp. Something so bad they could definitely do better is encouraging and gets debate going. Make it clear that a first draft level is always okay at the outset, and spell out what you would do to improve the poor example and why you’re using the draft as a starting point. Think out loud as you model your changes so they can understand your process. Be sure to go over common mistakes and discuss why those mistakes are common. One on one stuff is very important and to some extent irreplaceable, but so are opportunities to see they’re all in it together.

    9. LaminarFlow*

      A lot of the critical thinking that is required to function in the professional world doesn’t exist with GenZ, and in a way that it hasn’t before. When millennials entered the workforce, they usually asked questions about X to figure it out. They typically figured things out, with some help & collaboration from various sources along the way.

      So many GenZ people have never been tasked with something as mundane as figuring out transportation to a thing they want to attend, and they feel totally unequipped to figuring it out for themselves.

  6. Rogue Slime Mold*

    Don’t coddle.
    Do treat them like adults.

    In other words, lose the generation-based generalizations.

    I would suggest that your recruiter is not doing a good job, and many of these are not employees who are going to work out well. Which has almost everything to do with being the sort to create special chats to re-enforce the complaining, and little to do with anyone’s age. Your recruiter seems to be trying to get some missing stair fallacies going by insisting that we must forever hop over Todd (“We can’t reason with Todd; he’s unreasonable”) and you don’t actually have to do that.

    1. Rogue Slime Mold*

      To follow on that last paragraph: The people I know in this generation are serious about work-life balance. It’s possible your recruiter is having trouble finding highly qualified people because they look at the expectations and decide they can get better work for similar money elsewhere.

      I think people have become far more skeptical about the advice to pay your dues, suspecting that the goalposts shall forever move out of their favor.

        1. Rogue Slime Mold*

          My own observation is that those 20-somethings in STEM are taking jobs that pay well and offer reasonable work-life balance. Some are buying homes. They see themselves as having options, and don’t trust that any employer is necessarily going to be there for them 10 years down the road to pay off on all these things you get if you first pay your dues.

        2. Zombeyonce*

          Not necessarily. If the goalposts are forever shifting, they’ll be “paying their dues” forever and never actually get ahead, so it’s hard to see the point of continuing to do the unappreciated grunt work for no work/life balance if you could just do a simpler job with less stress, knowing it’ll never get you to a highly successful career.

          It was different for older generations (I’m an elder millennial, so have seen both sides). Working any job used to pretty much guarantee that you’d eventually get to a point where you’re relatively successful, but that guarantee of a steady career progression with a rising salary has gone out the window in a lot of areas. While it’s still possible in some places, I can understand the frustration and younger people reconsidering what’s worth doing when the future feels so bleak for them.

          1. Justin*

            It makes sense but they’re going to be 40 and floundering soon enough. So I don’t even mean following some American dream nonsense, I mean actually being way worse off really soon

          2. MassMatt*

            That upward mobility is still very much possible, but much more dependent upon skills vs: tenure than it was before.

            People need to develop and offer in-demand skills, and given the pace of change they need to keep updating and adding to their skills or risk getting left behind.

            1. different seudonym*

              My sense is that this is only true in some technical fields, and not generalizeable to all white-collar work. It would be interesting to get some stats, though.

              1. Quill*

                And only applicable in certain regions in some broad fields. I’m a later millennial and was very much targeted by the “go into STEM, young woman!” push. Turns out the STEM jobs available with a bachelors were all contracts with no medical benefits and “you can’t work for this company or any of its subsidiaries for 6 months after your contract ends!” which in my region was a significant percentage of companies. I have spent about a third of my adulthood unemployed because nobody wants to hire and also pay a living wage for the work I do! Took me until I was 30 to get a job that wasn’t through a contracting agency.

          3. GreenApplePie*

            I’ve been seeing social media advice about not staying in any one job for more than 1-2 years, partially to ensure that you’ll get pay raises that keep up with inflation and partially to avoid looking stagnant. It’s easy to imagine a lot of new grads taking this to heart and not caring about their conduct at work because they’ll all be gone in a year or so anyways.

            1. The Unspeakable Queen Lisa*

              LOL staying 1-2 years in a job isn’t even advice. Those are the averages. I remember reading the average stay in any job was 18 months-2 years – and I read that 20 years ago.

        3. biobotb*

          I think Rogue Slime Mold’s point is that the people the LW are describing are not the “highly qualified people,” because those people are able to get jobs with better work-life balance for commensurate pay. The people the LW is describing are therefore less qualified and capable, but still skeptical about paying dues.

      2. CrazyCatDude*

        I think those examples are where having young people challenge “workplace norms” is a good thing. Work-life balance needs to be prioritized, and the “pay your dues” nonsense has usually just been a way to exploit new workers to do more work without being paid appropriately for it.

        1. amoeba*

          I mean, that very much depends on the workplace norm! Stuff like “you need to be able to take and implement constructive feedback” or “don’t vent about how horrible your job is within hearing distance of your manager” is not something that needs to or should be challenged, imho…

          2. CrazyCatDude*

            For sure, although even then, I think there can still be value in considering it. I think what managers think of as “constructive feedback” isn’t always all that constructive from the employee’s standpoint. And if you have multiple employees having an issue with the way you give feedback, it’s worth looking at how you’re doing it.

          3. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

            No, although they have a point about the rigid 8am start time. OP, does your company/industry REALLY need that, or is it just a hidebound rule that no one ever thinks of getting rid of? In general, rigid/early start times are fine for some but they don’t play to everyone’s strengths, so the company may be missing out on the best someone has to offer. Advocating for more flexibility would go over better if it wasn’t tangled up with the negativity and bad attitudes of this particular group, but that specific idea isn’t a bad one.

            1. Anon with Emotions*

              LOL. Yes, Finance does indeed need to start at 8am for a wide variety of easily searchable reasons. My goodness.

              1. sb51*

                I do wonder if, for this particular thing, all that’s needed is that explanation, even if they “should” already know it. There is definitely a huge pushback against rigid start times just for the hell of it/tradition, that started a long time ago but really ramped up when everyone was virtual.

                And if they respond that you should band together with them to throw off the chains of industry norms, then you can have that conversation.

              2. AlsoADHD*

                It definitely will depend on what they do, but I worked for a prominent banking company (in a not client facing role) and it had remote work options and flexible hours. I don’t know what reasons finance jobs universally must start at 8am are. Banks don’t even open that early. Brokerages often have to work when various markets are open. Finance is pretty broad…

            2. CrazyCatDude*

              Exactly. There are rigid rules in may workplaces that have “always existed” but don’t have a good reason for persisting. Saying “well that’s just how it is” is not going to be well-received, nor should it be.

            3. MassMatt*

              Maybe the doors open/calls start coming in from customers at 8AM, and showing up whenever you feel like it isn’t possible?

              OP says they start at 8AM for a reason, we are asked to not second-guess letter writers.

            4. UKDancer*

              Yes some jobs do in fact need rigid start times. I’ve done jobs where we’ve dealt with a lot of people in different time zones so we had to staff our office accordingly. That meant some people had to be in very early and other people had to work very late. We tried to accommodate preferences for who worked which shifts but sometimes if you were the early shift, you were the early shift.

      3. Uncle Waldo*

        I agree with you and Allison. The true issue here is the subpar performance and inappropriate behaviors. Real consequences would address these issues one way or another.

        It sounds like LW is probably already the type of manager who educates and mentors her direct reports. Allison provided excellent advice to fill the gaps in knowledge due to generational differences. But as many others have already pointed out, there are several Gen Z employees who work hard and work well…and several older employees who are also similarly chronically disgruntled.

    2. MissMuffett*

      Yeah, it’s one thing to say, we may need a little extra coaching for these new hires as we onboard them, and another to be like, you always and forever have to coddle them. And it’s been 5 years since the shutdowns so at this point, I would think most young adults would have had some time to relearn how to be functional in society. Kids that started college online would (in most cases) not have finished it online.

      1. Zombeyonce*

        It’ll be an interesting case study in about 20 years. So much advanced social development happens during the high school and college years, so much that is really hard to get back if you miss out on it the first time around. Teenagers and young adults didn’t just move to online schooling, they also had their social circles completely cut off because of quarantines in the first few years of the pandemic. The skills they missed out on are not something they can get back easily now that they’re in completely different social environments. It’s likely going to take a very long time for them to get the skills they missed out on since they now have to be cobbled together without the social structure the rest of us had.

        It’s also important to realize for kids that got to go to the end of college in-person got there when the older students who lived through in-person schooling for the beginning of college were mostly graduated. This means that the newer students didn’t have the advantage of older students who knew the ropes to learn from, which is an easily overlooked benefit previous college students got.

        Elementary school kids who missed the first few years of in-person school are going through a very similar thing, only with basic social skills instead of advanced ones.

    3. MassMatt*

      In the past few years, employees (especially those with desirable skills) have had unusual bargaining power as there was a shortage of skilled workers. They were in a position to demand remote work, salary increases, etc and did not have to put up with dysfunctional workplaces.

      The pendulum has started to swing back to favor employers, and IMO it’s going to KEEP swinging in that direction, hard. Employees of any generation are going to have to adjust what they can and cannot demand of employers, but this is going to be harder for younger people because they don’t have the long-term memory of prior recessions, etc.

      This makes it even more important to give these new employees clear direction and expectations, and hold them to the standards, because if they don’t learn it early in their careers it will hobble them for life.

      I sympathize with younger people that missed crucial education and socialization due to the pandemic, it sucks, but you are really going to limit your career if you can’t handle coming in on time or answering follow-up questions to a presentation.

      The recruiter does seem to be doing these employees a disservice by expecting them to be treated with kid gloves and likely also in not giving good expectations for the roles she’s recruiting for. I agree with Alison re: checking whether she has any say in how managers manage their teams, if not then good, ignore her, but if she does there is a deeper issue where managers are being told to manage their teams without the authority to actually do so.

      1. rolf*

        The pendulum has started to swing back to favor employers

        It always has been. It’s just that in the time frame you spoke of, it was moved to not be angled *quite* so far in the employers’ favor. Hopefully workers keep pulling on it, ideally as a group.

      2. AlsoADHD*

        Longer term demographics are in favor of employees. But shorter term, I think you’re right we’re in an employer market (for months to years, it depends how bad the economy gets). But longer term demographics show a big disparity between the workers needed (amount and many skill areas) and the population in working age. Late retirements, AI, and offshoring/gig economy solutions will soften the demographics potentially (not clear how much) and some very popular fields are shrinking a bit, but there is a calculus that’s there when you look at long term trend projections. Not so great for X and older Millennials (we’re too old to benefit as strongly) but pretty good for Z.

    4. Lemons*

      Yeah, I think you may need to do what their schools/parents/your recruiter did not, which is to hold them to higher standards. Yes, they will think you’re mean, no, they will not get why you’re being so strict, yes, they will bitch and moan constantly. But simultaneously, hopefully, they’ll grow.

      I went to a school which put us through regular—in my opinion harsh—critiques, and graded things—in my opinion too stringently—on their quality. I thought they were mean, I didn’t get it, I bitched and moaned constantly. Today, I use those skills daily, even non-work things like hanging wallpaper are much easier because of those harsh quality gradings, they honed my general ability to craft things well.

      To be clear, this shouldn’t be your job. But I think, unfortunately, it is.

  7. Nia*

    If you’re adverse to making generational generalizations then don’t make them. This whole letter could have been written without resorting to them.

    1. Sloanicota*

      Agree, and I really hope we can reign it in in the comments section too. It’s not helpful or constructive, and honestly it really messed with my head when I was starting out lo these 20 years ago. I’d really like us to do better for the next kids coming up.

    2. Ask a Manager* Post author

      There’s a lot of research showing the effects the pandemic had on people who were in school at that time, and it’s not going to be easy to solve this without acknowledging that. I’ve been railing against generational stereotypes the whole time I’ve written this column (good lord, the stuff millennials dealt with…), but this is something that had a true effect on this generation’s experiences, and it’s relevant.

      That said, I do think Sloanicota’s point a couple of threads down about making sure you’re treating them all as individuals is really important. (And some of these people will be coachable and some may not be.)

          1. Kaiko*

            People talk about anecdata as a joke, but data is plural for a reason.

            -signed, a qualitative evaluator

          1. Observatorium sapiens*

            I think if I were the OP, I’d put on a presentation for the Gen-Z pandemic-damaged employees and show them those two links. Let them know that the science is in, and their experiences have left them with a skills deficit that they can address to improve their career prospects — they can come to work on time, take feedback professionally etc.

            1. Ally McBeal*

              Wow, no. That is not going to help in this situation where these employees are already having daily kikis about how management doesn’t care about them/is out to get them. I shudder to imagine the memes that will be made and secretly circulated during that presentation.

        4. Magpie*

          You can find many, many scholarly studies on this topic. School aged kids experienced a variety of detrimental effects from pandemic related isolation including learning loss, mental health struggles, and stunted social abilities. These are things that are not easily resolved even now because the effects were so profound.

        5. Hlao-roo*

          Here’s a list of articles and papers that are a good place to start (some are about high school students, some about college students):

          “Disruptions to School and Home Life Among High School Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic — Adolescent Behaviors and Experiences Survey, United States, January–June 2021” from April 1, 2022 on cdc.gov

          “The Psychological, Academic, and Economic Impact of COVID-19 on College Students in the Epicenter of the Pandemic” from April 10, 2022 on nlm.nih.gov

          “The Lingering Impact of Covid on High School Students” by Nellie Brennan Hall from September 12, 2023 on toptieradmissions.com

          “How has COVID-19 impacted Gen Z’s education?” from April 4, 2024 on usafacts.org

          “Pandemic Learning Loss: How COVID-19 Academically Impacted College Students” by Jessica Bryant updated April 8, 2024 on bestcolleges.com

          “Impact of COVID-19 on the psychological and behavioral health of college students worldwide: a knowledge mapping approach” from October 9, 2024 on nature.com

          I will link to all of the above in a follow-up comment.

            1. happybat*

              An oddity of this research is that it will usually focus on lockdown as the cause of learning difference. There are obvious other factors, such as the effects of Covid itself, both directly as a result of the illness and its aftereffects, and indirectly as young people’s family structures were changed by the death of elders who may have been important or main carers.

              We tend to talk much less about the learners who were benefitted by learning at home (particularly those whose learning was very much out of step with peers, and those whose ND led to a strong preference for learning independently).

              In addition, I wonder to what extent young people’s learning has been hampered by our very efforts to ‘catch them up’ and our insistence that there is Something Wrong With Them.

              However, all of this is very difficult (and very expensive) to research rigorously at a time when funding for educational research is… challenging, in my country at least.

              1. Bird names*

                All good points, but I especially find this interesting:
                hampered by…our insistence that there is Something Wrong With Them.
                I’m certainly in favor of taking their circumstances into consideration. But that should only happen if and when it is actually needed. I do wonder how different the situation would look now for LW’s group had the LW been allowed to address this more directly from the start.

              2. RagingADHD*

                We talk less about the learners who benefitted by learning at home because we are talking about the overall impact on the cohort — which was so overwhelmingly negative that those few individual positive blips are not visible in the data.

                These studies are not just looking at learning in person vs remote. They are also looking at life stress, the effects of parent/caregiver job loss, deaths in the family, the significant increase in child abuse and domestic violence, etc. All of impact a kid’s ability to learn regardless of whether remote learning works well for them.

        6. InSearchOf9000*

          There are quite a lot of scholarly articles out there that talk about the stress and reduction of socialization and focus and how they affected the various cohorts. Narrowing it down to a study specifically related to the age group of this specific incident is less trivial, but it’s easy enough to make the inference it’d apply to them as well.

      2. Nia*

        You’ve had plenty of letters about poor groups of employees who make each other worse. Should all those letters be seen through a generational lense?

        1. sarah*

          When you can draw a direct correlation between a group’s experiences and their behavior now (like AAM’s column on why people were anxious about returning to work in 2022, even when it didn’t seem fully rational to their managers), sure. People’s experiences at formative ages have an impact on them.

        2. Don’t know what to call myself*

          That’s not what Alison or anyone else is saying. This letter is specifically about newer hires who had significant portions of their education and early career impacted by pandemic closures, and that will by definition affect people of a specific age group more than others. This LW isn’t railing against “kids these days,” they’re noting a thing that has already been noted about a specific cohort of people that lost a lot of opportunities for social development because of the pandemic and the ramifications that lack of social development is having now. They mentioned the generational difference because it’s relevant to the issue they’re dealing with.

          1. Ask a Manager* Post author

            Yes, exactly. This generation had a different experience with much of their education and early career. Of course there are ramifications to that.

            Look, generational stereotypes drive me up the wall and I’m never going to say “all of Generation __ is X,” but we also need to be able to talk about how societal trends and the world around us influence the way people show up at work, and in this case we have a huge group that’s had the same very specific (and difficult) set of experiences at an age that really affects how they’ll show up early-career. That doesn’t mean they’re delicate flowers who will never amount to anything, it just means that they didn’t get the same work/school experiences as people who joined the work force before them.

            1. Tired*

              Gen X and Millennials were so loosely associated because they had less of a unifying experience BUT it would be clueless to act like the generation that had early depression era childhoods, or those that came of age in wartime Europe or lived through the Russian Revolution don’t have defining generational characteristics that mark them differently from those they preceded. There are countless scholarly research about these topics.

              Covid for kids/teens has very similar markings. This isn’t Gen X is unplugged or Millenials are snowflakes, and there has been a lot of research (still very early as we’re only 3 years removed and don’t have long term data) that show these marked differences.

        3. WellRed*

          I dunno. Have those other generations also experienced the disruption of a pandemic during their formative college years?

        4. Boof*

          IDK, is it inappropriate to categorize groups by major events such depression era, WWII era, vietnam era, etc?

      3. Sigh.*

        I work in finance as well, and my department helps onboard new financial advisors (mostly out of college, some mid-career). In the college grads, we’ve noticed a SHARP decline in reading comprehension and critical thinking skills – skills that previous groups of new college grads pre-pandemic had just fine. The pandemic’s effect on education levels and work ethic are going to have massive implications, for years/decades. It’s not endemic to just one generation, for sure, but the folks who were all high school or college age at the time and are now entering the work force WERE all affected in myriad ways. That’s not being biased towards a generation, it’s recognizing patterns.

        1. aebhel*

          Yeah, i noticed that even with – like, my daughter was in kindergarten during the first year of the pandemic, and her literacy learning took a nosedive from trying to do school remotely. She ended up having a really excellent first grade teacher who put in a lot of work to get her back on track, but how many kids also had that experience?

          1. Richard Hershberger*

            My kids were in, um, fifth and seventh grades? The remote year was essentially a lost year, educationally. What I found interesting is that academically, it turns out that losing a year did not matter all that much. But that is coming from a family that strongly values education. We had discussions about how to adapt, both to the remote year and the return. I can see how with less emphasis on the value of education, the outcome could well have been different.

            1. Contrary But True*

              My kiddo uhhhh actually did way better and leaped ahead during the COVID year. Turns out reading a bunch of real actual books is more valuable than whatever test prep BS her school was doing.

          2. valprehension*

            Very much this. My kid was born in 2018 so mercifully was too young for her schooling to be affected – she’s in grade 1 this year and her teacher says the difference is amazing. This is the first cohort she’s had since 2020 that’s meeting the same benchmarks as kids she taught in 2019 in prior. So unless schools figure out a way to get kids bridging the skills gap they developed in the pandemic, it’s going to be a lot of years before anyone’s entering the workforce without that impact.

      4. Cascadia*

        Yea, I’m a high school teacher, started at the same school in 2014, and am still here now. The differences between students pre- and post-covid are huge. While some things have not changed, some things definitely have. What the letter writer is describing lines up with things I’ve seen amongst many of my students. Certainly it is not ALL students, but as a group they were majorly impacted by covid and lock downs (and we are in a place that was locked down for a LONG time) and I see the impacts continually show up. While it is hard to attribute any one specific problem to covid, when you look at the problems this group has on a whole now, compared to students in 2019, it is notable. It would be unwise to assume such a massive global disruption on youth at a critical time of brain, social and emotional development would not have some effects.

      5. amoeba*

        In addition to that, I’m actually also wondering what the effect of technology/smartphones/social media is. I mean, on all of us, obviously, but I imagine the impact is even greater for developing brains. As far as I know, there’s also quite a bit of research on that as well…

        1. valprehension*

          Yes, and the impacts of social media were also wildly intensified by the pandemic, since for a few years that may have been a lot of kids’ *only* social outlet.

    3. Sean*

      To the contrary, I thought this letter was refreshingly free of them and was very specific about this cohort of employees and the issues being faced here.

    4. L-squared*

      I suppose you can not say “Gen Z”, but aside from that, this is something LW is noticing with people of a certain age/graduation time period. At some point, we should be able to call things out without tiptoeing around everything.

      But, these are concerns that have been being brought up for years by people in education. They have said “I don’t know how they will function in the workplace based on the behaviors they are exhibiting in school”

      1. Nia*

        The OP could have said I have a group of seven unmotivated employees that make each other worse what do I do about it. It doesn’t change the question or the answer to bring up worthless generalizations.

        1. Don’t know what to call myself*

          The generalization is not worthless. These are people who experienced enormous upheaval during their schooling and early career period, and that fact is extremely relevant to the situation and any solutions.

        2. Sloanicota*

          Right, Greta Thunberg is Gen Z, it’s not like we just totally flubbed with that group and need to start over.

        3. CTT*

          I think if the OP had said they have seven unmotivated employees without mentioning where they are in their career, it would be hard to give advice because how you coach someone entry level without much previous work experience is really different from someone who’s been working for decades.

        4. L-squared*

          I think if this group of 7 individuals have something in common, it is good to understand what that thing is.

          In this case, they are all of the same age group.

          If you hired 7 new people and they were having problem, and they all happened to have some other thing in common, you’d probably want to use that in your understanding. You wouldn’t just ignore that “these 7 women/POC are having issues”

        5. OP*

          I manage 7 of these employees, but this is a problem with this cohort across the organization of thousands.

          1. CrazyCatDude*

            If it’s a problem across the entire organization, it sounds like the problem might be with the organization’s culture rather than the employees.

            1. amoeba*

              I mean, if it’s literally just with that cohort, that seems unlikely. It’s always good not to generalise, but ignoring patterns outright because they don’t fit our world view doesn’t help, either.

              1. Oh No You Didn't*

                Yup. One thing I’ve noticed with our younger generation is a huge fear of doing anything wrong. Also, teacher friends tell me that they spend so much time on testing and getting ready for testing that they can’t address reading comp and critical thinking the way they would like to. These folks can mostly be helped by coaching and direct convo, if not, they’ll get fired and have to figure it out.

                1. Perihelion*

                  Yes—and the folks in the age range LW is describing are the first ones who had all of their schooling under No Child Left Behind, so they’ve really suffered the brunt of it.

              2. CrazyCatDude*

                But even if it’s a problem just with one generational cohort, that’s still ultimately a failure of the organization’s culture if it’s across the board.

                1. Boof*

                  So… what about the organizations’ culture do you think is failing then? Does this take change anything about Allison’s advice that maybe the problem was/is a need to set direct and clear expectations, or let them go?

            2. nnn*

              Maybe but you have educators and others who are in the trenches with this age group over and over (as the people in that demographic cycle through and are replaced by the next set) reporting the same thing. Maybe we should listen to the people in the trenches actually seeing it and the research showing the same thing and not discount it out of hand just because generational stereotypes have been misused in the past (which they have, I agree with that, just don’t think it’s the issue this time due to actual pandemic trauma).

            3. Lana Kane*

              I think for sure there’s an issue with the recruiter, given that they’ve made it a point to tell managers to treat them with kid gloves. That hurts everyone involved.

              Honest, difficult conversations are important in a healthy org, and that insistence on avoiding them with the new hires is not only hurting their own chances at growth, but it’s setting up the company for a culture shift in the wrong direction once those new hires are not new anymore, and are actually shaping the direction of the workplace.

              1. learnedthehardway*

                I think that both things can be true – a) that there’s a problem that the youngest employees are not prepared for the workforce, due to the disruption of their education, home lives, and psychological growth by the COVID pandemic. Exacerbated no doubt by being online/on phones all the time rather than having in-person interaction with people (I know my kids are certainly addicted to their phones, and despite what they say, having friendships with classmates online instead of in person does have an impact).

                b) the recruiter is giving bad advice and isn’t screening for things like resilience, work ethic, ability to handle constructive criticism, reliability, ability to take direction, etc. etc.

            4. huh*

              What you and Nia are failing to understand is that it’s a recognizable issue with a specific cohort, who happen to be in the same generation.

        6. The OG Sleepless*

          It’s definitely a relevant data point to say “oh by the way, their age cohort had a historic upheaval in their social and educational lives right at the age when it could do the most harm.”

    5. Ellis Bell*

      We definitely see the effects of the pandemic in teaching, whole new sources of funding and more bodies have been required to support students who present differently (lack of critical thinking, less experience with basic social skills, generally negative or anxious outlook) but it’s all reversible! You just have to stay the course of aggressive normality and positive cheerfulness and believe in your bones that they’re capable of picking up what you’re laying down, because they are. Also people forget that there are also kids/people who thrived during the pandemic and got a lot out of it.

    6. Hyaline*

      Except…it couldn’t be written without the generational references and remain the same letter with the same issues. There truly is a micro-generation that is posting particular and exceptional challenges right now. Ask any high school teacher or professor teaching undergraduates. There are particular challenges endemic to this narrow sliver of a demographic that simply fall outside “oh, all newcomers to the professional world are like this” or “yeah, I worked with 20-somethings for years.” This really is a case of “if you don’t see it, it’s because you’re not in the particular trenches where it’s visible.”

      Added to this is the “oh, the poor wee lambs who were affected by the pandemic, treat them like glass” mentality that the recruiter is bringing to the table, making the whole thing worse. This is a question born of a particular moment in time about a particular demographic and that’s actually important to addressing it.

    7. Hedgehug*

      The generation is relevant because OP is being told by the hiring manager to be gentle with them because of their generation. The generation card is being used by the hiring manager, not by OP. OP is being forced into the generalization.
      I’m sorry that trends and data are hurting your feelings, but you cannot ignore trends and data.

  8. Early GenX*

    This pretty much matches my experiences with early career coworkers the last few years. In my office, we support manufacturing so we have to be in office most of the time. The early career coworkers: resent having to be at work at a specific time and think they should be able to come and go as they wish, deeply unhappy as a whole that they have to work for a living, anyone holding them to reasonable expectations is “mean.” If they have to go onto the factory floor, they never put safety glasses on/make sure they’re wearing closed toe shoes. The attitude when they’re reminded is epic. One woman got very peevish when told her cute sandals weren’t safe for the factory and she needed to keep a pair of closed toe shoes at the office.

    Then there are the tech issues (chronic inability with basic Windows/MS Office functions, often extreme phone anxiety). I could go on and on.

      1. Early GenX*

        This is very different. I will go into generational generalities here. There is something different with this age group that came of age during the pandemic. Alison mentioned research on it a few posts up. It’s not unhappy about having to work for a living, it’s bitter resentment, is the best way I can describe it. They think they should be doing something better, but I don’t know what that is. Many of this age group are not adjusting well to the work force, in my experience.

        1. Richard Hershberger*

          Perhaps the issue is that in the past there was a plausible belief that hard work would lead to financial advancement. That is a harder sell nowadays, in the New Gilded Age. It’s not hard to see how this would affect attitudes about work.

          1. The Prettiest Curse*

            Yeah, they were sold that entirely false belief (as were other younger generatioms) – but on the other hand, if you deeply resent capitalism, why on earth would you choose to work in the finance industry, of all possible industries? It’s pretty unlikely that they’ll be able to destroy the capitalist system from within!

        2. Reb*

          A lot of us grew up hearing you can do anything you want if you just work hard enough. Only to grow up and realise it doesn’t matter how hard you work because the world’s falling apart. Hard to care about your future when you’re genuinely not sure if you’ll be alive next year.

          1. Rex Libris*

            Practically every generation has had some version of that, and has had to learn to cope though. When I entered the workforce, many of us were convinced that nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union would kill us all before we were 40.

            1. PurplePeopleEater*

              I’ve been listening to Queen’s “Hammer to Fall” quite a bit lately. Art has a way of resonating when history echos!

          2. Account*

            Good lord, though, my parents (now nearing 80) grew up with “Duck and Cover” drills in elementary school. Everyone always thinks the world is going to end.

        3. Wayward Sun*

          Judging from what I see on social media, they think capitalism is on its way out and the revolution will be any day now. It’s their version of the Rapture.

          1. Whanto*

            You joke, but the combo of the social media focus on mental health and anti-capitalism and the increased reliance on social media during the worst of the pandemic plus the anxieties of living through it as a child really whip up a distinct worldview that is not super compatible with the workplace. Seeing a funny meme about depression or the indignities of workplace hierarchy makes me go “hah” for 2 seconds then I go back to work because what else am I going to do? But if it’s what you’re stewing in 24/7 with little real world experience to balance it out, that can feel pretty oppressive, I’d imagine.

            1. Wayward Sun*

              I phrased it humorously but I’m really not joking. A lot of social media is very anti-work and there are a lot of armchair revolutionaries.

          2. Rex Libris*

            I’m not particularly fond of capitalism myself (especially the unregulated predatory version we have going on in the US) but I do find it preferable to spending hours a week standing in the toilet paper and bread line, so I’m not sure what the alternative would be.

            1. Wayward Sun*

              Sure. I’m also aware, as a queer person, that LGBTQ rights in communist countries have never been good.

        4. MerBearStare*

          This is just speculation on my part, but I’m wondering if this doesn’t have to do with things like Instagram and YouTube, where you can follow rich influencers and see them showing off their expensive stuff, going on exotic vacations, and just generally having it way easier than 99% of us. I definitely remember being just out of college and feeling resentful of the people my age who came from wealthy families and didn’t have to worry about finding a job and paying their own bills. And this was well before Instagram was there to shove it in all of our faces. I eventually got over it; hopefully they will too.

        5. Pescadero*

          As a late GenX – I’ve always had bitter resentment about having to waste my life working.

          I just realized that my only options were to be homeless – or shut my mouth about the bitter resentment I had toward work, suck it up, and try and make enough money to quit working as soon as humanly possible.

          My generation just figured out that suffering in silence is the best of a set of bad options.

          1. UKDancer*

            I mean I always knew I’d have to work. My parents made it pretty clear that the best thing to do was to get enough education to get a decent job and then get the best job i could. But they were very clear that I was expected to work. So I had a Saturday job from 16, worked in the university holidays and then got a job on graduation. They pretty much told me they wouldn’t have money to keep me. So work it was.

            I mean short of moving to somewhere with a guaranteed universal basic income, there wasn’t a lot of choice. So I found the best job I could and try and enjoy as much of it as I can.

          2. Rex Libris*

            Preach. I’m early GenX, and while I profoundly resent having to sell my time for money, my youthful plans to become a rock star/bestselling author somehow never came to fruition.

        6. Foila*

          Interesting. Not that it’s any help, but of course they probably did miss out on some of those great experiences that can make it feel like you’ve had a chance at exploring and doing fun things in life. I’m thinking stuff like study abroad, or being a ski bum for a winter, heck even a debauched and unsupervised spring break. (Rather privileged examples, but it’s a finance firm.)

          My college-era low-pay adventures definitely make it more tolerable to do a less exciting job now, because I know that adventurous spirit is in there and has gotten to go play. Plus those adventures can be helpful for dealing with surprises – missing a flight requires all kinds of adaptability, and surviving little stuff like that can make the world less scary.

          1. Wayward Sun*

            As a lower-middle-class kid from the Midwest I think I just intuitively knew those were not options that were going to be available to me.

        7. goddess21*

          influencers. ppl (not all young, but ignorant of white collar culture) think it is a thing to …be beautiful and consume and command attention all day long. i am not being hyperbolic.

        1. Sloanicota*

          Yeah honestly sometimes I think the younger people are the ones speaking the truth. We (elder milennial here) probably bought in too hard to “hustle culture” nonsense that didn’t serve us that well, IMO.

          1. Early GenX*

            Hustle culture? Let’s take one of the things I mentioned: showing up at a particular time. This is a quite basic expectation of many workplaces, that you show up at a particular time or be available at particular core hours.

            1. ian*

              Sure, but is it actually necessary? Nowadays given the amount of work that’s online and asynchronous, I think it’s totally fair for someone to say “if I’m getting my work done effectively, why should it matter if I start work at 9:45 instead of 9 AM or if I work from home vs the office” or anything similar that has been a basic expectation for years but may not make sense any longer.

              1. Early GenX*

                Well, given we support manufacturing and the factory shift starts at 8, yes, we have to start at 8. At my company, they knew when they were hired they had to start at 8 and it’s a definite thing, same with mostly needing to be on site. We interact with the factory floor multiple times daily. If they didn’t want the schedule, they shouldn’t have taken the job.

              2. Allonge*

                No. Who cares if the doors to a business, bank or library open an hour later, amiright? All those fuddy-duddies who wanted to get something done before their work starts are just boring. /s

              3. Yikes Stripes*

                I work in home health care and my company has absolutely had major issues with our youngest employees not taking start times seriously.

                Which is an issue when your client requires 24/7 care and the prior shift can’t clock out and leave until you get there.

          2. Caramel & Cheddar*

            Honestly, that’s how I felt reading this letter (and as a fellow elder millennial). OP is right to enforce whatever workplace standards their office has, but I think it’s also worth asking: do the kids have a point? Maybe, maybe not, maybe about some things and not others, but I wouldn’t assume they’re necessarily wrong about everything just because This Is Industry Standard. Lots of industries — and workplaces more generally — could do with modernizing and I wish people higher up the hierarchy were more open to that idea.

      3. Tippy*

        No, not in my experience. Quite a few people genuinely enjoy their work and would continue to do it regardless of if they “needed” to or not.

        1. Missa Brevis*

          Same in my experience. I’m not saying everyone shows up every day with a smile on their faces and a song in their hearts, or that we’d *prefer* to be working rather than engaging in whatever we do with free time, but a lot of people get satisfaction out of work.

          1. UKDancer*

            Yeah I had some blood tests this week and was trying to take my mind of things talking to the phlebotomist who was telling me how much she enjoyed her work because she could help people and knew she was the best and could get a sample when nobody else could find the vein.

            I mean I wouldn’t want her job (I have needle issues) but it’s nice that she really enjoyed it.

        2. Dust Bunny*

          I freaking love my job. Plus, having a schedule keeps me from working myself to death on hobbies :-).

        3. papaya*

          Someone can enjoy their work and still not be happy that they *have to* work in order to not be homeless. Completely different concepts.

          I love the actual work I do, but I hate that if for some reason I become unable to do it, I’ll have to scramble to find some other way to prove to society that I “deserve” food and housing. In the hypothetical society (possible or not – that isn’t relevant here) where everyone’s basic needs were met and work was more of a choice, the people who like their work would still be allowed to work. No one is saying that work should be forbidden.

        4. Pescadero*

          In my experience – lots of people enjoy their work, almost no one enjoys having to have a job.

        5. Account*

          I do not need to work– and in fact was a SAHM for ten years. I work now because I love it (I’m a nurse).

          1. amoeba*

            Care work is work to – just because you weren’t paid for it doesn’t mean you weren’t working!

      5. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

        I’m having to retire from work on health grounds and I can honestly say it’s NOT doing wonders for my mental health to face a life where I literally cannot work anymore.

        Because we’ve been hammered with ‘you’re only worthwhile as a human if you are working or giving back to society’.

        1. Librararian*

          You are worthwhile, regardless of your work status, physical and/or mental abilities , or any other crap that society puts on us. Think like Stuart Smalley :)

          I hope you are able to find a community in retirement that will help you feel fulfilled! I’m not even close to that option but have recently found/reconnected with a new group of super welcoming crafting people with the same “ooh I’m going to try everything” problem that I have so we can trade skills and stuff. It helps remind me that I’m more than just what I do in the office.

        2. PurplePeopleEater*

          This kind of honesty is very helpful to me. I’m trying to plan ahead as a disability I acquired worsens. I have ADHD and have relied on work for structure and quite a bit of my social connection. There’s a lot of uncertainty, but people keep encouraging me to “look on the bright side.” Sure, but in addition to the practical stuff, I also need to do emotional work to be prepared for what could charitably be called extremely early retirement. The “I do not dream of labor” trend runs into the reality of disability in very complex ways.

      8. An introvert in an extrovert's world*

        No, it was a point of pride when in late teens/20’s to be self-supporting.

    2. Lisa Simpson*

      I managed 16-21 year olds prepandemic and the “mean” thing drove me up the wall. “Please be on time,” in a neutral, professional voice was met with “Why are you YELLING at me?”

      1. CrabbyLibrarian*

        I had a manager firmly tell an employee that the conversation they were having needed to continue at a later time. The employee later said the manager “yelled and screamed” at them. The manager had laryngitis. They physically couldn’t do more than whisper.

    3. Don’t know what to call myself*

      Some of that is just people being new to the workforce. I worked in a library when I was in college back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and we hired a new member of the shelving crew who only lasted three days because she insisted on coming to work in mini skirts and ultra high heels. She knew the job required crouching to reach low shelves and climbing on stools to reach high shelves and pushing large and heavy carts that could do serious damage if you ran over your foot, but she didn’t think following the safety-focused dress code would matter.

      I like to believe she’s out there somewhere telling this story and saying “can you believe how silly and out of touch I was at my first job?!”

      1. Cats Ate My Croissant*

        She’s probably raising a pack of influencers.

        Pack? What IS the collective noun for influencers? A ‘like’ of influencers. An exposure of influencers, maybe.

        1. David's Skirt-pants*

          – a ‘pedant’ of influencers
          – a ‘bore’ of influencers
          – a ‘murder’ of influencers (maybe not?)

        3. C*

          A “group”, almost certainly. Nearly all of the dramatic collective nouns for animals are fanciful and were invented for lists of interesting collective nouns for animals rather than having ever been used, anywhere, by any actual speech communities.

          What we’re left with is what you’d expect – group, flock, pack, herd, school, band, troop, gang. I think those last three are mostly used with human and non-human primates.

      2. mcm*

        yes, I remember a high school food service job where having to wear uniform all-black closed toed shoes that I thought were ugly felt practically dehumanizing. What if someone I knew SAW me in UGLY SHOES???
        Some level of this is just always going to be true of people new to the workforce (and was at least somewhat true of all of us when we were new to the workforce!).

    4. A person*

      I know it sucks to resort to this… but if you fire someone for safety violations usually the problem sorta resolves itself. If people are blatantly disregarding safety rules there should be clear consequences. If people believe you will act on them… you’d be surprised how quickly they’ll remember their safety glasses.

      I’m of course not talking about the occasional miss that is corrected quietly with a quick “hey safety glasses”… cuz who hasn’t walked out on the factory floor missing some PPE absent-mindedly before? I’m talking about the ones that do it every time and give attitude when reminded. They’re gonna be a safety risk forever. Not worth it!

  9. Sloanicota*

    I’d encourage you as much as possible *not* to think of them as a generational cohort if you don’t find it’s helping you manage effectively (and it doesn’t sound like it is). You can train up or fire individual people as necessary. One of the worst things the prior generations did to us was lump us all in under one category and then chalk every kind of issue anyone had to that. Think of it as “Suzie, who needs to up her writing skills to be successful here” and “Tommy, who can’t get the hang of our office culture” not “these kids these days.”

    1. Eldritch Office Worker*

      I think part of the issue is that some of these things are value shifts that are real and competitive companies need to grow to match if possible (schedule flexibility, hybrid workspaces, etc), some of them are growing pains for any young professionals (getting tough feedback, learning professional norms) and some are real and studied things that are specific to this generation and many, many companies are struggling to compensate for (tech literacy, critical thinking, phone anxiety). Without acknowledging what’s causing some of these differences, we can’t address them appropriately.

      1. Sloanicota*

        Yeah, I feel like getting nuanced is useful here. “Can we offer more trainings on phone etiquette to employees who haven’t had to use phone calls as much in their careers” is helpful. “Employees must use the phone for X and Y task, as it is far more effective than email, no exceptions” is actually helpful (I think). “These kids are too mollycoddled” is not helpful.

        1. Don’t know what to call myself*

          I really like this framing. Companies need to address the training needs of their new hires, and those training needs will change over time as the experience levels of new employees changes.

          I had an intern last summer whose school didn’t have a computer lab because each student was issued a device to use from home, but the device they were given was an iPad. As a result, the kid was great with touch screens and a disaster at using a mouse or a track pad because they had no experience with it. So I gave him some tips and training and he figured it out eventually. Throwing up my hands and saying “how can he not know such a basic thing?” wouldn’t have helped the situation, he needed a small amount of training to be effective at his job, we provided it, and everybody moved on.

          2. Teapot Connoisseuse*

            The mouse thing is really interesting. I wasn’t really aware of it until my godson was having trouble passing his driving theory test last year. He was acing the practice tests on his phone, but struggled to use the mouse at the test centre. He did eventually pass after his mother sat him down do do some practice on her desktop computer.

  10. T.N.H*

    I’ll link to the article in a follow up comment, but I love this quote from 1976 about Boomers:

    “To put it in simplistic, laymen’s terms,” one Los Angeles psychiatrist said, “a lot of these kids were led to believe the world would be handed to them on a silver platter. They got spoiled by permissive parents, and aren’t prepared for a cruel world.”

    Most of these generational differences aren’t real, y’all!

    1. Ellis Bell*

      Wasn’t it Socrates who said “Our youth now love luxury, they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders, and they love to chatter instead of exercise. Children are now tyrants not servants of their household. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.”

      2. Caramel & Cheddar*

        This is apparently misattributed to Socrates, but generally you’re correct that there are other 2000+ years old examples of this.

    3. spcepickle*

      I think that is not generational differences but the pain of growing up. I am also a manager in my early 40s. And I am just starting to admitting that I am not a “kid” anymore. Watching my new hires who I now manage behave in ways that I forgot I behaved in is hard. When one of them asked me if it was okay to flip off people while driving a company branded truck – I have to remind myself of the stupid things I have done in the past. No blame COVID quarantine.

    4. Caramel & Cheddar*

      Every time someone complains to me about the generation below them, I’m very inclined to say “And your elders were probably saying the same thing about you twenty years ago.”

      The “kids these days” attitude goes back to ancient times and it’s so funny how easy it is to forget that. Even Aristotle complained about them being insufferable know-it-alls!

      1. Rex Libris*

        I do think one element that has changed though is the advent of social media. It makes it too easy to be the superstar of your own private world, and when reality (or work) intrudes on that, drama ensues.

        1. Bird names*

          Sure, but by the same token a lot of this stuff is broadcast far more than previously and may cause us to overestimate of how widespread a particular issue is.
          The actual percentage of kids eating tide pods for example may have been fairly similar to their predecessors who were swallowing goldfish a century earlier.

      2. rolf*

        Just like every push for better working conditions was smeared as “entitled” “lazy” “unreasonable”

  11. Lacey*

    It’s really going to help them to make sure expectations are clear.

    I had a young coworker who was super fragile about corrections. Management coddled her (she was a nepo hire) and now she’s a manager who can’t manage effectively because she’s still super fragile about everything.

    This was like, 15 years ago, so we’re both millenials, but she can never work at any other company because no one else will treat her with the kind of deference she recieves there.

    1. Sparky*

      I tried to set aside my misgivings about the generalizations for the duration of this letter, and most of the reported behaviors by these employees do appear to be somewhat entitled, at least if the description here is accurate. But criticizing an employee for taking mental health leave due to the stress of the job is wrong and should’ve received some pushback. It doesn’t matter whether this individual didn’t have as stressful a workload as her peers by your estimation. Mental health doesn’t work like that. You work in an industry that’s pretty famous for being stressful in general anyway, and not everyone can handle the same level of stress at work (and that’s even if you assume there aren’t any factors outside work contributing). It sounds like an employee used mental health leave for exactly what it’s intended for — her mental health. The fact that you criticize an employee for this and count it among the ways your younger employees are being “coddled” makes me think that you may be exhibiting a similar level of judgment and condescension when it comes to these employees in other matters, and it makes me trust your assessment less. It’s perfectly likely that these employees are being entitled in plenty of ways, but I’d caution you to take care not to generalize this to every concern employees of this age have without seriously considering them first. Even if there’s a lot they need to learn about workplace norms, just because you consider something the norm doesn’t mean it’s best, and it’s best not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

      2. Oh No You Didn't*

        What’s tricky, though, is what counts as mental health. I’m seeing that many younger people aren’t being raised to differentiate between a rough patch or a stressful project and a genuine MH crisis. That will not benefit them at work long-term.

        1. Rex Libris*

          I think it may be a byproduct of the social media epidemic of self care advice. I’ve seen younger staff who genuinely seem to believe that receiving feedback of any sort is triggering, and respond as though it’s a mental health concern.

        2. Sparky*

          I agree that it’s very easy to struggle to differentiate between these things — though for me personally, my biggest error on that front was in the opposite direction, and I ended up losing my job because I didn’t handle an actual MH crisis early enough or treat it seriously enough. But I think this is an issue across generations, and I don’t think it’s a boss’s place to assume they have more insight into whether an employee is REALLY going through a mental health crisis than the employee themselves, especially given that they have objectively less information to work off of on that front.

      3. Sashaa*

        It may mean that this employee isn’t cut out for a career in finance. If she is taking work-related MH leave in an objectively non-stressful role, it doesn’t bode well for future more senior and more stressful positions.

        I’m a UK physician, and from experience if resident doctors are finding their jobs stressful in the early days, they don’t tend to last out the full 10-15 years of training to become a hospital consultant (the UK does not have the ridiculous residency hours you have in the US – they work an average of 40-48 hrs a week). This is an observation not a criticism, and they get a huge amount of support to complete training, but the job is the job, and tends to get harder and busier not easier and quieter as you get more senior. IME the underlying issue is

        IME the underlying issue is usually that they fundamentally don’t enjoy the reality of being a hospital physician, and they tend to choose to move sideways into family medicine or something less patient-facing, and are much happier for it.

  12. Justin*

    Recruit elsewhere. Maybe less pedigreed schools. I’ve had great luck with internships and they’re even younger.

    These folks seem basically like a parody of what people generalize about and give their hard working peers a bad name.

    2. Rogue Slime Mold*

      I suspect the recruiter is doing a poor job making the field look appealing to the most qualified applicants, and has (thus far successfully) managed to brand this as Young People These Days, rather than What You’re Offering Isn’t Selling.

      2. Hell in a Handbasket*

        Given that it is very highly paid, my bet is what Justin is implying — they’re getting the most “qualified” applicants, but they’re defining “qualified” by the fanciness of their college. It would be interesting to see what results they would get with state college grads with real work experience — I bet they would have fewer issues.

        1. Justin*

          I went to an Ivy undergrad and only at my public college for my doctorate did I really feel prepared

          1. Grimalkin*

            Similarly, I went to a fancy private liberal arts school for my bachelor’s degree. (Not an Ivy, but well-regarded and selective just the same.) When I went back to school at the local community college for my paralegal studies certificate, I got way more information and preparation for the working world from them than I ever did at my fancy expensive college.

      3. Miss Chanandler Bong*

        I’m wondering about the company in general. Now finance can be a very vague term, so I don’t know exactly what OP does, but the hours for both finance and public accounting are known for being brutal. Especially at larger firms. A lot of Gen Z (and some younger millennials) simply aren’t willing to work the crazy hours anymore. Or deal with the stress over a job.

        I won’t argue that the younger 20 somethings are behind in maturity. I’ve definitely noticed that, and teachers and college professors have been saying it for a while. But there is also a shift (including with younger millennials) where there’s less that we’re willing to put up with. Like the comment from OP about how the one worker was going on mental health leave from work because of stress when “they’ve never worked late.” That…baffles me. You can have a stressful job without working late (I never worked late at a prior job and had a terrible boss who was ruining my mental health…I’d been in the workforce for six years at this point and had worked for four different bosses; he was just terrible).

        I also have to wonder about the company culture. Accounting firms are known for hiring all new grads and having horrible expectations and work life balance. I don’t know if finance firms (including the one where OP is) have similar expectations, but based on that they’re managing seven younger people, kind of sounds like it. Which is also why a lot of college kids aren’t going into accounting or (like I did when I switched mid career) jumped straight to an industry role instead of going the public accounting route.

        1. Nontraditional student*

          The first question a student asked at a CPA event was about work-life balance, and one of the accountants replied that the question was a “red flag.” Even the more diplomatic panel members defended the hours as the only way to learn the job. But I think they’ll have a harder time getting young people to drink the Kool-Aid when work-life balance is literally the first thing they’re looking for in a career.

    3. Happily Retired*

      I’m particularly mystified by the issues around can’t take feedback, offense at being asked follow-up questions, balking at edits, and so forth.

      I’m in a state university now (a very senior senior), and all my classes involve presentations with questions from classmates and professors, editing suggestions from professors, and general critiques. Also, as a science major, I have to list citations for EVERYTHING. (I know that that’s true of other fields as well, but it’s way different than back in my younger days.)

      Isn’t this the norm for a university education?

      1. Happily Retired*

        Oh, to add, every major department encourages students to do at least one months-long internship, and many, including mine, have a structured internship as part of the major requirements.

      2. Perihelion*

        I’d say it’s typical, although how much can depend on the school and class sizes. But I did also have a recent course evaluation where someone complained that no matter how hard you worked on your writing, I still had “negative” comments. Which of course I did, it was an intro class. If I hadn’t had feedback for them (which I really work to make sure isn’t all negative), I would have been failing at my own job. I rarely see it so blatantly, but I certainly it do see students who seem to feel that anything other than completely positive feedback means they failed. I don’t know how much that’s changed in the past few years.

    4. e271828*

      I came here to say that if the recruiter is bringing in people who all have a similar background and similar workplace issues, then the company needs to change recruiters and diversify their hiring pool. These employees may have great-looking resumes and interview smoothly, but if they can’t do the job without setting up a circular complaining chat group to validate their negative feelings, they aren’t going to develop well.

      The suggestion to look for people who have had retail and other CS type jobs is good.

    6. Wayward Sun*

      The whole point going to an Ivy is to get preferentially hired by a loyal alum to some sinecure job. Of course they’re mad when they have to do work.

    7. Pam Adams*

      I agree! My first- generation students working multiple jobs to help support their families, while being excellent full-time students, will change your opinions about “kids these days.”

  13. Jennifer Strange*

    A somewhat similar thing happened at my previous job. We have annual apprenticeships for new professionals to get hands-on training in their field. The first group after the start of the pandemic apparently had a group chat going where they complained about everything.

    I was on maternity leave for a portion of their year, and it sounds like there were one or two legitimate grievances in there, but most of it was complaining about having to do work. I think some of them – who would have otherwise had no issues – got bogged down by the snark of the others and it just became an echo chamber of complaints.

  14. kanada*

    every generation, all the way back to ancient greece, has been convinced that their elders were wrong about them being lazy and entitled, but that their youngers /really are/. you don’t have a “youth” problem, you have an employee problem, and probably a culture problem on your team, and framing it that way (rather than some vague, unfalsifiable concern about “the kids”) makes it clear how you need to address it.

    1. Tea Monk*

      I like this because actually helping is the way we improve employees. Most people will be able to meet reasonable expectations if you’re clear.

    2. Sloanicota*

      Yeah, I wonder if one factor is physically grouping these workers together all the time, allowing them to develop this in-group-culture and the group chat. Do people need to be better integrated into their teams and with senior mentors? I know in my current org, we have a bad cultural problem with very senior people who’ve been there forever, and they don’t really allow any power-sharing or (though I shudder to use the term) “thought leadership” from anyone outside this core group. This causes all of us in the next tier to lose motivation; who cares, nobody’s listening to us anyway, they’re never going to allow any kind of changes. Could something like this culture be contributing to the way this cohort is acting?

      1. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

        This is a really important point. If most of their interactions are with this same group of people, that’s going to reinforce what’s going on.

    3. Rogue Slime Mold*

      Yeah, if the group chat of complaint had arisen amongst a bunch of boomers, it would be the same employee problem, just a different generation to blame.

      Ecclesiastes 7:10: Do not say “Why were the old days better than these?”

    4. Teacher Lady*

      Truly. I’m mentoring a brand-new teacher who is 22, and it is forcing me to relive many of the same new-to-the-profession choices I made as a brand-new 22 year old teacher, and…whew. It’s not about what generation we’re part of, it’s about not yet knowing better to do better.

  15. Kate*

    OP, you have my profound sympathy. I have experienced this over the last few years in my industry as well — I could pretty much have written the same letter as you did, word for word.

    I may have some lessons learned that I can share, since what Alison has laid out here is basically the approach I have been implementing for the past three years.

    1) If you haven’t already, develop a VERY tough skin. Alison’s tips do work for moving the needle, but they won’t stop the perception that you are being “mean”. You just have to make peace with it, and count on the fact that you have a reputation as a fair and kind manager so the “mean” rumours won’t go far.

    2) Write out what you can, even if it seems time consuming. Write down your standards and expectations, link them back to company policies (or in my case government SOPs and standards) where you can, maybe even mock up a brief or an email with corrections (not one of theirs) so that they can see what’s normal to expect. You’ll need to refer back to them about 1500 times anyways (whether with the same employee or the rest of the cohort) so it’s not time wasted.

    3) Keep some of those documents for yourself. From a pessimistic perspective, you may well need them one day down the road when someone tries to complain about how mean you are. From a less pessimistic perspective, it can help you internally anchor yourself so that, yes, you are providing the same level and standard of guidance to everyone, or form the basis of a training plan for new people — look at you, taking the lead on revamping onboarding procedures! ;)

  16. Exhausted teacher*

    As a teacher all I can say is buckle up, its going to get worse before it gets better.

    The kids who were school age during covid missed so much, not in terms of academic content, but social skills and resilience.

    The next generation is anxious and mollycoddled. Its been a difficult few years to say the least.

    1. lol*

      Yeah, it sucks to be subjected to not only the challenges of a pandemic and unprecedented societal and environmental collapse, but also authority figures who are incapable of accepting accountability for abuses they perpetuate or excuse because we’re so “coddled.” I promise you’re not as socially skilled or resilient as you assume you are.

      1. Justin*

        Having descended from enslaved people, you really gotta chill with any of our horrors being the worst.

        2. lol*

          I’m talking about climate destruction, massive technological change, and the way both those things dovetail and worsen the rise of fascism worldwide. I certainly never called the horrors “the worst” nor did I make any comparison to the lived experiences of enslaved folks.

          1. Justin*

            I apologize for snapping. I teach young adults and have had (white) students say that to me repeatedly so it gets on my nerves probably more than it should

          2. Yikes Stripes*

            Do you think those things aren’t affecting literally everyone else too? My friends in their 40s and 30s are all terrified of how all of the social and environmental collapses are going to impact their kid’s lives, a ton of us are struggling with our future security disappearing before our eyes, and we’re all watching the societal advances we fought so goddamn hard for be rolled back or fully destroyed. I have a client right now who is 104 years old and who cried while telling me about losing her older brother *and* her fiancé in WWII only to see fascism rising again in her lifetime. She’s struggling with her mental health to a staggering degree.

            Your generation is facing horrifying hardships but the idea that those hardships are solely yours is ridiculous.

          1. Miss Chanandler Bong*

            Yeah, but I personally have to wonder if there’s something else going on here, particularly with how OP is giving the feedback.

            For instance, one employee is going on mental health leave, and to quote OP, the employee “doesn’t ever work late and has the least amount of work.” I really should have taken mental health leave at a prior job when all of this was true of me… because my boss was terrible and HE was the issue.

            I also have to wonder about getting upset over the feedback. For instance, I get feedback all the time because it’s part of my role, but I get frustrated when I’m suddenly told to do something differently after having it done consistently for months and then being given feedback as if we should have been doing it that way all along. It also gets wearing, for anyone, if feedback is constantly negative and never positive. It helps even with email feedback if you say “Great job overall, let’s fix a few things.”

            I also think more mentorship and working with some older coworkers outside of their chain of command would help these employees adopt professional norms more quickly. I know it helped me when I was 21/22.

      2. Yankees fans are awesome!*

        “…authority figures who are incapable of accepting accountability for abuses they perpetuate or excuse…”

        —-

        @Exhausted teacher: To “anxious and mollycoddled,” I’d add “weak internal locus of control.”

      3. Account*

        Like… my dude. You didn’t get drafted to Vietnam. Your village didn’t get wiped out from cholera or Spanish flu. You didn’t even live under the Cuban missile crisis or the Blitzkrieg. Please, please gain some perspective about prior generations.

        1. Dezzi*

          Nobody actually died in the Cuban missile crisis. Just about 1,200,000 Americans have DIED from COVID in the last five years. Please take several seats.

    2. MigraineMonth*

      One way to look at it is “mollycoddled”… the other way is “confined”. When I think back to my formative young adult experiences, they pretty much all happened outside of my house: my first job, study abroad, going away to college, traveling solo… all things that were much harder to do during lockdown.

      It’s been a difficult few years for adults, who can look at the breadth of our lives and say “that was a scary blip, but we trust that something like normalcy will return”. For young people that *was* their normal, they adapted to it, and now we’re pulling the rug out from under them by expecting completely different behavior and skills than what we’ve taught them.

      2. Oh No You Didn't*

        Yeah, and when parents try to send them to play outside, they get arrested for child neglect. The book Anxious Generation is instructive for anyone, I think.

    3. Harper the Other One*

      I’m going to provide an alternate view. Believe me, I support teachers and I know your job is hard! But our education system is full of meaningless and/or unexplained work kids just have to do. My oldest thrived during study from home during the pandemic because his teachers were able to give students lots of flexibility with how they learned and showed their knowledge.

      And then he went back to school, and things fell apart. It’s “I understand this math concept but I have to do four repetitive worksheets before I’m allowed to do anything else” or “we’re doing a sex ed unit and I’m required to turn in a terminology word search”…

      That’s a systemic problem about how school boards etc. assess students, not the teachers’ fault. But imagine getting a taste of independence and then being closed back up in a more rigid classroom setting again, and I think that’s a big part of where so much anxiety and stress among students comes from

      1. Pescadero*

        “But our education system is full of meaningless and/or unexplained work kids just have to do. ”

        The problem is – that is pretty good training for life, which is full of meaningless and/or unexplained work you just have to do.

        1. higheredadmin*

          This is what my 8th grader says about school – it is designed to teach you to be a mindless corporate cog doing repetitive boring stuff. Well, I guess one way to look at it. (Repetition is unfortunately a very reliable way to learn a lot of things – want to get better at math, do a sheet of problems every day.) RE: the comment nested above – good grief my kids HATE outside now. We got a dog just to force them outside to walk it. If you try and talk to a stranger in the great outside, they literally look like they could die. (I seem to remember feeling like this with my mom, so maybe a kid universal.)

    4. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

      I’d dispute the ‘mollycoddled’ bit but agree on the anxious.

      Quite frankly if I were of university/entering the workforce age right now I’d be terrified. The pandemic not only did a number on a lot of people’s physical health but also their mental health. There were news articles all the time about how the vulnerable should just die so that the rest of the world could get back to normal.
      I can’t even imagine how schooling when you’re not allowed to be in the same room as other people or see your friends must have been.
      And now we’ve got a growing rise of fascism in many countries and the world is rapidly changing and NOT for the better.

      I think anyone who can hold their mind together for a day is doing pretty good right now.

      1. Reb*

        Too much is scary for us to be terrified. GenZ people I know, we’re reaching the point of just bland acceptance that everything is effed and there’s nothing we can do to change it so why even bother with the small stuff.

        1. Bird names*

          Hey Reb, I hear you. I’m sorry things are so tough right now and trying to gain or maintain perspective is genuinely difficult, to put it mildly. And the things people talk about here, like resilience, perspective, confidence in yourself and so on. These are all legitimate skills, which is to say, you need both space and time to practice those.

          When it comes to the situation at large, be that politics, climate change or your own personal struggles as you try to figure what to do and why to even bother, I’d like to offer this:
          – growing up I wouldn’t have thought to hear that the ozone layer might heal in my lifetime
          – studying the effects of climate change was just beginning to be part of my higher education. The concrete improvements through on-going projects as well as variety of approaches added I’ve seen in the last 10 years alone are beyond anything I could have imagined (course there’s still a lot to do, but lots of improvement as well)
          – personally speaking, your perspective sounds fairly similar to mine about 10-15 years ago (though some of the reasons were different of course). I wouldn’t call myself optimistic by any means, but I have for now gotten myself firmly stuck to life (quoting Oliver Burkeman here, wrote a book about time management and facing mortality during the pandemic among other things)

          I’m not saying that it gets better all by itself, but I want to make a larger point about change. If there is one constant to life, it’s change. And you’ve had to deal with a lot of recent changes to the detriment of many, many folks. All true, all deeply frustrating. But if everything must change and nothing is truly static, that has to go for the bad stuff too. That’s the point where it’s possible to use a small crowbar (art, creating connections, learning something new, planting a literal seed) and starting to wiggle away at the assumption that you’re stuck without agency in perpetuity. Most of our options right now might suck, but some suck less. Building on those allows us to create some breathing space. Once we have that we reach out. Thanks for commenting and reaching out.

        2. Allonge*

          I am really sorry you feel that way, that sucks.

          If I may, my solution to questions like this: I care about the small stuff because the small stuff, in the end, makes up most of my life on a day-to-day basis.

          I am scared of climate change effects and war and the way politics develops, yes. But the world I live in on a smaller scale is impacted by my showing up on time, not freaking out when I get corrective feedback and my learning from others and in turn, them learning from me.

          I will never solve climate change (wrong field, for one, but I will also not solve the big issues of my field).

          But living my life to the best I can, including delivering well on work I am paid for helps people, including myself – in ways that being afraid of the bigger stuff does not.

    5. Don’t know what to call myself*

      The other piece of this that I haven’t seen mentioned yet in the comments is trauma.

      Living through the early years of the pandemic was terrifying, and I was a grown adult in my 30s. I cannot even imagine living through those years as a child, and I extremely cannot imagine having to parent during that time period. These kids were afraid a lot of the time, and with good reason, and the adults around them couldn’t even reassure them that everything was going to be okay because we didn’t know if it was or not.

      That level of intense fear while your brain is still developing is going to produce an entirely different sort of brain with an entirely different set of coping strategies. The anxiety a lot of teens and 20-somethings have now is the product of the state of the world during their formative years, and it’s going to take a lot of work to get around it.

      I’m not saying LW’s recruiter is right and that new hires who grew up in pandemic times should be coddled forever. Im saying that we need to be a lot more direct and proactive in training this generation for the work world, because they’re coming to us with a very different background and set of experiences from what we normally see in new hires.

    6. Mary Lynne*

      Even further – I’m in early childhood development/child care programs. We saw significant toddlers with speech delays, and delayed potty training – that is one we didn’t expect. Five years olds now barely saw a stranger’s face their first two years, and had families under trauma-level stress. We have a bunch of preschoolers with less emotional regulation and weaker peer skills about to go into elementary school. It is indeed going to get worse.

      1. IHaveKittens*

        Ditto this! My son is an early childhood teacher, specifically of children on the spectrum. Their skills were rolled back in a lot of ways during the pandemic. A lot of these children came from low income families and they did not have things like laptops and high speed internet connections to participate in remote classroom learning. For a lot of them, it was an anxious parent trying to balance a child on their lap with holding a cell phone in the other hand, attempting to keep the connection to the lesson of the day. It did not – in many cases – go well.

  17. Dogmomma*

    please don’t push these people onto other, senior employees..at least not for a long period of time. these younguns need to grow up and do their job, not have a continuation of what probably been happening at home.

    1. L-squared*

      I was thinking this. Like, if you have good employees who are a bit older, saddling them with these younger employees who have shown to be… difficult, is a good way to make these other people unhappy.

      Like, if you want to ask people about mentoring, by all means take volunteers. But don’t foist it upon them.

    2. LizB*

      I think if the senior employees have the right skill set and are briefed ahead of time about the mentorship role they’re expected to play, it can work. There’s a big difference between just pairing up a couple employees with no context and hoping for the best, and finding some volunteers among your senior staff (maybe the ones who want to move into leadership soon?) who can be told what behavior to expect and how to coach the younger employee into better habits.

      1. MsM*

        Yeah, I feel like the more you can expose this group to people who can provide perspective on the field and working norms in general, and ideally do it in a way that can inspire them to work toward something instead of just viewing work as the enemy of all that is good in life, it might help break up this collective complaint circle they’ve got going.

      2. EarlGrey*

        Yeah, isn’t mentoring / coaching / letting a younger employee sit near you and learn by osmosis at the very least a super reasonable expectation of more senior employees? These young people “need to grow up” but no one should have to suffer through teaching them what exactly that entails?

        Coaching the younger generation is definitely something i struggle with as i get more senior in work and the newest staff get further and further from me in age/experience. But it’s a skill we all gotta cultivate so we have someone to grow into our roles as we move up or retire.

        1. TechWorker*

          Yes definitely a reasonable expectation on more senior staff & IMO one of the key things at the organisational level that can be lost with fully remote work.

        2. Honor Harrington*

          Is it really my obligation as a senior employee? It doesn’t say so anywhere in my job description. I’m not paid for it. I’m not rewarded for it.

          If companies want to develop their employees, they need to have effective managers taught how to coach and develop employees. The managers need to be allocated to do that part of the job, instead of having so many additional duties that they don’t have time to do the real management functions. Companies need effective job training programs. Hoping an employee learns to be “good” through osmosis is pretty silly – especially since most of the letters on this site tell us how many “bad” employees are out there to model after.

    3. JustKnope*

      This is just standard mentorship. Being around more seasoned employees and learning their norms by osmosis is a good thing and not putting a huge burden on those older employees.

    4. FD*

      Not all employees are likely good candidates for being mentors–but I bet some would be happy to help. A lot of us remember how shitty things were as a young person and would be happy to help out!

      That said, like any mentorship relationship, it’s important to chose wisely and monitor how it’s going with both participants.

      1. Oh No You Didn't*

        Yes, and the mentors have to know that you have their back if one of the mentees complains about “meanness” etc.

  18. Pastor Petty Labelle*

    If they are stunted due to the pandemic, continuing to allow them to be stunted is not a kindness to them. They aren’t going to grow if they are coddled.

    The nicest thing you can do for them is be clear — hey the working world expects you to show up at work, do the job, accept feedback gracefully and respond to reasonable questions from your boss. No matter what job one has.

  19. Stuart Foote*

    I do suspect that Gen Z is screwed, and honestly, have been screwed in large part by their parents who tend to both helicopter them but also put insane amounts of stress on them, and dumped them in the deep end as far as screen go which I think now few disagree have had terrible effects and not that many positive ones. However…when I entered the working world my similar age co-workers also complained constantly. It’s a big adjustment going from college, where everything caters to the students, to the working world, where it doesn’t. So yeah, there is probably some generational stuff going on, but also a lot of this is probably just a normal adjustment and following Alison’s advice will help.

    1. Sloanicota*

      Yeah, I keep remembering how much it really stung to constantly hear that my generation was “entitled.” That was the word I always heard in regard to all of us. I graduated in 08 and was making 35K working full weeks, nights, and weekends, but all I kept hearing was that we were “special snowflakes” who “didn’t want to work hard” … while I was being actively exploited by the people senior to me. And I didn’t even have the same load of medical debt and student loans that many others do. It didn’t make me better to hear this constantly … it made me more cynical about work, a cynicism that I believe has continued to grow in young people who came after me – but I’m not convinced that’s because they’re more “entitled” than I was.

  20. Who me?*

    I think some of the problem here is the group chats. They’re feeding into an echo chamber where one person’s minor complaint gets amplified into a major complaint that everyone agrees with and feels aggrieved by. Is there a way to cut that off or somehow redirect it? A reminder of the purpose of intraoffice communication channels – “these tools are for communicating about work and tasks. Comments about anything else are more appropriate as lunch table discussions.”

    1. Rogue Slime Mold*

      The group chats remind me of some past letters (like the Exclusive Team) where excising everyone swirling around in this little team eddy of re-enforcing bitterness was easier than trying to logic individuals out of the mindset, then sending them right back into the same group.

    2. Liz the Snackbrarian*

      I think to cut it off entirely it would have to be an official work tool like slack or team, but otherwise, yes.

    3. disgracted_libertine*

      I second this comment. I work at a Fortune 20 company and chats like this have been grounds for dismissal as they can be considered “malicious gossip.”

    4. Wayward Sun*

      My guess is they’ll recreate it somewhere not visible to the employer. I would, and I’m GenX. The last cohort of tech workers I worked with (ranging from Boomers to GenZ) had multiple chat venues management didn’t know about.

    5. NT*

      Ah, yes, because banning your employees from discussing their grievances with each other has never gone wrong. I can’t think of any faster way to convince them you’re an overbearing tyrant.

  21. CTT*

    I’m in BigLaw and oof, I feel this. In addition to Alison’s advice, do you have peers at other companies you can talk about this with and see how they’re dealing with it?

    I don’t want to excuse the way this group is acting, but I also think you can use this as an opportunity to see if there are any places where you do need some evolution on the established standards. I’ve definitely had some difficult “this job is not 9-5 and sometimes you have to put in late hours to meet client needs” conversations. But on the flip side, my firm recently introduced different tracks for associates with different billable hour requirements because we were finding that “it’s 1900 billable hours and that’s standard, deal with it” wasn’t realistic for everyone. Your group of employees sound like they have very illegitimate gripes, but I think it’s good for an organization to be open to the legit ones when they arise, even if it goes to the core “how things are done.”

  22. Alex*

    I just want to comment that I have had a completely different experience with my gen Z coworkers! I work with a fairly large number of young people ages 18-25, and I’ve found the vast majority of them to be competent, kind, reasonable people who generally work hard and want to do well. Of course there are duds in every large group, but I’d caution thinking about it in a “this generation is like this” way and rather in “we need to look at how we are hiring/training/setting expectations” way.

    1. Sloanicota*

      Yeah, I was super impressed with our interns this past year. They were very motivated and I think much more idealistic (in the good way) than past groups we’ve had.

    2. OP*

      Yes, I think this probably has a lot to do with our head of recruitment setting up problematic expectations and giving us guidance that isn’t serving us or the new hires.

    3. Constance Lloyd*

      Yes, I see this more as a symptom of employees new to the work force, and the people currently new to the work force happen to be Gen Z.

    4. Account*

      Same here! I work in healthcare and the young (new grad, 22-24 years old) nurses are hardworking and excellent team members.

  23. Sansa Tyrion 4 the win*

    I’ve found that employees with mental health struggles aren’t necessarily over-worked or poorly paid. In my experience at least.

  24. Cat Lady in the Mountains*

    If they’ve been coddled historically, it may also be worth being direct that your management approach is changing – like “I realize in the past we’ve given leeway on X. That’s proving to be untenable for the business because [reasons], so I want to be really clear about the expectations going forward so you can decide if you’re up for it or not.”

  25. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

    Disclosure: I have (deliberately) no knowledge about child rearing or development or experience with educating the younger generation.

    But I’ve found good results with my 18+ year old niblings by treating them no different to anyone else. If they start doing behaviour I find objectionable I simply say that no, they can’t do that and their feelings about it are not my concern.

    Sounds harsh but I get on quite well with most of them. I think because EVERY other adult in the family still talks to them like they are kids and it’s a sin to hurt their feelings and my word must that chafe when you’re paying taxes and rent and things. I’m interested in them and talk to them like fellow adults (because they ARE) but just like I won’t take someone who is my age whining about how life is unfair because I need them to be at work by 8am I won’t take it from anyone else.

    1. Rogue Slime Mold*

      In college (in the 80s) one of my freshman friends remarked that he hadn’t put in his class requests yet because they hadn’t come after him. An older member of the group laughed: No one was coming after him. He just wouldn’t be registered for anything come next term, and would have to stand in a bunch of long lines to sort it out, hoping there was still space in the classes he needed.

      And poof: He became someone who could fill out that form.

      This was a very smart person who went on to professional success. He just needed a shrug and truthful “No, that’s not how this works. It won’t have the effect you were hoping for.”

      (Which is why I suspect a key problem is actually the recruiter, and top candidates not finding their dues-paying culture appealing.)

      1. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

        He just needed a shrug and truthful “No, that’s not how this works. It won’t have the effect you were hoping for.”

        Basically, the times that I’ve had the hard truths of ‘no, that’s not how things work and also you’re heading for disaster if you don’t pull your finger out’ it’s always been painful in the moment but has led to a lot of success.

        Like how I’m celebrating 10 years sober.

        2. allx*

          Congratulations on 10 years sober! That is no small feat. I am almost 8 years alcohol-free, and count it as one of my most important life accomplishments.

      2. Ms Afleet Alex*

        Sometimes it’s as simple as that you don’t know what you don’t know. I know I had my share when starting in the working world sooo many years ago.

    2. Heffalump*

      If they start doing behaviour I find objectionable I simply say that no, they can’t do that and their feelings about it are not my concern.

      Nothing wrong with that, assuming your delivery is matter-of-fact and not brutal.

      1. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

        Generally I say things rather matter of fact as I’m more comfortable dealing with computers than humans. I hoenstly don’t know if I sound brutal but they’ve never acted like I was.

    3. bananners*

      I am a parent, of tweens and a teen, and I do a decent amount of volunteering in spaces where kids are. I take a very similar approach to interacting with ALL kids. Interacting with them as you would an adult is a wonderful way to model what they will encounter when they are out of school. (It also makes my little teenage friends think I’m cool, even though I probably hold them to higher standards than most people.)

  26. BLUF Rox!*

    It would go a long way if there was recent 2025 data proving they are getting paid above the median. Our human capital team conducted compensation studies in 2025 and published the results here: (link). Sometimes what people think is well paid is the same or less than what was average in 2010…

    2. CTT*

      If they’re in finance, then I would take the LW at her word; compensation tends to be very competitive in that industry.

      1. Mid*

        Honestly, I’ve found you shouldn’t really take anyone above entry level at their word that their entry level positions are “well paid.” Because COL has increased a lot more than people realize. I made more right out of college than my parent ever had (who also has a college degree and works in a “well paid” industry.) My parent also lives in a very low COL area with a fully paid off mortgage (and previously that mortgage for a 4-bed house was less than my rent in a shared, gross house would be), in a dual-income household, with no medical issues, and no student loan debt. I don’t live in a very high COL area, more medium. But I literally cannot live on $35k or $45k a year where I live.

  27. chai bagel*

    I’m in my early 30s, and while most of my Gen Z friends are extremely hard-working and professional (as well as clear-eyed about the role of work as something you do for money, not necessarily passion), the ones who struggle seem to have a deep malaise about life in general, not just work. The humiliation comment really stuck out to me as something I’ve heard applied to very basic social interactions. I’ve also heard it from older people who got especially burned out by the pandemic and subsequent political situation.

    I say this not because it changes the advice, but because it might be a useful reframe from “this cohort isn’t cut out for the working world” to “these people are struggling, possibly/likely in every arena, and the best way to reestablish healthy norms is to be direct.”

    Directness is kindness and we could all use a little more kindness right now.

  28. GingerNinja*

    Read Generations by Jean Twenge, PhD. No simple answers but a ton of data that can help you understand why any age group is the way it is.

    1. ElastiGirl*

      Jumping in with a thumbs up for this book. I found it far more illuminating about generational differences and expectations than The Anxious Generation.

    2. Good Lord Ratty*

      Thank you for the recommendation! I’ll be checking that out for sure.

      (Finally someone who recommends something beyond just saying that you shouldn’t read Anxious Generation. I get that Haidt’s book is flawed, but it’s getting at a real phenomenon and I’d like to be able to learn more about it than just “HAIDT BOOK SUCKS.)

      1. Morgan*

        Worth noting that that commenter iglwif had already posted multiple recommendations for Behind Their Screens by Emily Weinstein and Carrie James as an alternative, specifically based on the If Books Could Kill episode several people mentioned as a good explainer of the problems with The Anxious Generation.

  29. Zee*

    Yeah, I’ve encountered some of this with early-20s workers too. They had Gen X parents who swung wildly in the opposite direction from their own latchkey-kid upbringing to become helicopter parents. They were educated in schools where teachers weren’t allowed to ever give failing grades. It’s not surprising to see a complete lack of emotional resilience from people who grew up in bubbles. I don’t have any solutions – just sympathy both for the young workers and those that have to work with/manage them.

    1. lol*

      It’s astounding to me that yall have so much to say about a lack of resilience and being raised to be soft but absolutely nothing about how the direction of the world — politically, environmentally, societally — is one which makes it impossible to *be* “normal” in the eyes of older generations. Luckily, I find that the generations preceding my own are ignorant, abusive, and close-minded in the same proportion that mine are mollycoddled brats.

      1. Etak*

        I don’t think Zee called you a brat? They expressed their sympathy so it seems odd to have this reaction to them.

        1. Zee*

          Right? The irony of me saying “it’s not their fault their parents & teachers failed to help them develop skills, which was the adults’ responsibility to do” and them saying I’m being abusive being a clear demonstration of the issue we’re talking about.

      2. AvonLady Barksdale*

        Yes. The world is terrible and it is an incredibly stressful time, more stressful than most of us have experienced in our lifetimes. And yes, older generations do have to adjust expectations. But none of this is a reason not to develop skills in the workplace that are necessary, like learning to take constructive feedback, learning how to respond to feedback that isn’t constructive, arriving in a timely manner, and taking the time to learn how to do something new.

      3. Zee*

        You know we live on the same planet, right? You’re not the only one affected by the current state of the world.

        1. Account*

          Haha, this is a solid point. “We are in a stressful world!” Yes, indeed, all of us live together.

      4. L-squared*

        You are kind of proving the OPs point lol.

        Any slight criticism and you take it as a personal affront. No one called you a brat, but here y ou are calling everyone older than you ignorant, abusive and closed minded. And again, waht triggered this was someone saying (checks notes) “I have sympathy for both the young workers and those that have to manage them”

      5. Elbe*

        …but absolutely nothing about how the direction of the world — politically, environmentally, societally — is one which makes it impossible to *be* “normal”

        I think that the point here is that it’s not impossible. It may be difficult, but life often requires people to do difficult things. That’s what resilience is.

        The framing of relatively normal things (learning to take feedback, learning professional norms) as impossible is exactly the type of thing that feeds the stereotype of a person who has no resilience or ability to grow. No one on the planet – of any generation – likes having their mistakes pointed out or being told they have to behave in a way that feel counter-intuitive to them. It’s a really common thing and people have a lot of sympathy for how young employees can struggle. But everyone has to learn to manage those feelings if they want to be good employees that can grow in their careers.

    2. Richard Hershberger*

      I have a theory that the helicopter parent phenomenon is a delayed result of the 1970s. The 70s were a very bad decade, but child rearing didn’t really adapt to the badness. In junior high I would take city buses by myself to visit the big downtown library in a not good neighborhood. Nobody thought this was weird. Well, maybe the destination being the library was weird, but the journey was not. Upon becoming parents, we collectively looked bad at the 70s and were horrified, and concluded that we must never let our kids out of sight. I push back on this with my kids, but it is an uphill slog. “Things are different today!” Yes. Violent crime has plummeted since the 70s. But people simply refuse to believe this. They saw a story on the internet about some bad thing that happened somewhere, so that is that.

      1. different seudonym*

        Not so much the 70’s per se, but the success of the particular brand of reactionary freak-out that Reagan perfected.

  30. TotesMaGoats*

    I’ll say it again.
    -Recruit at the non-flagships. Your local university that caters to the non-traditional student is usually passed over for the flagships and ivy league visits. My students bring work experience and an understanding out how employment works because they’ve been there. While you are at it, offer internships at times OTHER than summer/ones that are remote/ones where they don’t need to quit their other jobs unless you are paying enough.
    -If you have a high school aged or soon to be HS kid, they need to get a part time job. Yes. Skill that 4th club, 17th AP class and yet another extracurricular and have them get a crappy job. That is where you learn all the hard lessons when the stakes are much, much lower. There are things I just can’t teach in college related to soft skills than you can only learn by working. And since many employers have great scholarships for their employees, you don’t have to bank on your athletics or other skills to pay for college.

    1. Hell in a Handbasket*

      Agreed. With this job being “VERY highly paid” I bet they’re recruiting at Ivies and the like, which means a disproportionately privileged population. Kids who’ve spent summers working at McDonalds or Walmart are not going to expect to be mollycoddled. (In fact, the issue I’ve had with my own teens, who’ve been working since age 14-16, been the opposite — unwillingness to advocate for themselves even when it’s warranted.)

    2. Wednesday wishes*

      My high school fast food job prepared me for life and the working world in ways I can only appreciate looking back. (I am GenX)

      1. Coffee Protein Drink*

        an outside job can instill a sense of responsibility that you can’t get at home or school.

    4. Notebook Hoarder*

      Yes, my 16 year old is learning so much from their part-time job! And I think my younger one will learn even more when the time comes.

      In my (non-US) area, in-person school was only closed for the spring of 2020, and after that, in the fall of 2020, school came back in-person (with mandatory masks, and cohorts, and all sorts of restrictions and covid protocols), specifically because of concerns about the mental health of the kids. I was so worried about how dangerous it was to send them at the time, but actually there weren’t a lot of outbreaks because there really were a *lot* of precautions taken. And in retrospect, the limited socializing both my kids were able to do at school during the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 school years (when other social gatherings were completely banned in my area) was so key, and I’m so glad they got to do it.

  32. Jam on Toast*

    I get a sense that this has been building for a while and now every new shortcoming feels burdensome. But it may help temper your temper if you also look for things they are doing well, instead of only looking for things that can be added to a giant list of AllWrongs.

    I don’t mean you should sugarcoat it or ignore legitimate performance issues, but I do think that just like your employees, you’re in a kind of reinforcing echo chamber, too, and that’s making it harder for you to distinguish individual strengths and shortcomings from the group’s. You may well need to manage out, or even outright fire, some of these newer employees. But that should come as a result of their individual performance issues, and not their demographic details.

  33. I should really pick a name*

    They might have different expectations based on the circumstances when they started working, but it’s on management to correct these expectations.

    The LW themself says that the company has been coddling them.
    THAT’S the common factor, not the generation they come from.

  34. Someone Else's Boss*

    I find generational stereotypes useful. Sure, maybe not millennials ruining everything (I’m also 40), but often it speaks to a core issue that generation faced. In this case, the pandemic did a few things, including limiting how much pre-workforce work experience people have had. The internet/social media also often makes people feel slighted about things that aren’t happening to them, such as low pay, because it’s common overall. Acknowledging the limitations your employees face will help you to address them.

    1. lol*

      Right, so a generation facing unprecedented political and economic environmental collapse are exactly the same. Funny how the usefulness of stereotypes to you stops at the point of which you would extend empathy to others. (And btw I do think the coworkers sound bad).

      1. Kaiko*

        I mean, to be fair, Millennials and Gen X also living in a world that is facing unprecedented political and economic collapse. We’re just not starting our careers in it.

        1. CrazyCatDude*

          True, but to be fair, it’s easier (though by no means easy) to deal with the state of the world when you’re already established in your career and have the financial advantages that come with that.

      2. Etak*

        lol, we’re all facing those same collapses? In the kindest way, from someone just barely older, I think you’re experiencing a outsized response to this letter and it may be useful to take a step back, if that’s something that you’ve ever found helpful before.

      3. Sandwiches*

        Do you think that Gen Z are the only people facing the world we currently live in? Are you unaware that there are also Millenial, Gen X, and Boomer people that also exist and are experiencing the current global upheaval?

      4. Account*

        To lol:

        You’ve commented many, many times on this thread today. With the same type of comments, over and over. Can I kindly suggest you go outside on this lovely spring day? The world is not, in fact, an awful place. There are daffodils outside. And since you’re posting today, I assume that (like me!) you are home, either for spring break or for some other reason. If you speak to a stranger, from any age cohort, there’s at least an 80% chance they’ll be friendly and kind. Give it a try! If you speak to strangers online, they are awful– it’s a different experience face-to-face.

        1. papaya*

          I found all of 4 comments from them when I ctrl+f-ed, all within a 10 minutes of each other. We could all probably use a reminder to go outside, but this doesn’t seem to be someone spending all day on AAM looking for comments to reply to.

    2. Zee*

      Yeah, I do too. Not in a “all [generation name] are [negative trait]” way. But in a “this group of people experienced XYZ major events during their formative years which makes them interact with the world differently than people who didn’t experience those events.” This goes for both older and younger generations! I have no idea what it’s like to face a military draft, but my parents have no idea what it’s like to have grow up with active shooter drills in schools. It erases and trivializes people’s real, lived experiences to claim there are no differences between generations.

      1. Sloanicota*

        I still think you have to connect it to some kind of useful outcome before it becomes helpful. “This generation came of age at the time technology was more perfected, particularly on smart phones, so they may have more experience as a user but not be used to problem-solving or trouble-shooting tech issues. We’re going to offer more training on the basics of x and y.” Or “this generation hasn’t had to use phone calls much in their daily life because of the increase in messaging and email. Therefore, we’re going to provide optional scripts and capture some recorded examples of good phone practices to onboarding employees.” Not just “these kids aren’t resilient like *we* were – this generation is doomed.”

  35. Dawn*

    I’m your age, and I was exactly this same way when I first entered the working world – and I wasn’t working anything so difficult and stressful as a job in high finance.

    You say that you don’t like to make blanket generalizations about generations – so you shouldn’t. Because this isn’t about their generation. This is about hiring people in their early 20s, and how many people in their early 20s are regardless of generation, and about these employees in particular. And it’s worth getting an outside look at whether some of their grievances actually are valid – high finance also isn’t an industry known for treating its workers well, and you may just have become blinded to some of that in your time there.

    1. Busy Middle Manager*

      I do not understand “everyone is like this in their 20s” statements.

      People in their 20s now are the first generation to grow up with a 10-20 year backlog of social media, youtube lifestyle channels, and reddit threads (a site that gets 97M daily users) with tons and tons and tons of fake salaries and expectations. They make careers look super easy, they claim to be juggling a few six figure jobs. I’ve caught people lying about salaries countless times at this point, but the lies are often subtle enough to be believable, like claiming a certain company or role pays them $150K for a given role when it’s really $90K – $110K. Or claiming they job can be done in two hours a day, when most people doing the profession are constantly busy.

      Older people didn’t get bombarded with lies in the same way. That’s the difference

      1. Dawn*

        That’s great! Because I didn’t say “everyone”. I said “many people” and I stand by that.

        You’re talking about something completely different than what I was talking about. But young people have always complained about their jobs and their managers and always thought they had it harder than they did when they first got into the working world, especially if they entered into a toxic workplace early on. This is nothing new.

  36. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

    I’m not gonna lie, when I saw that the LW was in finance, I was fully prepared for the complaints to be, basically, that these newer staff members weren’t letting management abuse and exploit them. This generally does not appear to be that. Though there are some areas of contention that may be legit, like how long the hours are (just because it’s typical doesn’t mean it’s OK) and whether the pay is enough to cover expenses and deal with school debts during the current fiscal calamity. (shakes fist in Canadian).

    I wish I had useful advice to share, because this sounds like a tough situation for everyone.

  37. Chairman of the Bored*

    I try to help with some of this with new employees by modeling that it is OK and normal and expected to get critical feedback on your work.

    By education/background/experience I am an expert systems designer and acknowledged as such by the people who work for me.

    I still actively encourage them to find areas where my designs could be improved, and treat the ensuing conversations as normal review activity rather than something that should cause a person to feel “humiliated” or defensive.

    Let them see you make mistakes, get feedback, and improve as a result without making a big deal out of it. If necessary, explicitly point this dynamic out to them.

    Anecdotally, I think a lot of high-potential recent graduates are lifelong A-student types who regard anything less than a perfect outcome the first time as some sort of grievous personal failing. That’s not how work works.

  38. mango chiffon*

    1) I believe social media pressures people to live beyond their means (this is not a generational thing, but I think it impacts those of us who “grew up” with social media more) and making more money isn’t going to solve their problem. I don’t think you can help with this, to be honest.
    2) Some jobs and industries ARE underpaid, but I laughed when I read this is in a finance company. I work in nonprofit. There are reasonable places where the argument of increased pay would make more sense, but they are not going to find something that matches pay for less or easier work.
    3) To me, this sounds like students who set themselves upon the path of “going into finance” with the financial expectation, but don’t actually like the work and never had a chance to figure out what they want.

    1. Cordelia Comments*

      I totally agree with this. I’m Gen Z and I work for an arts nonprofit and I see similar issues with employees my age or younger who just aren’t prepared for the reality of the career path they’ve chosen. Artists who are surprised they are expected to work as independent contractors, live performance crew who resent being asked to work weekends, etc. Things that are very typical for our industry seem to aggravate my peers in ways I don’t really understand. It seems OP realizes the issue lies in the recruitment process – sounds like you’re hiring young people who want the benefits (or image) of working in finance without any of the realities. To be clear, I think this could come up as an issue with employees of any age, but you don’t get older employees starting in a new industry as much as you do young people.

      1. Coverage Associate*

        I feel for hiring managers. On the one hand, we have learned that not everyone grew up with access to white collar norms, and so it’s equitable to spell out more things than were spelled out in the past. On the other, sometimes this spelling out can feel pedantic, and because it’s new, there are not great examples or models.

        Like, I would expect a live performance applicant to have looked at the performance schedule and understand that there are performances on weekends. On the other, I once got instructions for preparing for a white collar job interview that were insultingly out of date (have a fancy pen, carry your resume in a leather folio).

        1. Annie*

          To be fair, those dated interview prep instructions aren’t totally out of line. “Have a fancy pen and carry your resume in a leather folio” can be useful ways to implement “Have something clean, intact, and professional-looking to take notes with”. I don’t think society has crossed into the phase where “Have your phone’s text editor and/or note-taking app(s) up and ready” is considered OK for standard in-person interview prep yet.

          There’s also the possibility of people knowing that a certain sucky thing is common in a job and not realizing that it’s a dealbreaker for them until they’ve actually experienced it.

  39. snarkalupagus*

    It’s been alluded to a couple of times already, but I wanted to highlight the potential for at least some impact of groupthink, especially if they’re talking amongst themselves on Slack or wherever. It’s easy for a group to settle into a self-reinforcing thought cycle. As far as actionable advice for that goes, it’s hard to provide suggestions that don’t sound like, “You can’t be friends with your friends because it poisons your mind!” but it is possible to suggest that they step back from the complaints a bit. Venting to let off steam is helpful, but it’s a fine line between letting off steam and stewing in it. That’s not age-specific, advice, either.

    1. Rogue Slime Mold*

      Yes, I think the groupthink groupchat is the bigger problem. It’s hard to dislodge something that the group keeps re-enforcing.

      And that would be true if the group were The Pastry Department, or Golfing Accountants Over 50.

    2. BayGeek*

      This. Not to pile on the generational assumptions, but this is a cohort that has been very isolated for many of their formative years. In past organizations I’ve worked for, we’ve tried to create solidarity among our new cohorts. But in this case, you need to create intergenerational solidarity. If you can, pull back on activities/support that isolates the cohort, and instead shift to mentorship and other team building across levels. Help them to identify as part of a multi-generational team, and less as a new hire. Also, you probably have 1-2 people fanning the flames, but the groupthink has devolved to a point that it’s hard or impossible to identify who those people are.

  40. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

    Also, give this a read as there were a lot of comments that may be helpful:

    https://www.askamanager.org/2020/09/i-cant-seem-to-stop-being-late-to-meetings.html

    The letter writer wasn’t coddled but was having a hard time going from school where accomodations and help were available for everything and others would advocate for them to the workplace where if you want help it has to be 1) requested by you and 2) be reasonable.

    It’s a very swift change! And I do wish I could get my mentor on this forum as he was my former boss who back when I was in my early 20s and a right git told me that I wasn’t behaving like a professional adult at all. (He was right, I wasn’t)

  41. Shauna B*

    Much of this depends on how these kids were raised. My nephew is 24 years old, married, and expecting his first child. He works for a larger accounting firm in corporate tax, so must work long hours during tax season. And he’s well on his way to saving to buy a house. I know my sister and brother-in-law instilled good values and work ethic to make him who he is today. So maybe the hiring process needs to be a little tighter to find these types and weed out the ones who are too fragile to make it.

    1. Seashell*

      So 100% of the people you know are equally as successful and motivated as their siblings? Never met anyone who was raised the same way but turned out differently? I know plenty of siblings who are polar opposites.

      Personally, I would be concerned about my child rushing into marriage and parenthood that young. The divorce rates for people who marry in their early 20’s are very high. Does your nephew’s spouse get to be involved in saving to buy a house?

      1. TCO*

        That’s a weirdly aggressive take against what sounds to be a well-adjusted, responsible adult (assuming his spouse is somehow excluded from their financial decisions?).

      2. Shauna B*

        Okay, wow. That’s aggressive. My nephew met his wife in college. They are both from strong Christian families and have strong faith and good values. His parents were high school sweethearts who married in their early twenties and they have been married for almost 27 years. My nephew and his wife are both involved in planning for their future.

        I’ve seen plenty of kids whose parents have solved all their problems for them and never made them learn how to work hard or deal with adversity. Those kids struggle in the real world.

  42. Elle*

    I’ve been in the workforce since the late 90’s and have been managing people for 20+ years. This behavior is not new. What’s new are group chats and connecting mental health and trauma to everyday things. Yesterday we had a post about bad DEI trainings. In my work we’ve noticed that high maintenance employees are using the language from discussions around intersectionality and diversity to avoid responsibility and criticism. I had someone in their 40s tell me she couldn’t handle feedback due to generational trauma. Her work was full of errors and she didn’t want to fix it. She couldn’t come into the office once a week due to racism she’s experienced in her life. She has been passed over for promotions as a result. There have been other folks in my office like this and it’s a struggle for managers.

    1. Sloanicota*

      I do actually hate the weaponization of “th*rapy speak” although I don’t find it specific to the next generation, as I hear people my own age do it all the time too. Not my fave!

  43. Hyaline*

    “But we’re now five years out, and a significant segment of this cohort continues to struggle.”

    From my view over here teaching at a university: We keep blaming the pandemic. It’s not just the pandemic. It’s a collision of helicopter parenting, phasing kids out of part-time jobs, funneling much of their lives online, hand holding throughout school, and extremely low bars for success, with the cherry on top being the pandemic–but it’s not just the pandemic and those root causes have not been addressed. We’re talking about young adults who have rarely been held to an actual standard and have not met consequences when they did not reach the standards.

    They don’t need kid gloves. They do need some special care in that you have to assume their education has been remiss in teaching them this kind of grit and fortitude, and the basic concept that there are expectations and it’s your responsibility to meet them. They need the realities to be spelled out, and then they need to be held to them. Unless you want to be making excuses for them in ten years, twenty years…stop making excuses for them now–and your recruiter should get this memo, too.

    1. Meep*

      +1

      (Untreated) OCD, anxiety, and bipolar run in my family. Do I wish my dad had been kinder and more empathetic to me at times? Yes. But when I compare how lackadaisical my aunt and uncle were to my now 23-year-old cousin when he was dealing with bipolar manifesting at just 12 years old* vs how my dad handled my own mental health, I have much better coping skills for it. I will cry and whine before I do it, but I am not petrified by it.

      *They literally let a kid decide his education and left home alone for 9+ hours a day after I went to college and could no longer essentially parent him by taking him to and from school and help with homework. And I recently found out they planned to send him to boarding school before my parents stepped in and essentially “shamed” them by offering to take him in instead. My dad, again for all his flaws, also has been helping my cousin through college now. I don’t even know if his parents know what he is majoring in.

    2. Elbe*

      I agree with this. The pandemic is only one factor.

      We’re talking about young adults who have rarely been held to an actual standard and have not met consequences when they did not reach the standards.
      Yes. There are a lot of people who are not being taught how to function independently and take on age-appropriate responsibility as they grow from children to young adults. As a result, the authority figures they encounter later in life (college professors, bosses, mentors, etc.) are then put in a situation where, if they want this person to succeed, they have to be the one who holds the line.

      I think that one of the reasons why teaching and workplace blogs are getting so many questions similar to this one is because a lot of people are struggling to provide a level of guidance that, frankly, looks a lot like parenting. People who are used to giving feedback on how to do a specific job are at a loss on how to coach people on the concept that your boss is allowed to give you feedback, or that feedback needs to be taken seriously or there will be consequences.

      While I have so much sympathy for how these young people got to this point, I also have a lot of sympathy for people who suddenly feel responsible for teaching life skills to someone who they are not related to and who is in their 20s. It’s an incredibly challenging task that not everyone has the ability or willingness to do. I really liked Alison’s advice because it kept the hand-holding to work items. The LW should be clear about norms and expectations, but it’s ultimately not the LW’s job to convince these employees that they should adapt.

  44. AfternoonSleepy*

    As a cusp gGn Z/Millennial I am a tiny bit annoyed by OP’s annoyance toward the mental health day thing. It doesn’t matter what you think of their responsibilities. They could just be saying the more acceptable answer. Especially in the US right now, stuff sucks. It has for a few years. And even they are magically not affected by that, adjusting to the work by using their PTO or just taking a day off for whatever reason is something they should be able to do (within reason) without judgement.

    1. Eldritch Office Worker*

      Taking a mental health leave is different than taking a mental health day. It typically means you’re out for an extended time using disability or FMLA or something similar.

      That still doesn’t mean it should be stigmatized but it’s more disruptive than what you’re describing.

      1. Sparky*

        Criticizing an employee for taking FMLA-based mental health leave because you perceive her as not working hard enough is even worse imo. Even if it’s disruptive, it is wrong-headed to frame the employee as entitled or “coddled” for doing so.

    2. Kaiko*

      This is such an example of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” Gen Z has lower resilience and higher rates of depression; this group is also working in a setting where mental health care is being viewed with skepticism. People can’t just muscle their way into better mental health.

      1. Sloanicota*

        I’m really concerned for the future of our mental health, because a significant portion of adults right now are NOT going to let anyone else take advantage of benefits *they* didn’t get to. If you muscled your way through your career in misery, it drives you crazy to see someone else just … refusing to do that, and finding any kind of acceptance for the idea that they should “get away with it.” In our current backlash, I expect these types of people will soon have the power to do away with these benefits once and for all.

    3. fhqwhgads*

      I read that differently than you did. I don’t think OP is annoyed at the concept of someone taking mental health leave. Many things suck and many people have mental issues to deal with, and they’d have them regardless of their jobs.
      The letter read to me like this employee was explicitly citing the stress from the job as being the cause of the need for the leave. (Maybe the employee was saying that to not have to provide the real reason, who knows, we don’t know, OP doesn’t know). Taking that employee at their word, I think it’s reasonable for OP to say, well you have the easiest job here and if this is too stressful for you, it might not be the right job for you because in this industry, it is not generally considered a stressful role.
      The whole point of the letter seems to have that theme: OP’s not saying it’s never reasonable to have any of the complaints these employees have. OP’s saying these employees’ roles at this company don’t logically fit with those complaints. There’s a mismatch of expectations, that to date this company has been just sort of ignoring, and the answer is to stop ignoring it and state the reality and let the employees choose whether they want to stick around or not. This isn’t a boss who is paying minimum wage and offering 5 days PTO a year and working people 80 hour weeks saying “stop complaining”. This is a situation with well paid professionals, in non-stressful roles saying “you have to pay me a lot more to put up with this” and OP very reasonable can and should say “nope”.

      1. OP*

        Thank you. Yes, I am all for taking the time you need (we have unlimited sick days, paid leave and a ton of vacation) and I frequently offer comp days for people who work overtime or who simply need to deal with personal issues. I raised this example simply because the notion that this job could be THAT stressful dismayed me, and I suddenly saw quite clearly how misaligned some of our employees are with the expectations of our jobs. (But fair point that this person could have had other things going on that I know nothing about! )

  45. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

    So, LW, are you hiring?

    Anyway, do you have any employees on this team/in this department/etc that are in that general profile and succeeding that you can laud as examples for the others?

  46. slim_pickins*

    i’ve felt this (and i’m a zillenial). honestly the best thing you can do is set consistent expectations, communicate them clearly, and document them as needed. that won’t protect you from all fallout, but either your employees will

    a) rise to the occassion and meet those expectations or
    b) they don’t, but at least you have the documentation needed to address it with a PIP or other tangible missed marks

    i’ve seen this across generations honestly. it’s true that the social cues of the pandemic really screwed up the cohort behind mine, but i’ve seen this in 50/30/25 year olds alike. biggest thing is just making things as clear-cut as possible. you can’t control groupchats and all of that drama, but you can be consistent in your expectations.

    1. Sloanicota*

      Yep. Don’t coddle, just make it clear where the bar is and then – this is really important – *fire the people who can’t meet it.* That’s how everyone else will realize the group chat complaints aren’t helping them.

  47. Harper the Other One*

    I agree that it’s going to be important to treat each of these employees as an individual rather than lumping them all into a group. But I’d also encourage you to think about shifts in attitudes to work that may be at play here.

    My BIL is an accountant at a large firm. When he started, it was expected that you pay your dues with ludicrous hours in exchange for better-than-average pay, and then you’d work your way up to a spot where you’d “only” be working 50-60 hours a week during the busy season. But now, he’s finding the best entry level candidates aren’t willing to make that trade. They’d rather make $10,000+ less at a place that guarantees them a maximum of 45 hours of work a week, or that allows work from home/flexible scheduling with core hours, etc. And those places are becoming more and more common, skimming off more and more of the top candidates.

    So, I’d also ask myself: does standard in the field have to be the standard on my team? What would the ACTUAL pros and cons be of making some changes like not requiring an 8am start? Right now you may not be getting non-monetary ideas because you’ve pre-emptively ruled them out (no point in asking about a 10 am start time to avoid traffic if you’ve already said 8am is required…)

    Also second the advice to properly evaluate if well paid for their level is true to current conditions. I have several friends in “above average salary” roles who still have to count pennies for groceries at the end of the month because of local costs.

    In the end, you may decide that you’re doing all the right things, and the new cohort really is the problem, but I think it deserves some serious investigation first.

    1. Sloanicota*

      This is, to me, a great point. A lot of the BS we inherited was never “real” so much as something a senior person liked or gave them a power trip. I think with the pandemic especially, but also a lot of other factors like the housing crises, medical costs, education debt, people are more aware than ever that the promises are increasingly hollow.

    2. EarlGrey*

      Agreed! I’m the same age / career level as LW and i hate hearing from more senior people – people in a position to change these norms – “that’s just how it is in Industry.” A lot of these norms around working hours, client service outside of regular hours, not taking time off for mental health – looking at them as a newer employee, a “but why?” reaction is not exactly irrational or entitled. And “we all paid our dues so you have to too” doesn’t feel like a real reason, it can feel like pushing the crap downhill.

      Of course for things like taking feedback / follow up questions the scripts in the advice are great, as those are expectations of any job (or class for that matter). But for stuff like the 8am start i might add why: “our clients open at 8 and expect us to be available, this isn’t a rule we made up, it’s a business need” or how you make it work: “we really only need 50% coverage at 8, so we can work out a rotation” or some frank honesty: “it’s the C-suite’s expectation even though there’s really no need to be physically present at 8, I’m telling you this so you understand they’ll be looking for butts in seats.” Whatever fits the situation and lets them know you’re not just handing down a crummy norm that got handed down to you when you were the kids these days.

    3. Acorn*

      I find this comment to be ring true with my experience. I think being direct about expectations is important.

    4. mlem*

      Excellent points. As a Gen-Xer who got burned by “you have to put in your time” and “the company rewards loyalty”, I cosign the idea of stepping back to evaluate what’s “expected” from what’s *functional*.

    5. FD*

      Yeah, this is pretty much where I’m at too. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to be pretty disgruntled at the work world, and at the reality that many Zoomers are working under worse conditions for lower pay and higher expenses than we did for no reason other than to enrich the ultra-wealthy.

      The system is bad. Just because working Millennials who have managed to find careers and have learned to navigate it doesn’t mean the system isn’t awful.

      That said, this isn’t a productive way of going about this, and there’s a limit to what you can do as a manager. I think I would start with the key action items:

      1) This group of employees needs to be able to be comfortable with feedback, including public feedback in some cases. (When I say this, I don’t mean the kind of feedback that should be private, but more the sort of thing where you float an idea in a meeting and people say “Nope, that won’t work because XYZ.”)

      2) This group of employees needs to know how to navigate the politics of an office. This includes things like “Generally speaking, your boss’s boss will listen to X, Y, and Z feedback, but you’re likely to struggle to get traction with A, B, and C. This is because…” and “Hey, this is what HR will and won’t be able to help with, generally.”

      I like Allison’s scripts, but I think that it’s also helpful if possible to give good examples of what this actually looks like. So for example, I might share something like, “Recently, I was in a meeting with a few teams. We were really hoping to change some processes. I shared some ideas I had. However, someone on another team explained that we can’t do that because [A, B, and C]. That’s actually the point of meetings like that–sometimes you have an idea but you don’t have all the information, so you need to talk to people and find out their perspectives. It’s a bit different than in school–in a healthy team, the goal is to work together to find what will work, instead of to keep score of who did things perfectly.”

    6. OP*

      But these folks ARE working a max of 45 hours a week and making $100k/year to start. That’s what is so befuddling to me. Start times are set based on the requirements of the role and aren’t arbitrary. Like, we ARE trying to adapt and improve the company culture (it was not anything like this when I started) but people are still so unhappy.

      1. FD*

        That’s fair–but I also think that their happiness isn’t actually yours to manage? I think if you focus on the “Okay, these are the non-arbitrary requirements of the job, let’s focus on talking honestly about them and setting expectations, then holding people to them” and less on trying to manage feelings, it’ll be best for everyone.

      2. Harper the Other One*

        Thanks for responding OP! And I get that it’s very frustrating when you’re thinking “if you could see what it was like when I started here…”

        It sounds like you’ve already done some of the thoughtful work I was suggesting which is great. So my next question would be how are things being communicated to these employees – do they understand why certain things are a requirement of the role?

        That said, your response makes me lean much more strongly to this being an issue with your recruiter not knowing how to hire for your work. I think it would be interesting to go along with the recruiter and observe; that would likely explain a lot of the issue of how you’ve ended up with such a large group with similar struggles.

      3. Oh No You Didn't*

        You’re doing all you can then. I’m 25 years into a career helping crime victims and will never see $100k. Sounds like some of your new hires will figure it out, and some will leave which doesn’t seem like much of a loss.

      4. EarlGrey*

        that sounds like a super frustrating position to be in, to know how far things have come and how good these positions are relative to the majority of the working world! I do think many of the points in Harper and FD’s comments are valid about how bad the whole system is, how bad a lot of jobs are – and that can really get into people’s minds and make it think it’s happening to them. I’m thinking of how many people will respond to polls saying the economy is terrible or crime is going up when their own circumstances are actually pretty good – to some extent this might just be a human nature thing of internalizing bigger narratives about social issues that aren’t actually issues for *them.* I don’t know if there’s anything that can really be done about that but the clear expectations can’t hurt.

  48. teensyslews*

    A lot of this feels like it could be sussed out in the behavioural part of interviews. These aren’t 15 year olds getting hired in a part time role, these are young professionals with university degrees. How did they take feedback on their work in class? On group projects? How are their presentation skills? Can a presentation with follow up questions be built into the interview?

    And grumbling about pay can be alleviated (although probably not entirely eliminated) by making pay bands transparent, especially in the hiring process.

    1. Meep*

      I am also kind of annoyed that we are still using the pandemic as an excuse. Was it traumatic? Yes, of course. Does it have long-term effects on people? Yeppers. Did it make things harder and more challenging for everyone? Also yes. But it was 18 months out of their lives and during a time in their lives where they were not rapidly developing. Yes, it sucks they missed out on senior year and had to stay home for their freshman year of college. But really, it is small potatoes all things considered.

      I expect people who were in elementary school to be more emotionally and intellectually stunted, because of the pandemic. Not someone who was 20 at the time and should be able to access coping skills.

      1. Reb*

        Hi. My brother has a respiratory chronic illness. When lockdown ended, it was not safe for him to go back to school. Classes were no longer online and teachers couldn’t be bothered to send work home, despite him and our mother emailing them. As a result, he failed all but one of his exams.

        Lockdown may have been “only” 18 months, but the knock on effects are lasting much longer.

      2. Grimalkin*

        I don’t think this is entirely fair.
        For one thing, if they’re fresh out of college, you might be overestimating their age by saying they were 20 at the time. 17-19 seems like the more realistic time frame here.
        And that time frame means that the pandemic probably struck for at least a substantial portion of their first year of college. (Either on the tail end from March 2020 on, or for whatever chunk of the 2020-2021 school year was affected.)
        I think it’s fair to say that a lot of kids learn a lot about life, including socialization and coping skills, during that first year of college, and that they wouldn’t learn the same things by taking classes remotely while living with their folks and stuck inside their childhood home.
        This might also mean that their first job, or what was to be their first job, would be affected by the pandemic too. If you were expecting to work your first job starting the summer of 2020… maybe you got let go before you could start, or maybe your job was up in the air in weird ways that you probably didn’t realize were as weird as they were, because again, first job!
        Plus, aside from the issues with lockdown… there’s the issues with the virus itself. Which is still out there, of course, even if society’s decided that the pandemic ended sometime in 2021 because reasons. How many of these young adults are suffering from undiagnosed long Covid, or caring for someone with long Covid? How many lost a loved one to the virus? That’s not going to just go away. If anything, we’re going to see more of that as time goes on.

        1. iglwif*

          My kid got her BA in 2024, which means she graduated from high school in 2020. Finished grade 12 online, no grad ceremony, no prom. Zoom frosh week activities, all first-year and half of second-year classes online.

          So that’s the kind of experience fresh « college » grads had.

        1. Good Lord Ratty*

          Covid is probably never going away. For you, does that mean we will always be in a pandemic? Genuine question; I am trying to understand this viewpoint.

      4. Former Preschool Teacher*

        >But it was 18 months out of their lives and during a time in their lives where they were not rapidly developing.<

        Maybe not developing as rapidly as a 0-5yo but adolescence/young adulthood is absolutely a time of cognitive, emotional, and social development. And all of those were disrupted.

  49. Lisa*

    LW, you say “The person responsible for recruiting them has aggressively encouraged managers to treat this cohort with kid gloves because the pandemic stunted their development.” Your recruiter is wrong. The pandemic stunted their social and professional development, but the answer isn’t to handle them with kid gloves, it’s to fairly and evenly apply standards and give them the supports they need to develop those skills. If you coddle them they’ll never develop beyond where they are now.

  50. Meep*

    As a young millennial (30) I get where you are coming from. On one had, I fully support not working excess hours and maintaining a work-life balance, but some Gen Z are… a special breed to the point I think the Zoomer nickname (implying they are entitled) is quite accurate… Since I am young enough to have gone to high school and college with this demographic, let’s just say I have seen more than too many them equate their parents or professors expecting them to do homework to abuse and now they are all grown up…

    Not to mention that absolutely bizarre study that shows college-aged “kids” have a hard time using a computer/word processing programs and reading despite having the most technological upbringing.

    It is going to be interesting seeing where we go from here.

    1. No Longer Gig-less Data Analyst*

      “Not to mention that absolutely bizarre study that shows college-aged “kids” have a hard time using a computer/word processing programs and reading despite having the most technological upbringing.”

      Many young people have never touched a computer with a traditional file folder structure, as their experience may be primarily with Chromebooks and tablets. It’s one of the things we have to train entry-level analysts on extensively at my workplace, because if they don’t drop their files in the correct location it doesn’t get picked up by the data movement job. You send them a directory location on the network and it’s a blank stare 9 times out of 10.

      1. Early GenX*

        I’ve seen multiple early career coworkers who are unable to transfer skills from Gmail/Google Docs to using Outlook or MS Word. I’ve even had MS Word on one monitor and Google Docs on the other. They are so similar for basic functions. Coworkers have been just totally lost.

      2. Meep*

        I admit lived in a very affluential district so we had desktop macs and weekly computer labs starting in the first grade, but I get where you are are coming from on that as a whole. It was definitely weird seeing a new hire just three years younger than me not knowing how to use a shared folder system when I have been doing it since I was 7.

      3. Zee*

        I find this phenomenon super fascinating! In my experience with coworkers who weren’t good at what – to me – seems very basic tech is this: Boomers view it as too complicated to learn how to do, and Gen Z’ers don’t realize there is anything to learn, because they’re used to only ever seeing the front-end of apps. (I have had to point this out to managers several times that being young ≠ automatically being good at tech and advocate for training.)

        1. Zahra*

          For me, I compare it to cars:
          When they first came on the roads, you had to know how to repair them yourself (or travel with a mechanic, because towing didn’t necessarily exist yet).
          A handful of decades ago, a lot of people know how to change their tires, oil and troubleshoot basic issues.
          Now, a lot of people barely know how to check their oil level and/or how often they should do it.

          In the 80s to early 2000s, you built your computer from parts to your specifications and you had to troubleshoot bugs yourself. I can’t count how many times I had to reinstall Windows 3.1 because I played in display settings or something like that and my monitor would display the equivalent of an abstract painting. I clicked everywhere and tried stuff (don’t necessarily “move fast and break things” but be willing to “break things” in order to learn). I still dig around to see what information is accessible to me when I start a new job. And then people ask me “How do you know that/knew where to find the information?” A lot of clicking everywhere, tons of bookmarks that are more or less structured into folders and some “I saw this somewhere, let me try to find it again”.

          We went from Windows 3.1 (1992) to Windows 95 to Windows 7 (in 2009) in the course of 27 years. We went from classic menus (in the 90s) in Microsoft Office to the infamous ribbon in 2007. From floppy disks to CD-ROMs to USB keys to cloud storage. We got used to changing interfaces and adapting to them. I don’t remember such profound changes in the last 15 years (maybe cloud storage, but that one too is very “Plug-And-Play”).

          Now, on a phone or a tablet, everything “just works”. Users don’t have the reflex to Google “how to X” or “software doesn’t Y” because “it just works” doesn’t prepare you to debug/troubleshoot regular software. Phones and tablets don’t have a file/folder structure that you have to dig through when saving/searching for a file. Plus, if all you’ve used are tablets, phones, gaming consoles and Chromebooks, you never had software with tons of options, file structures, etc.

          It’s not bizarre to me that the younger generation has issues with traditional office software and folder structures. They never had to even try looking “under the hood” so to speak. They’re at the equivalent of “I don’t know how to check my oil levels and can barely refill the windshield washer when it’s empty” level of technology adoption.

          1. Teapot Connoisseuse*

            > maybe cloud storage, but that one too is very “Plug-And-Play”

            Except for OneDrive!
            I still don’t understand why I can save something to OneDrive but then be unable to find it in my file manager.

            The transition from classic menus to ribbon was something that occurred to me when reading a previous comment about how close Word and Google Docs are – I remember so much fuss among people about the change, so maybe it’s not that surprising that people might be blinded by panic over relatively minor differences.

    2. Ms. Yvonne*

      Hey, Meep – if you don’t mind indulging the question, re the suggestion for a kind of mentorship by a worker cohort not too much far ahead of the OP’s cohort of kids… if you were asked to mentor them, how would that land with you? Would you expect support from elsewhere in the organization, or would you think there should be some kind of “getting this lot up to speed” curriculum or something to aid you? Or would your first instinct be an, “Oh, so thank you for thinking of me, but so busy, so busy” attempt at brushing it off? It just seem like too much onus on someone else to fix the issue, imo.

      1. Lisa*

        TBH the way this is worded feels like you don’t understand work expectations, because “mentoring people more junior to you” is an expected part of every role I’ve ever been in, and there’s never been a curriculum or anything for it.

        1. Ms. Yvonne*

          ok, fair enough – but the suggestion above about shadowing a cohort in particular in the context of them being a lost lot. It’s the what and how do you gauge they’re doing “better” part – like there ought to be an improvement – but does the mentor get advised on what those deliverables ought to be? That’s the stuff about work that we (whoever we are) often think people should be able to figure out (e.g. have a deadline? Put it in your calendar!) that is also the stuff that isn’t obvious enough for them to know that they need to figure out. So is that mental load to figure out what is wrong …. needs articulating? It sounds silly to have to say “Have a deadline? Put it in your calendar!” – but that’s also literally the level of the gaps.

          1. Meep*

            This feels very loaded on your part, but I am going to answer this assuming you are actually asking in good faith.

            I actually do manage a bunch of Gen Z and am responsible for their development while being a female in a male dominated field. Much of it I had to learn on my own because of incompetent bosses. Fortunately, my Gen Z coworkers are actually pretty competent. But in my experience, Boomers and Zoomers are very much a like in their work-style regardless of gender in terms of learned helplessness, if that is what you are asking?

            Using your example, they often expect others to make the calendar invite for them – even if they are the one suggesting the meeting. I usually find the best approach with dealing with both generations is to usually encourage them to do it on their own with positive feedback (“Great idea! Look at my schedule and send me an invite that works best for you!”) and model expectations (the good ole treat others how you wish to be treated), because I am not their mother nor their secretary. I am a freaking engineer. Same as them.

            Bless him, but I had a coworker repeatedly say “someone should write this down” in a meeting yesterday like he was not capable of writing it down himself. I said that is a great idea and since he suggested it, he can do it himself and to let me know where he decides to put it. It led to a greater discussion of that being the issue. He didn’t know where to compile these notes so he was stun-locked which made him want someone else to do it.

            Common sense isn’t common, but you need to be able to learn to ask for help if you don’t know how to do something other than just sit their numbly. I have yet to meet a mind reader in this lifetime, but I will say the most admirable trait I have seen in a person is one who asks for help instead of blaming others. No amount of mentoring is going to save people who do the latter.

          2. Meep*

            No. Mentors don’t get to advise on what deliverables should be. They might know from experience how long something should take, but mentors are there to give professional advice to those who ASK for help. Not advocate for those who don’t.

  51. DD*

    As a baseline how many hours a week is this group working on average? Your peer group may have sucked it up and worked 80-100 hour weeks when you were their age but this peer group might not be willing (can’t say I blame them). Gen Z, in general, is pushing back and saying we want some work/life balance. It will be interesting to see if they can change the culture of how newer hires are worked at places like Big Law.

    1. Justin*

      They’re not going to be able to change it if they don’t excel first. In this economy there’s someone willing to put in the hours. They don’t have any leverage.

      1. CTT*

        Seconding this – I wrote above about how my BigLaw recently introduced lower billable hour requirement options. Part of the reason for it was that associates who did very good work and were beloved by clients were unable to meet the high minimum requirement and felt like they had to leave the firm.

    3. huh*

      But if they interviewed and were told the expectations were 40+ hour weeks, why are they now complaining about it? They signed up for it!

    4. Coverage Associate*

      There may be a few professions where very long hours early in careers are necessary training. Medicine, maybe, for example. But I don’t understand why so many professions feel the need for such long hours. No one is learning or growing after hour 10 in a day or whatever. It just seems to be hazing or salary savings to me, and I see from comments above that maybe it is changing at least in law.

      1. JMU*

        What little science there is on the subject (*) says that past 50 to 60 hours per week on a regular basis, productivity decreases with increased hours worked (because you lose focus, you are more tired, etc.). _Total_ productivity, mind you, not _hourly_ productivity. Meaning you get _less_ done despite working more hours. Therefore it is not about salary savings either.

        (*) Reference: John Pencavel, “The productivity of working hours”, 2014. Notice that this is a study about ammunition factory workers; one can expect the effect to be even more pronounced for white-collar jobs, which probably include most of this blog’s readers.

  52. Quinine..I need quinine*

    I’m in my fifities and have been a manager on and off for a long time. Personally I haven’t seen any real differences between the younger employees of today compared to the last 30 years.

    There have always been people who don’t like feedback, complain about the boss and don’t want to start early in the morning. I’d advise not treating them with kid gloves and just treat them like anyone else. No reason to “coddle”

  53. Sweet 'N Low*

    As a 26-year-old technically in Gen Z, my two cents is that coddling them is a big part of the problem–or at least is contributing to it. People are often going to rise to the bar you give them. If your organization is treating them like they need to be coddled and protected, they’re more likely to act like they need to be coddled and protected. Doubly so if they’re all in a group chat together where they then keep echoing that to each other too. If you treat them like adults who need to do their job, they’re a lot more likely to act like adults who need to do their job. If you so that and they don’t meet that bar, then they aren’t the right fit for the job.

  54. Rogue Slime Mold*

    For reasons, I want to share here that I was once helping my mother-in-law go through some old family papers, and came across some journal entries from the 1930s about the poorly behaved children next door, whose academic parents were far too indulgent. The youngest would climb on the couch in her shoes, and no one would correct her, and what was going to happen to Young People These Days when they grew up and had to make a living, having never learned self restraint.

    1. Leenie*

      It is true that “kids these days” is an evergreen conversation. But taking a very different lesson from the 1930’s, a lot of us who had grandparents who were children during the Depression saw them saving every scrap of paper or aluminum foil, or even trying to consume spoiled food, because they were so traumatized by the deprivations of the Depression and WWII. I think it’s reasonable to believe that maladaptive behaviors can come from extraordinary traumas during one’s formative years. And when that’s a shared experience for an entire generation (or, in this case, I think more of a subset of the generation), it’s also reasonable to acknowledge that broad influence.

  55. Dido*

    Yeah, this is ridiculous. I’m within the 20-27 age group and have a corporate job, and I’m quite confident that my manager would not tolerate ANY of that behavior from me or my similar-age colleagues. I regularly have to speak to clients, media, and give external presentations, so I’m expected to be on time, take feedback gracefully, and generally just act professional. And I do it. I’m really not sure how the pandemic is an excuse, because I graduated and got my first job during the pandemic and was still held to professional standards I am now, because we would’ve lost business if I was acting like an idiot and putting out sub-standard work. Stop coddling them.

  56. The Person from the Resume*

    I’m betting the “echo chamber of toxicity” is a significant part of the problem. I was part of one and it really makes it worse and the individual miserable. Unfortunately I don’t think you can stop people from communicating with their coworkers.

    I’d recommend that you follow Alison’s advice, stop coddling, and have those conversations.

    The idea to link them with someone not part of the echo chamber is a good one. Someone who can pushback and laugh at wild ideas like an 8am start is cruel and inhumane.

  57. Heather*

    There are three common elements: Their generation, being young professionals, and having the same recruiter. I think we are not giving enough focus to the third. The recruiter is ultimately responsible for filling the spaces and did a poor job, so much so that they gave a heads up on how “fragile” the group was.
    It may be time to retrain the recruiter and go over the office norms, job duties and requirements, as well as the industry standards before passing them on for interviews.

    1. Parenthesis Guy*

      This is a large finance company with thousands of employees. There probably isn’t just one recruiter. There are probably a bunch of recruiters with one person leading the recruiting team. The boss may be trying to protect their people, but it’s not like one recruiter is doing a poor job.

      1. Heather*

        The LW said it was one person. See below.

        “The person responsible for recruiting them has aggressively encouraged managers to treat this cohort with kid gloves because the pandemic stunted their development. “

  58. Minnie Ed*

    Had to laugh a bit as I read this letter, imagining it’d been written by Mr. Milchick on Severance. Oh, that younger generation, never satisfied!

  59. Jam on Toast*

    Gen Alpha experienced an unprecedented generational upheaval that robbed them almost universally of teenage and young adult experiences that people even five or ten years older never even questioned. They were just part of the trajectory of growing up in Western society, until suddenly they weren’t. That leaves an impact.

    I am a parent to a 19- and 21-year-old. They lived through the pandemic as teens in a household that was economically stable, with two married parents, in a country with public health care and sufficient technology to participate and learn and socialize online. Despite that, I can still see so many bruises and cracks and changes to the trajectories of their lives five years on and I mourn what they’ve lost.

    I’m not dismissing your nephew’s success individually, but parents aren’t the only influence on a child’s life and saying because you know of one person in their cohort who isn’t suffering in the wake of the pandemic and therefore all the fragile ones should be ignominiously weeded out of the workforce ignores all of the variables that made your nephew’s success possible, but that may not exist or be replicable on a large scale for others.

  60. Parenthesis Guy*

    Are you invited to the group chat or are you snooping? I’ve definitely had complaining sessions with coworkers where I’ve complained about this and that just to vent. If a boss read those convos, they’d definitely get an impression of how I feel about things that is more negative than the reality.

    Aside from that, I like the ideas about getting them to work with some of your older people. You may want to consider firing a few of the more toxic people to focus on the others.

    1. CrazyCatDude*

      I was wondering the same thing. If LW is snooping, that’s a very different situation than if they were invited into the group chat.

    2. OP*

      These are whatsapp group chats. I have no access to them. But sometimes people who are part of the chats share what is being said.

      1. FD*

        Ah, I think that you might need to put some boundaries around them doing that.

        Assuming they aren’t sharing something you DO need to act on as a manager, I would maybe say something like:

        “I want to stop you there. Generally speaking, I’m not going to push into your personal chats. Because of that, I’m going to ask you to not bring them up unless there’s something I need to handle as a manager. Cases where I *would* need to be involved would be if there was any kind of harassment happening in the group chat, or if people who decided they didn’t want to be in the chat were being treated poorly for that decision. Otherwise, though, it’s the kind of thing I’ll stay out of as a manager.”

      2. Parenthesis Guy*

        Got it. I would tell people to stop telling you about the chats. People venting is their own business. It’s not going to lead you anywhere productive.

        What I might do is tell the people that work with you that things in their chat are being released to the public. I might say that I heard you had these concerns and ask if they want to discuss them with you. They should know that the things they say may get out and may make them look unprofessional.

        After that, I’d completely ignore everything that happens in the chat and encourage them to talk with you directly if they have concerns.

    3. Ms. Whatsit*

      I generally have a practice of staying out of those spaces because I recognize that people need to vent and there definitely is a risk of overgeneralizing or misunderstanding. But it is possible to be aware of something without direct knowledge (invited or not). Group chats are extremely common, and if there’s a sense of shared negativity & common complains without a lot of live chatter at work, it’s taking place somewhere. It’s also possible someone in the group has told the LW (which could be done by someone seeking to emphasize that “we all think things need to change” or by someone who dislikes all the negativity).

    4. MassMatt*

      This strikes me as a strange comment. LW is in a supervisory role. If it’s a work chat, either sponsored /provided by work, or done on work computers, on work time, it should be expected that it’s seen by the company and I would not call it “snooping”. This is another area where these new employees don’t seem to understand work norms.

  61. Mom of 4*

    pre pandemic it was already becoming more standard for 15-25 year olds to not have part time jobs and instead focus on school and extracurriculars and competitive college admissions. also there has been a combination of delaying drivers ed and a rise in the costs of driving that lead to the parents having to drive the students to the part time job making it more difficult and not cost effective to the parents to bend over backwards for a minimum wage job. middle aged people may think the pandemic was five years ago time to move on, but it was half of their high school or college years, so for them it was an incredibly long time. and they weren’t old enough to go back to normal on anything. their entire lives are online and the Internet is a very negative place. pre pandemic schools were getting away from soft skills because of “standards”. the pandemic destroyed the teaching of adult soft skills. but it’s not just the young people. I have had to speak to middle school and high school principals about teachers texting homework assignments after 9pm. many people have moved into a steam of conscious and no planning world and expecting an immediate response with always having internet. no sorry if you forgot to give the homework at 2pm then it isn’t my problem at 10pm with a 6am bus.

  62. Oceansloth*

    I was one of those young employees who had a really complaint and negative group chat in my org when I was 22-25ish, but at a small nonprofit. We younger staff did have some truly legitimate complaints, but our clique did start to spin out into just becoming a self-reinforcing negativity chamber pretty quickly. Getting chances to work with older colleagues REALLY helped me separate what were legitimate grievances and things that did need to change, vs. just bitching. So I definitely recommend that!

    1. Meep*

      I find the biggest hurtle is often figuring out HOW to voice concerns with young professionals. Otherwise, as you point out, it leads to circlejerking and then just blinded frustration.

  63. Fish out of water*

    If support is something you personally or the company want to consider offering these employees, you could open the conversation to what they ARE looking for in a job. Even if they say wildly unrealistic things (for example, to work at my own pace on my own schedule with minimal oversight, which is what many employees want but can’t expect at entry level), it might give you the opportunity to coach them further, guide their thinking, or point them in the right direction. Even hearing something as simple as “We provide/require this structure in part to help teach you, and to develop and guide your work. In other words, we want you to grow in your role, but we can only provide that with oversight. Is that something you’re interested in?”

    But it’s not fundamentally your responsibility to be what amounts to a career coach for them. This is the sort of support remote learning may well have robbed them of: sitting down with someone and being asked, What are your interests? What do you want in a job? This suggestion is only if offering support feels more palatable to you and/or aligns with your company culture than a simple “This is the role, and it’s important that you’re able to meet these expectations.”

  64. Kaiko*

    Also, not to dunk on the LW, but could this be one of those “if you meet one jerk, you meet a jerk. If you meet ten jerks, you might be the jerk” situations?

    Framed more expansively/compassionately: Alison’s advice is good management advice, and if it’s new to you, or you haven’t been implementing it systematically, then it’s definitely time to examine your own leadership. A disgruntled, underperforming, and depressed team is probably a good indication that something *is* up with corporate culture, and just because you have been working in it for years, or it works for you, or it’s familiar, doesn’t mean it’s healthy or viable. And while this might be a flukey stacking-up of poorly-fitting hires, this might also be what sea change in corporate culture looks like on the ground.

    1. Meep*

      This has always been weird to me. Not saying that finance SHOULD be this way, but even I know that if I am going into finance, I am basically selling my entire life for cash for the time I am in it. It is lucrative until you do $/hour.

  66. Old Professional Rookie*

    I am inches away from 40, so there’s my millenial cred.

    Growing up, most of my friends had jobs in high school. They worked in call centers, pharmacies, bakeries. Because of family caregiving obligations (and general lack of developmentally appropriate experiences due to family stuff), I was unable to work and therefore unable to get paid work experience, work skills, and work knowledge. When I had my first job in college (retail) I was not good at it and did not know what to do. Training was bad and I was so nervous I didn’t do a good job of learning what I could from the bad training. I was then bad at my next job, which was paid in cash for a friend’s parents and also did not come with any actual work training.

    At this point I became sure I was too stupid and incompetent to have a job. I also didn’t actually know what jobs existed because (family stuff) and so I just kept working for the friend’s parents for a long time. Then I got another retail job and was also bad at it because they decided I should be the store manager despite being hired to be a regular worker because I had a degree. (It was a humanities degree.) I was, of course, minimally trained and had no skills to fall back on. (The company unsurprisingly went under.)

    Eventually I decided to go to grad school to get a (professional degree). I was SO BEHIND all my classmates, who had worked in (field) for at least a little while and most of them for a long time. I was bad at both my internships – I was good at learning and BAD at doing. The ability to translate what I knew into what I was doing just…was not there. And not getting critical feedback really made it harder. Having no idea what you are doing wrong but kind of also knowing it’s wrong but not knowing how to fix it is an actual nightmare.

    I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And I continued to be bad at everything I did (at chaotic organizations because those were the only places to give me a second look, rightfully so) until I was in my 30s. Not that I am so great now! But I know my deficits and I work at them and with years of extremely intentional improvement I am basically unrecognizable from a few years ago.

    How does this relate to younger folks who had a pandemic smack dab in the middle of their development? Why, quite nicely!

    Because the lack of developmentally appropriate experiences and the drastic reduction in opportunities to hone developmentally appropriate skills is a NIGHTMARE. And for these folks it’s not just “oh I didn’t get this opportunity and I am an individual who is behind”, it’s “we spent formative years in a truly bizarre situation from which many of us are still recovering and it arrested our professional development” which is far more widespread and far less individual.

    Clear expectations are a kindness. Direct feedback is a kindness. These things are kind even if folks do not realize it until they are in their 30s or beyond.

    Thanks to all of those who have patience with people whose development was arrested by outside factors and are not doing well catching up.

  67. Andrew*

    ““You’ve sounded upset when I’ve sent you edits recently. It’s very normal in our jobs, and in most jobs, to receive feedback on your work, and you should always expect that will happen when you turn in work. ”

    Regarding this topic, I held onto a copy of _all_ the versions a memo of mine went through when I got substantial (and needed) editing from a senior manager at my firm – probably 10 versions, which has been handy for showing younger staff that this kind of review cycle is a) normal, and b) results in better final versions

  68. Beyond the sea*

    I am 40 too. A millennial who lived through many “unprecedented times”. I am only saying this to give a bit of different perspective. Are you indeed paying them well for the location? As Allison mentioned are the recruiters really explaining the details of this job? Hours, expectations, pay?

    Gen Z, is upset (and millennials are too bc I have been for years) for working for low pay, exceedingly high expectations, toxic work environments and crap benefits. In a world where pricing are climbing every day. Where they can barely afford rent, groceries and student loans. Pay for jobs has barely risen since I graduated from college in 2008. So I don’t blame them for being upset.

    OP I am not blaming you. You are doing your best, you’re frustrated. You probably don’t get much say in the pay. Them not doing their job, makes yours harder. I get it I really do. I guess the above wasn’t really aimed at you. I have been thinking what Gen Z is finally bold enough to do and say for years. It sucks that my husband and I make decent livings but the cost of everything is high, we barely break even most months. Its’ not fair and I honestly don’t blame Gen Z one bit for complaining.

    1. OP*

      We recruit directly out of college so many of these folks didn’t have any work experience outside of internships. And while we pay very well for our FIELD, the cost of living is increasing at a much faster rate than salary increases. So I understand the anxiety about being paid (I feel it too) but this is probably the most any of us can realistically earn without moving to a new career within the industry.

    2. Head Sheep Counter*

      Damn… I’d love to have not thriving at my 100K salary job that “demands” 45 hrs a week in a highly competitive field… to be my biggest problem.

      1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

        Likewise. If that’s torture, I’ll learn to be a masochist!

  69. Wednesday wishes*

    I’m going to go out on a limb and generalize- and I realize this isn’t the case for everyone (my son is a gen Z and the most ambitious hardest working person I know. His sister, not so much!)
    These kids came of age in high school and college when they worked remote. Is it also possible that many many of them got their grades by open book testing and collaborative or open book homework. This means they maybe weren’t used to having to think as much on their own and they had a crutch whereby to succeed and get “the right answers.” There isn’t much of that in the working world where they are now expected to do their own work, and I think its stressing them out. I don’t think they are as qualified as their degrees make them out to be.

    1. Reb*

      I’m not sure about other places, but in my experience the open book tests were both more difficult and tested different skills than normal tests would.

      They required a lot more actual using of the information than I was used to, because any question just asking “what is x?” you could find in your notes, so all the easier (to me) memorisation questions were replaced with stuff I found more difficult.

      Don’t question the quality of our degrees. We’ve enough to deal with already.

  70. Landry*

    I see this constantly in our department’s employees under 30. The lack of work ethic is most astounding. They will make every possible excuse to not perform a task. I do blame our management for creating a culture where they think that is allowed (no accountability or consequences), but it seems like this generation prefers to try to get out of things rather than doing them. Zero ownership of their role and zero sense of responsibility.

    The coddling is a big thing too. We’ve had more than one person flame out in less than a year, in large part because they were so terrified to meet with clients that they would freeze up and a manager would need to attend the meeting with them (almost literally holding their hand). They knew they were being hired for a sales role and the “meeting with clients” part is clearly explained in the interview process.

    My company has had a habit of hiring from certain universities, but I’ve seen this behavior from graduates at all different kinds of schools, so I don’t think they are to blame. I do think my company bears some of the brunt. We have bad hiring practices in general, at least in my department. They want to hire someone quickly who can maybe do 40% of the job semi-well instead of holding out longer for someone who may be more qualified. We also don’t provide great training. Combine that with a generation that feels very stuck in general, and it’s a mess.

    1. Oh No You Didn't*

      Yeah, companies went from “Your first week is training” to “Don’t ask any questions, just do” in the course of my career and that’s not helpful. There are so many tech options and platforms that you can’t assume a new hire of any age knows your systems. Hope your company will put more effort into training.

      1. Wayward Sun*

        It’s not always the tech you think, either. I worked at a university where we had Gen Z interns, and one of the most surprising things was they didn’t know how to compose an email. They don’t use email in their personal lives, only text messaging services. They could learn to do it, but we had to train them…but of course that’s part of what an internship is for.

  71. SB*

    I’ve seen this too. And like the OP, I try to avoid over-generalizing generations.

    …but, I think with social media, people who’ve been in the work force a long time started talking about toxic and abusive work environments openly and honestly. And that’s great. It really is. People need to know they can advocate for themselves. However, if you don’t have a lot of experience, it’s hard to know what’s toxic and abusive, and what’s just having a job. Sometimes having a job sucks.

    To me, it feels really similar to how people started talking about mental health and then suddenly, the term “intrusive thoughts” got so watered down it didn’t mean anything anymore. And to be clear! Talking about mental health is great. But most people mean “impulsive” thoughts like, “cut your bangs” and not the scary ones that make you think you might hurt someone.

    I do wonder if breaking up the younger cohort and placing them on teams with more experienced colleagues might help re-set the expectations?

    1. Dinwar*

      This is how we try to do it in my company. Lots of new hires have very…odd…views about the work (and I myself was firmly in this category!). It’s not generational; it stems from the fact that our universities are geared towards teaching people to be university professors (at least in some fields), rather than teaching them how the jobs in that field work. So the typical thing is to pair the fresh-faced new grad with the grizzled old field hand. The newbies learn a lot through osmosis, a lot through direct coaching, and frankly they learn a lot through a peer telling them “Dude, you’re being a moron and gonna get us BOTH killed!”

      I will add that teaming people up this way softens the blow. I don’t care how kind you try to be, corrections from The Boss come across as harsh someone who’s spent the last 16-20 years of their lives being trained that corrections from superiors are inherently bad and often potentially life-changingly bad (ie, you get bad grades, don’t get into a good school, and can’t get a job). Corrections from peers–even more experienced peers–don’t have that sting to them.

    2. bananners*

      One of the things that The Youth has a hard time discerning – and it is this way because they a) lack experience and b) lack a fully developed prefrontal cortex – is what Unpleasant Things are worth pushing AGAINST and what Unpleasant Things must just be pushed PAST. I take it as part of my responsibility as a mentor to listen to their concerns and help them make that judgment call.

      1. The Prettiest Curse*

        I agree, and I also think that people who grew up communicating primarily on social media might be a bit less used to communicating in a nuanced way, because it’s the extremes (either “I am totally obsessed with [thing]” or “[thing] is The Worst Thing Ever”) that get the most attention and engagement. If you’re used to spending your non-work life thinking about how you can communicate about stuff in a way that overstates your actual feelings, it’s hard to suddenly turn that off for work purposes.

        Of course, all generations go to the communication extremes on social media so I’m not saying that this is something that’s exclusive to younger people, just that they might have more difficulty switching off that mode of thinking if they’re used to primarily communicating in that way.

        1. bananners*

          I’ve noticed this with my high schooler and their peers friendships/relationships, too – big hot and cold swings without room for nuance.

    3. EarlGrey*

      “sometimes having a job sucks” is a great line/mindset for this situation. I could absolutely see LW deploying it in a “yeah, relatable, right? anyway, I still need you to do X” way.

  72. CzechMate*

    Aside from maybe being willing to explain *why* things are a certain way (e.g. “We have to be at work at 8 am because…”) I think you could just treat them like any other employee of any other age who isn’t meeting expectations. Just say, “This is what I expect, let me know if you need help getting there, and if you can’t, then maybe this isn’t for you.” Then step back to see if they rise to the challenge or not.

    1. CzechMate*

      Also adding that I work in higher ed and we have a LOT of Gen Z interns in my office. For the most part, they’re all fantastic. I always advocate for focusing on behaviors rather than generational labels.

  73. Anonymous Zoomer*

    Wanted to add a Gen-Z perspective here — it sounds like this is mostly a group problem, not a generational one, but I do think there’s some truth in the idea that my generation is disillusioned with work. It’s not because we were “coddled,” but rather I think the combination of growing up with constant news of school shootings, losing formative years to COVID, and the cost of living/housing crisis has fostered pessimism and resentment towards work. Seeing constant examples of how systems will disregard your well-being or throw you under the bus + feeling like you’ll never be able to afford a house or the basic trappings of a middle class life even on a dual professional income = not happily devoting your life to a company!

    Maybe folks of other generations can point to similar crises in their own generations, but I do think it’s worth mentioning that a lot of Gen Z has grown up understanding that they will be worse off than their parents’ generation. This isn’t excusing or even explaining the behavior LW describes — I and most people I know my age have no trouble following professional norms. But I think there’s a growing sentiment of distrust among my generation where workers are unwilling to give their unwavering loyalty to a corporation that they don’t trust to give any loyalty back.

    1. Kaiko*

      Totally – ROI on work has always been framed as *work hard and you’ll be financially stable/successful/have the money to live comfortably” and that’s just not true anymore. Employers are positioning themselves as though the end goal is still status and a big house someday; younger employees know that might not pan out, so, like, what else you got/why bother?

      1. Salty Caramel*

        It hasn’t been true for a while. Hard work is rewarded with more work. Companies feel no responsibility to their employees and are miserly with raises. You have to jump ship to keep up with the cost of living, and then you get flak for being “disloyal.”

        1. Wayward Sun*

          I think that’s all true except for the last bit. I’ve never had an employer call me “disloyal” for leaving; they understand how the game is played, too.

    2. SB*

      I suspect some of the friction is that Millennials also dealt with that. (I’m an elder one. Columbine happened when I was in high school and that shit never stopped.) So other than being an adult during COVID….we’re in the same boat.

      The workplace has been improving steadily because we’ve been working really hard to improve it. You get to be a person now! You weren’t allowed to be a person when I started. And I know I’m being flippant, but I can’t explain how bad it was. I was not a person. I was a tool to be used.

      So yes, you are correct – things suck. It’s not fair. You shouldn’t feel any loyalty to a company. It’s just that we’ve been trying really hard to clean up a landfill for decades. It’s difficult and frustrating and all of that…so when new people come in and tell us it sucks? Lol. We know. But we’re trying and hey, at least you have health insurance (for now) and you can go to your doctor’s appointment during the week and not have to worry about getting fired because we fought for work/life balance.

      I know we’re not being fair. I know. The world is burning and we’re all acting like it’s normal.

      But I think if you want to understand the friction point, you should talk to older colleagues about their experiences. We’re on the same side. We just can’t see each other yet.

      1. Crepe Myrtle*

        This is such a good comment. A lot of us who aren’t a ton older than Gen Z are dealing with the same stuff and have had to make this adjustment to our thinking too. So we should all talk about it together instead of blaming each other’s ages.

      2. JD DJ*

        I totally agree that Millennials have had to deal with a lot of the same things, and we need to talk about it with each other, but I’d push back on the only difference being an adult during Covid.

        I’m on the cusp of Gen Z and Millennial and my Fiancée is solidly Millennial, only a 2–3-year difference, and one thing we’ve talked about is how big of a difference it is when this is all you’ve known, vs having at least some time where it wasn’t. Like one of my first memories is 9/11, I literally don’t remember airports before TSA or a time where mass shootings weren’t super common.

        We’ll talk about how we wish things were different and she’ll say “like when we were kids” and I have to remind her that I literally don’t know any different. I don’t have memories of a time where I wasn’t afraid of a mass shooting or being hyper jaded about anyone doing something to stop it, and its only gotten worse as I’ve gotten older and seen more examples.

        There’s a big psychological difference between being immersed in this from birth vs knowing a world without it; I can’t imagine it’s better for people younger than me who grew up with all this accelerating even more.

      3. Wayward Sun*

        Part of it is realizing the world is ALWAYS burning in one way or another. I’m GenX so I grew up with the understanding that we could all be vaporized in a nuclear exchange at any moment. I graduated into the tech recession then watched 9/11 and the housing bubble pop early in my career. Every generation has hardships and trying to win the Oppression Olympics only gets you so far.

      5. Good Lord Ratty*

        This resonated with me. I’m a millennial who was in elementary school when Columbine happened. I graduated into a recession etc. The only differences really are that I was an adult during the pandemic and I’ve been on social media since high school, not like… birth. Millennials by and large haven’t had it all that much better, and we’d all do better to recognize we have more in common with Gen Z (and they with us) than not.

    3. Tea Monk*

      Yea I’m a millennial and if I was 25? I would give even less of a crap than I already do. A lot of people are externally motivated and that doesn’t make us bad people. I’m glad other people will work hard no matter how little it gets them but I get resentful if I work too hard

    4. Head Sheep Counter*

      I’d like to push on the being devoted to one’s company. That may have been something that was tried in the 1960’s or earlier as a hanger on from the World Wars where really things were upended and devotion paid off and was paid forward (in some spectacular ways). That all really began to die the way of the Dodo in the 1980’s … when the strive for shareholder value snuck in. The moment that the companies fully commoditized their employees… was a good moment for the employees to do likewise… but humans human and we held to old ideas for awhile longer.

      The move away from pensions and union jobs… which coincided with the move to make a degree a requirement for all jobs… happened starting in the 1990s (and earlier). Now we have degree requirements up the wazoo, college costing $100Ks, billionaires wrecking our government and we are pitted against each other.

      So a long-winded… way to say we shouldn’t be devoted to work… but pragmatically food, clothes, housing and travel are the fruit of working… so we need to provide our reasonable best selves so that we get our best careers. I realize that folks in their early careers have much to learn (and perhaps now even more) but they also have much to contribute.

  74. Aspiring Great Manager*

    I want to encourage you to also think critically about their comments. I mean, maybe they are not wrong? Think about it this way: even longish hours are the norm in your industry, is that actually A Good Thing? regularly working 10-16 hour days is physically, mentally and morally exhausting and does not leave you time to live life. What I see is that young people have a more balanced perspective about work, family, personal life, etc, that GenX (speaking for my generation here) didn’t have at that age, it’s been all “suck it up, work hard and get ahead”, and in many places that adage is no longer true (e.g. a $300K house in Canada in 2010 now goes for $800K and salaries have not increased by that same proportion, that’s for sure). Yes, definitely be direct with the expectations of work, but also consider that the new generation does not want to die working and can’t even see how it would help them since the goals previous generations had are basically unattainable. There may not be much you can do, but if you are a manager, perhaps this can open up some space to discuss with upper management about realistic expectations and balance.

    1. OP*

      Some of their criticisms are very fair, I share them, and the shifting values of younger generations actually is improving our company culture in certain ways. But in this specific case, I am talking about working 45/hours a week max and earning about $100k/year to start, so it is not a situation of throwing them into hell pit

      2. Dinwar*

        Wow. When I started it was expected I’d work 50-60 hours per week (ten-hour days are industry standard, for very valid reasons related to sampling requirements). I’m still struggling to learn to live with 40 hour weeks!

        Different industries, I know, but the differences in expectations are just shocking to me.

  75. Circling in Life*

    Have you tried providing explanations for what is happening beyond that’s how we do things? why are you providing feedback and why is it important that the changes be made etc. I’ve noticed that recently and especially with new coop students and junior designers that That’s the way it’s always been us just not a acceptable answer. I don’t think they are wrong to expect a real answer.

    1. Circling in Life*

      I would like to clarify the explanations are not to encourage debate but provide context for those decisions that they are missing. Like when I explained to a new coop that yes he had to go back and remove all the leading zeros on an imperial drawing because machinist are not expecting them so they could easily read 0.01 and .001 which will give us an unusable part that we still have to pay for.

  76. cxxxb*

    I am in the social work field and we are struggling with this exact same issue. Social work jobs are HARD-working with folks with severe mental illnesses, etc. The younger staff seem to really not understand that those convos need to be in person, on time, etc. Largely they all did their internships for school remotely so their experience dealing with situations is limited. Social work internships are designed to give the learners a real world expectation of the field and how hard it can be-some folks dont finish their education because of that, and that’s fine-thats what the internships are for! to see if you’re cut out for it! But because these younger folks didn’t have those opportunities, they are ROCKED when the job is the job. We are struggling too.

  77. But I WANT To!*

    This is part of the age-old tradition of every teacher or parent who has ever been called “mean” because they: wouldn’t let you run out in the busy street/ made you eat vegetables/ made you clean up your own mess/ etc. ad infinitum. Overblowing normal feedback or reasonable expectations as mean, humiliating, or cruel is an immature reaction. The suggestions to educate calmly and compassionately but hold firm on the expectation are right on, whether you’re dealing with a toddler throwing a tantrum over bedtime, a dog who wants to chew on your favorite shoes, or an employee (of any age or generation) who has a sense of entitlement not aligned with reasonable workplace norms. LW, these employees are lucky to be managed by someone who is being thoughtful and constructive about their shortcomings. You will do them no favors by giving in further to their immature impulses. I’ll bet that at least a few of them will come to appreciate your fair but firm stance when they realize it set them up for future success.

  78. Lurker*

    If the employee who applied for a mental health job thinks is easy they will have a rude awakening for them. Wait until they see the pay for what is expected in terms of education on on-going training also.

  79. Clearance Issues*

    I’ve mentored several gen z people and I’m going to echo Alison and Sloanicota’s words: Be direct, and treat them as individuals. It’ll help show which ones can learn and which ones are just not a good fit.

  80. Heffalump*

    I’m thinking of a comment by one of my past community-college instructors. He was talking about school, but it could apply to work also. He said students would often start community college under parental pressure, with no real idea of what they wanted to do, and they’d wash out. A few years later they’d decide that they wanted to be equipped for something better than McJobs, and they’d return to community college knowing what they wanted out of it. And they’d be the best students.

    This discussion also made me think of the dress code interns. Presumably their previous life experience led them to think that launching a petition was the thing to do.

    1. Coverage Associate*

      I was thinking about the dress code interns below when I mentioned that law firms have committees to raise junior professionals’ concerns with management. It provides a right way to raise things and sets up a kind of filter that can help working relationships. For example, with the dress code, committee leadership would tell management either that it’s a common but weak complaint or a common and strong complaint that management really needs to consider. (Or maybe it’s just one popular employee who cares at all) Then management has a better sense of how important something really is and can respond accordingly.

      It also allows for some anonymous communication between employees and managers. For example, an employee thinking of having a baby might not want to raise related issues (eg, can parental leave be taken in segments instead of continuously?) with their direct manager or even HR for various reasons, but they can raise the issue anonymously through the committee. (HR might not have a good sense of what policies management might agree to change, is one reason to skip HR.)

      My estimation is that start times might be in a similar category as dress code for OP.

  81. Jane*

    It sounds like a lot of this is young people seeing the positive social wave of workers demanding rights they deserve and then taking it to the very extreme with no nuance.

    A boss yelling at you? That’s bad. A boss asking you a follow up question? That’s normal.

    Being denied time off when you’re sick? That’s bad. Having to arrive at a set time every day? That’s normal.

    This feels very “chronically online” to me.

  82. Sarah Hein*

    Jumping off of Alison’s suggestion to pair these younger employees with slightly farther-along employees, one initiative I found helpful when I was new to the workplace was a “Lunch with Leadership” series. It was specifically focused on presenting information to newer employee (“levels 2 and 3” in my organization’s terms), and helped foster connections across employees of different levels. A few lower-level employees led the group, and topics included a graduate school Q&A panel, a presentation about our EAP, one about health insurance options, discussion of professional development and conference opportunities, and more. My crowning achievement was when I led the group and arranged for our retirement fund provider to give a presentation – I would estimate we had 80%+ attendance at that session! The specifics would definitely look different at your company – my workplace was a nonprofit government contractor – but there might be some value if you think this could fit into your corporate culture. As a young millennial, I think all new employees need a little help to adjust to professional norms, and this LwL series was just the right thing for me when I started my career.

  83. Elizabeth West*

    I feel bad for them, because the Covid pandemic* was legitimately traumatic for everyone and it hit this cohort at the worst possible time. But — they need to accept that this is how work works, at least the way it is now. Frankly, I would like to quit working forever myself, but I can’t, so I just have to do it. We all do.

    I do like that Gen Z is more assertive about asking for what they actually need. Many of us Gen Xers didn’t learn how to do that since there was less awareness, so we sucked it up because we had no other choice and silently suffered. Now, I feel more like I can ask because they do. Someday they’ll be in power, and we can hope they make things better for everyone.

    *what does it say that I felt an ominous need to specify which pandemic we’re talking about, ugh

    1. An introvert in an extrovert's world*

      Gen Jones, our entire late teens and 20’s in the Rust Belt were traumatic. Online learning and staying in touch while protecting themselves from illness. It’s not nearly as big of a deal and we need to stop letting it be an excuse.

      2. C*

        The domestic violence, suicide, and overdose rates jumped dramatically during this time period.

  84. Political Consultant*

    For hiring new employees, a few tips for me that have worked to screen out young employees with unrealistic expectations:

    1) Be extremely up front about job requirements in interviews, ask if they’re ok with those requirements and pay attention to how they answer. For you, that would mean saying things like “our standard work hours are 8-X; are you comfortable with an 8 am start time?” Most will say yes, but you’re looking for people who say things like, “yup, I’m a morning person” or “yes, I know that’s the standard in our field,” not, “oh, good to know about the early start time, yeah, I think I can make that work.”

    2) Ask about a time they’ve received feedback they disagreed with and how they handled it. Consider also asking about a time they had to do a task or project that was “tedious” and how they approached it – it doesn’t sound like that’s your issue, but it would give you insight into their grasp on the realities and expectations of entry level work.

    3) Ask their references about their grasp of professional norms and how they handle feedback and unpleasant/tedious/entry-level tasks.

  85. Project maniac-ger*

    “Direct is kinder in the long run.”

    I wish this was the first page of every managerial book ever and the first part of every supervisor training ever and it’s on a post it note in every manager’s office.

  86. Steph*

    I work in a very different field (public libraries) and I’m a tail end of gen X manager. I’ve been a manager for 20 years now. My newer employees are very different. My colleagues and I talk about it all the time. We are now managing feelings instead of people. As someone who is very reserved about my own feelings, it’s uncomfortable for me to have to talk about feelings in every conversation about work matters. I’ve had more conversations about my employees mental health in the last 2 years than I did in the previous 18. And, yes, it can be good to be open about these things, but it’s still work, and I’m still your boss, and I’m not a professional therapist. I feel like I’m in the weeds sometimes, trying to manage everyone’s feelings. Oh, and no, bringing your cat to work does not count as a workplace accommodation, no matter how nice it makes you feel.

  87. Silver snake*

    Oh my gosh, I’m not in the same industry but I could have written this article. My coworker and I (both mid-level managers) really struggled with how far we could and should go when it came to these issues on our teams.

    We were at least able to state what we needed to do the work but when it came to trying to actually develop our Gen-Z staffers, it really felt like they were not open to receiving any info that deviated from their worldview (essentially, “anything at work that is hard or that makes me feel uncomfortable is bad and should be changed”).

    In the end, I left the position, but if I’m in a similar one in the future, now I have some steps for early intervention, so this is much appreciated. I hope I’m not becoming a curmudgeon about “these young people” as I inch toward 40, but this issue certainly made me feel like one!

  88. overcaffeinatedandqueer*

    Honestly, I have heard that a solution to this problem is to hire first, 1.5 (moved when they were kids), or second gen immigrants, including from poorer backgrounds.

    The life experiences of their or their parents’ struggles and integration means, in my experience, they’re less coddled and have more grit than the Gen Z stereotype. The different perspectives are also helpful.

    Alternatively, you could look at candidates that seem to have more of a work history and have self-funded more of their life and education. They know what it takes to survive more.

    1. Ash*

      This is literally discrimination against someone due to country of origin, which is illegal at every level.

    2. Elbe*

      From a hiring standpoint, I think you would be in some really dicey territory if you tried to screen for most these things. I can’t imagine asking an applicant when their family came to the country or if they had struggled much in life or if they grew up poor.

      Questions that are more along the lines of, “Give an example of how you apply feedback you’ve received from a boss/teacher/etc.” or “What is your approach to problem solving when you encounter difficulties accomplishing a task?” would be much more useful.

  89. Ferbi*

    I fully understand the LW, though I don’t have answers, because I was recently in a similar situation. I was asked towards the end of last year to manage Sarah, whose previous manager (also my manager) had identified as a non-performer. Sarah has been with the company for about a year and it is her first full-time job after an internship. I’ve successfully managed teams before and have been able to turn around non-performers, and I’ve been a mentor, so no problem taking this on. I provided positive feedback on Sarah’s successes including in team meetings to build a good reputation, checked line-by-line any negative feedback about her from colleagues and challenged anything I considered unjustified, then worked with Sarah on any remaining areas for improvement. Her previous manager considered that in Sarah’s annual review she should be marked as below-expectations and I advocated for Sarah that based on what I had seen of her performance (which was only a couple of months) it met expectations (just!) and that she was improving. Sarah’s previous manager is also my manager and I used up a lot of political capital to secure a meets-expectations for Sarah.

    However, moving into this year it was clear that there were actually issues with Sarah’s performance. Her work is poorly presented with issues with fonts, formatting, and spacing even after setting out clearly our corporate standards, coaching her on how to use office tools, and multiple iterations of each product. There are material factual errors in work which she presents as ready for publication to clients, like the hyperlinks in a case study of one company linking to an incorrect company, misstatements of regulatory requirements, and other errors, despite research and authorship of content being her core responsibilities. Sarah also needs multiple prompts to complete admin tasks like “put your leave in the team calendar”. It is the same mistakes and same reminders, multiple times. The investment in coaching Sarah has resulted in assignments taking much longer than budgeted, which has adversely impacted delivery to our client deadlines.

    Two weeks ago, Sarah went to my manager in tears stating that she is stressed and anxious, and that she sees me as non-constructive and not sufficiently focused on her learning. I am exhausted. I have experienced this once before, a few years ago, with another person (similar experience) who was unable to reliably perform the most basic tasks of her job, and also cried when given performance feedback. Sarah requested reassignment to another team and I was relieved to support this decision. I’m one of our company’s strongest individual performers and from this point, my intention is to be an individual contributor without management responsibilities. It is just too exhausting and unrewarding, and potentially places my own career and job security at risk.

  90. Oh No You Didn't*

    For the people who are upset that LW is making generational stereotypes, it might help to reframe. In this instance, the problems ARE with the younger workers. And the LW is only 40. LW didn’t just write in to say “get off my lawn”. If LW wrote in about workaholic Boomer managers or coworkers who were driving everyone into the ground, that would involve a generational component, but also be true and worthy of discussion.

  91. Orange You Glad*

    I hire a lot of college students and recent grads. I’ve noticed a subtle shift in work habits that the pandemic has magnified – mainly around work experience and professional norms. I’ve noticed the younger generation is much more vocal about their needs, which is applaud them for, but sometimes needs a reality check on what is reasonable to expect or ask for. I’ve also noticed a decline in work experience as a teen/young adult (cashier or wait tables for a few hours per week, it’s not about needing money but gaining experience outside home/school). For full-time roles, I’ve stopped accepting people for interviews if they don’t have some type of experience outside of a classroom.

    Ownership for their work and critical thinking are two biggest traits that many folks I’ve interacted with seem to be lacking. It’s frustrating because I hire for roles with “analyst” in their name, so I expect some level of thought and analysis to go into their work.

    Some of my youngest team members are great and on their way to great things in the future. I think identifying what traits or values are critical to the role, and focus on those during the hiring process could help. It’s nice to hire someone who went to your school or who likes to play soccer on the weekends, but I want to hear about examples of their problem solving skills. As others have said, being clear about expectations will go a long way and if someone can’t meet expectations, then let them go.

    I do think there is room to work with each person’s needs individually. Is there a good reason for an 8am start time? Are they complaining just to complain, or would arriving at 8:30 genuinely improve their commute? Has the person that is too stressed out by the job talked about specifically what she finds stressful? Maybe she’s not right for the job, but maybe there is something minor that she is missing or deals with that you aren’t aware of.

    Finally, ignore the recruiter if you can. I can’t think of any professional scenario where a recruiter would be dictating how to treat or evaluate an employee. Their role is to help hire the best candidates (which clearly they aren’t doing), not manage your work or personal management skills.

    1. Ash*

      If the recruiter is getting a bonus for every candidate they refer who stays for at least 1 year, I can see how they are incentivized to encourage the agency to let bad behavior go. But your points are well-taken.

  92. Art of the Spiel*

    So much of this phenomenon is the direct result of the increasingly-ridiculous college admissions standards. They want to see high GPA’s and a TON of extracurriculars; anyone wanting to be competitive has to completely forgo the after-school job.

    And don’t get me started on how that seems to be a *mighty convenient* way to gatekeep low and middle income kids out of the running.

    1. Wayward Sun*

      Part of it, too, is the idea that if you don’t get into one of the top ten colleges as ranked by USA Today your career will be forever tarnished. There are plenty of state schools that aren’t that competitive admissions-wise but still provide a good education, and in many fields it doesn’t matter that much where your degree comes from.

    2. C*

      Are you sure you don’t have your causation backwards? I wasn’t under the impression that so many retail and fast food jobs even wanted to hire teens nowadays, and informal employment such as babysitting or mowing lawns has also largely moved to professionals, ie, adults.

  93. An introvert in an extrovert's world*

    Please mention they are responsible for their own feelings! You didn’t make her feel humiliated, she chose to feel humiliated over a simple question. One of the most annoying things about Gen Z is that most all thinks that feelings are caused by outside forces and must be reacted to.

  94. Coverage Associate*

    I haven’t read all the comments, but in law we have “associates committees,” that act as forums for new professionals to give feedback to management. Usually, the leadership of the committee presents the feedback anonymously to management, ie, management doesn’t know which associate had the feedback.

    I hear OP about the venting spiral, but I would suggest that an approved way to present issues to management might give outlet to the circle of complaining and allow management to address common complaints with the group instead of individually.

    Usually, the leadership of such committees are associates who have been with the firm for 2 to 3 years and can head off some of the most unreasonable complaints while also filtering the message to management (eg, this is a complaint from one person or one region or from several people, etc.).

    Examples of things such committees have addressed are benefits with very small networks in one region, pregnancy accommodations (especially during Zika and after Dobbs), and absent middle managers (when everyone was supposed to return to office after the pandemic).

    1. TCO*

      This could be a good idea. My office also has a committee (open to all staff) to address benefits, workplace culture, etc. This would be a constructive way for OP’s employees to discuss their concerns with a focus on concrete policies, etc. and not just complaining.

      This could be one way for these newer staff to collaborate with and learn from more seasoned staff. Maybe they’d learn that their requests aren’t realistic, or that X benefit/policy already exists that they didn’t know about, or whatever.

  95. Diomedea Exulans*

    I don’t understand this “pandemic stunted their growth” talk. I studied into my early 30s and only started working in my industry after finishing my PhD at 32. Apart from my previous career as a teacher and lecturer, I have always worked remotely. I also never had student jobs and internships but I ran a tutoring business instead. Still, I never had any issues with professionalism.

  96. Gen Z Elder*

    I agree with the comments about how this may be a recruiting issue – not entirely, of course, but a lot of this behavior may not be as rampant in people from other backgrounds. I’m a Gen Zer who graduated college and began working before COVID so I definitely have it better in terms of my life being majorly impacted at an important age compared to those even just months younger than me, but I know I had similar struggles while working part-time jobs. For example, I had a performance review in my part-time job in college where I was told I was a good employee but needed more confidence in myself/to seek out less direction when I clearly knew what to do or had an instinct. I think needing very clear direction consistently, or being spelled out, is sometimes just a “green” thing. That’s not to say I’m a perfect employee now, or even completely over some of the issues mentioned in the post/these comments, but I feel I had a head start by getting those earlier experiences. Not to blame those who don’t, though – I can’t imagine getting job experience was easy during the pandemic! I appreciate Allison taking special care to make sure that the lasting effects on social/career development for the younger crowd isn’t overlooked or understated.

  97. FunkyMunky*

    just a small note – is the expectation to start at 8am or official hours after at 8am? not to generalize, but I’m also an older millenial — and some things I “grew up” with, working with now Boomer generations, just don’t jive with anyone anymore. So while you emphasize that the industry and the workplace is more buttoned up – is that necessary or are you just hanging on to old traditions and expectations of the generation that trained you?

    1. Wayward Sun*

      Finance jobs start at 8 for some pretty specific reasons involving when the markets open and when transactions have to be cleared. I worked at a bank in the 1990s and it was the same way — 8 am to 4:30 pm with a half-hour lunch.

  98. Owl Cat*

    Observing this chat as a Gen Z person has been disheartening. I worry that many people — including those here — risk sliding into subconscious hiring biases (against hiring people of this cohort) based on these talking points by assuming we are oversensitive, fragile, and maladapted. It’s easy to see how that could lead to Gen Z people being passed over in hiring in a work climate that’s already incredibly difficult to break into, especially in my particular field (game development).

    Nobody here seems actively hostile, but please do be aware that even well-intentioned patronization is patronizing, and “you poor things” is as unhelpful as “you’re hopelessly broken because of social media and the pandemic” (a view I’ve seen expressed elsewhere). If employees are immature, address *that* and not their generation.

    I’ve mentioned this above but I also want to reiterate that The Anxious Generation is poorly researched, written by someone pushing a reactionary ideology, and not something that should be leading this conversation. If it was a serious book, it would’ve interviewed many, many actual young adults rather than sermonizing from the outside and then prescribing blockchain and recess as solutions. Please, please listen to the If Books Could Kill episode for more detail.

    1. Trotwood*

      I just want to say I’ve encountered many awesome Gen Z young professionals too…students who found amazing opportunities despite the challenges of going to college during the pandemic and made great hires. I think these observations about the lack of resiliency and unrealistic expectations about the professional world represent a subset of the generation, but generalizing to the whole age cohort is obviously impossible and unfair.

    2. Elbe*

      There’s a pretty big difference between acknowledging trends and assuming that everyone of a specific age embodies those trends. I think that most people can both understand that environmental factors can shape a generation while also knowing that everyone is an individual.

      If you’re applying for entry-level jobs, a lot of the other applicants will be of a similar age and have similar work experience. I don’t know of anyone who would not hire someone just because they are Gen Z. If anything, it may give you an advantage in interviews if you highlight instances where you had to adapt and learn.

      1. Owl Cat*

        That’s why I am worried about it being subconscious. Maybe few people would pass over Gen Z applications consciously, but some of the discussion around this topic I’ve witnessed makes me think it’s easy to internalize beliefs about our immaturity, especially with how many have bought into the panic pushed by people like Haidt. In other forums I *have* seen people express dislike Coupled with a lack of companies hiring true entry level roles (most requiring 2-5 yrs for even associate level) and a market full of overqualified folks who’ve been laid off, it’s a compounding effect I dread to see.

        1. ME, Myself and Fries*

          Gen X and Boomers have the same problem with age discrimination, conscious or not.

    3. iglwif*

      That IBCK episode recommends Behind Their Screens by Emily Weinstein and Carrie James, and I read that and it’s SO good.

      Mainly because they actually talked to teenagers, but also because they are researchers who did research, whereas Haidt isn’t and didn’t.

      1. Lewis*

        I loved the IF Books Could Kill episode of the Anxious Generation.

        For those who haven’t listened yet, this one data point alone exposes the manipulated timeline of Haidt’s hypothesis: the jump in diagnosis of teens with mental health issues directly coincides with the introduction of the Affordable Care Act, when suddenly there was health care coverage for a lot more people including teens.

  99. hbc*

    “I often ask what else I can do to make their jobs more fulfilling and help them to do their jobs well. They don’t know.”

    At this point, I think it’s not coddling so much as actually lending credence to their complaints to continue to listen. In one-on-ones or in a big meeting, you need to lay out “This is the pay scale, this is how it falls in comparisons to other similar positions, and these are the expectations for performance. That’s not changing any time soon, and I’m done discussing it. The only way to make more money here is to excel at the job you’re doing now and get promoted. I hope you’ll continue to work and grow here because I think you have a lot of potential, but if you think someplace else is a better fit, I completely understand.”

    Also, I’d have your recruiter be on the look out for another set of candidates, because I’d be shocked if you didn’t need at least one firing or resignation to turn things around. Just make sure you see some resumes from the not-as-qualified candidates so you can figure out if they’re not screening the way you want.

  100. Living That Teacher Life*

    Besides being affected by the pandemic lockdown, theses younger professionals were the first to grow up in a world of smart phones and social media. The book The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt is research-based and goes a long way to explain the impact these technologies have on the human brain. As a Gen-X teacher, I watched the increase in anxiety and the decrease in social interaction happen in front of my eyes (beginning years before the lockdown), but the empirical research in this book and Haidt’s clear-eyed analysis really helped me understand my students so much better. Highly recommend The Anxious Generation, and I believe there is a website as well.

    1. Owl Cat*

      The Anxious Generation is a gawker’s perspective on social media from a person who is promoting a regressive ideology with poorly researched talking points about how apps are turning kids trans, who has gone on Joe Rogan to complain that social media is making young people too leftist, and who talked to barely any of the people he’s handwringing about for his book. There’s a nuanced conversation to be had here, and that should be had here, but Haidt isn’t the one to lead it. It’s exhausting to be talked about but not talked to, using very one-sided and not terribly nuanced research.

    2. iglwif*

      Instead of reading The Anxious Generation, please read the much better researched and more engaging Behind Their Screens by Emily Weinstein & Carrie James.

      Weinstein and James did a number of things Haidt didn’t, including talking to teenagers about their cellphone and social media use.

      Instead of being alarmist, it’s a nuanced and interesting look at what teens actually do online and the many different ways they feel about it.

    3. Living That Teacher Life*

      My point is that there are other powerful factors affecting this generation beyond the lockdown which had already been mentioned repeatedly. While I do not agree with everything Haidt says, and there are certainly more books to read and more discussions to have, I appreciated the hard data confirming trends that I had observed on a smaller scale in my students. I talk to teenagers every day, but I didn’t have graphs showing nationwide and worldwide trends correlated to the introduction of the smart phone or the like button on social media. It’s reasonable to believe Gen Z and generations following will think about and relate to the world differently because of their close and constant connection with technology since childhood. It’s understandable that many of them will chafe at the 9 to 5 when becoming an influencer is a legitimate career path, and others will struggle with anxiety or lack of purpose. Just another factor to think about in this discussion.

  101. Nat20*

    One thing I’ve heard people in both higher ed and K-12 talking about recently, in retrospect about how we as educators handled the early pandemic days, is that we were all talking about giving students flexibility during scary & uncertain times, but what we actually gave them was leniency. Flexibility would mean extended deadlines, make-up opportunities, a wider range of metrics in determining success, additional support, etc. What they got was no deadlines, easier (and less) material, softer grading, far more excusals, and removal of many consequences. Sure that was mainly four or five years ago now, but it was not just for one year. Crawling out of that hole is ongoing and has not been easy.

    So now, a lot of them entering the workforce still expect all excuses to carry weight, for bare-minimum effort to meet expectations, to never deal with revisions or feedback, and to never face even the most minor consequences. They expect a proverbial “A” on everything they do by default, not because they’re spoiled or entitled, but because WE taught them that an A is simultaneously the standard, average expectation but also the best they can possibly do.

    All of this to say that I also don’t ascribe to generational divides, and I don’t think covid excuses all shortcomings for those entering the workforce. I also don’t think these problems are universal in that age group, of course not. But it does remain true that Covid University really, deeply messed up their outlook on a lot of things, and that much is not their fault.

    Then there’s also the phenomenon of “lawnmower parenting”, which we see a lot in parents of Gen Z (even before covid): instead of helicopter parents who constantly hover & monitor, these are parents who go out in front of their kid and clear the way entirely for them. No hardship, no lessons to learn, no mistakes, no consequences, no responsibility. The parents who blame the teacher for the kid’s bad grade, who never say no, who never teach their kid even basic life skills because they’re too busy doing it all for them instead. And since K-12 schools are increasingly beholden to parents’ whims, it’s unfortunately mirrored and reinforced there too. Then those kids get to college or the workforce, get a nice fat dose of reality, and not only are they anxious and bewildered, they’re pissed. They might be pissed at whoever is suddenly imposing normal expectations, but more often they’re pissed at the cultures and institutions who they now realize have hamstrung them. They can’t function and they know it, and they’re mad (and deeply overwhelmed) that they don’t have the tools to even learn how to learn. This is not an uncommon phenomenon; I see this anxious unpreparedness in college students all the time and I blame the parents, not the student.

    So, it also helps to keep in mind that so many of them (again, this is of course not universal) have simply never been tasked with responsibility that actually has standards and consequences, or have genuinely never learned from failure before. That doesn’t mean that the expectations should change, but that we can extend a bit of patience and compassion about it.

    1. Nat20*

      I also don’t mean this to be patronizing or infantalizing, just that we can have some empathy. For what it’s worth, I’m on the younger end of millennial (32).

  102. Daria grace*

    While of course these new hires’ behaviour is unreasonable regardless, it might be worth looking at if there’s anything in the recruitment process and external marketing that’s off. I previously worked at somewhere that publicly presented themselves as being a flexible employer and good place to work so it was a struggle to deal with the fact that they were very inflexible about quite early start times. Even knowing how the work world worked it was kinda hard to not resent that. The interview process should always be clear about what to expect, especially for a new to the workforce cohort.

    It troubled me a little to see the mental health leave brought up as an example here. I’ve had times where work stress on its own was only moderate but the way it mixed with stress in other parts of my life made it damaging

    1. lincva*

      Yeah, I thought LW’s mentioning the mental health leave was a bit unfair. You don’t know what’s going on in someone’s head.

      1. Wayward Sun*

        I’ve seen it used as a cudgel before — “you’re being so hard on me that I’m stressed out and need medical leave.”

    2. iglwif*

      This may be cynical of me but I wonder if they’re doing a lot of recruiting from very expensive universities with a lot of legacy admissions …

  103. Raida*

    ” The person responsible for recruiting them has aggressively encouraged managers to treat this cohort with kid gloves because the pandemic stunted their development. ”

    Cool, great to hear an unqualified person giving advice!

    You don’t help someone GROW by helping them stay stunted.
    You help them to grow by giving them real tasks with real responsibilities and real consequences and real rewards, and not being an arsehole to them.

  104. Raida*

    I’d suggest putting them not together, by the way.
    Learning from each other, when already echo-chambering their complaints?
    Terrible setup – maybe pair them with other staff who can give them some push back on their perspectives?
    Realistically, if the company really wanted to be *nice* to them they would all have had mentors, and those mentors would not be restrained into being dishonest with them.

    Separately – Do you have any staff their age this isn’t a problem with?

    Overall you now have an issue of a toxic group feeding off each other, so support while breaking that up is going to be necessary regardless of age or experience or initial reasons. Especially if there is honestly a ringleader – you should be able to get the chat logs from IT, see if you can find a clear pattern of one person shit stirring the others, and maybe ‘manage them out’

  105. Kt*

    Complaining about your boss and your job, ‘threatening’ to (or more realistically fantasizing about getting to) quit have been coworkers primary form of bonding since the dawn of time. Trying to ban that would make you (and your organization) seem absolutely insane.

    I also have to wonder if ‘paid well for our industry’ equates to ‘paid well’.

    I think it’s important to not fall into ‘I came up the hard way so since you have it slightly easier none of your complaints are valid’.

  106. ABC123*

    And this is finance. Imagine people with this type of attitude and behavior in emergency services, or the military, or any other job where there are real hardships and dangers involved.

  107. lincva*

    Speaking as a Gen Z worker here – I echo what some earlier commenters have said about the whole “Gen Z wants to be coddled” being a result of not having to figure things out on their own rather than any generational divide. Might it be amplified by the pandemic, sure, but I think there’s more to it, just like I think people who are always bleating about “pandemic learning loss” weren’t paying attention to how many students were already behind grade-level in 2019.

    I’m a public school grad and often had to figure out stuff on my own or with my family because the school was no real help. Therefore, when I got to college, I was used to trying to solve things without assistance (honestly, I swung TOO far in this direction). Compare this to my peers who threatened to call every administrator on the planet if someone didn’t fulfill their every need. As for the oversharing, my parents drilled it into my head to watch what I said at school and at work. And even if I hadn’t been told that, I think reading the room is important. Sometimes I say things and instantly regret them because of what I perceive the reaction to be. With these employees, the room is echoing their words back at them.

    1. mpe1*

      “With these employees, the room is echoing their words back at them.” -> YES. This situation sounds far more like an echo chamber problem than a generational problem.

      (I mean, there could be a generational problem as well. But personally – elder GenX here, true to form – I’m cynical about that. I got exactly this kind of attitude from younger GenX/elder Millennials mumbledecades ago. The young will be young, and the olders never want to believe this was always so.)

  108. iglwif*

    I keep hearing about pandemic grads having bad attitudes and no skills … and I keep seeing my pandemic grad child (age 22, finished high school in 2020, got her BA in 2024) being actually significantly more professional and competent than I was at her age.

    But another thing she has that I didn’t is the knowledge and self-confidence to advocate for herself and her coworkers … and that’s good, but I can understand why some workplaces would not appreciate it.

  109. Loons*

    My older children were third and sixth grade during the worst of lockdown and are seventh and tenth grade now. They, and their friends, are…very socially backward. Part of it is that even after the pandemic isolation, these kids are still choosing a lot of time alone. Even my extroverted middle child forgets that inviting friends over is a thing they can do. They come home from school and talk to their friends on group chats instead of hanging out. It’s so much easier and less scary and no one needs to pester their parents for a ride!

    My oldest finally got all her friends to come over for her birthday party and it was like having fourth graders over in term of social polish. They’re staring at the floor to avoid eye contact, they’re unaware that our shoes in the entry mean we’re a “shoes off” house, several didn’t know shoes off houses were even a thing, they accidentally insult the house because they’re comparing it to their own houses ALOUD, no one knows how to address me and it’s all “X’s mom” like I’m chaperoning a first grade field trip. And these were lovely kids! I liked all of them and they’re kind, good friends to my kid. But they were a mess.

    1. Bananners*

      I had a third grader in 2020 and yes to all of this. We live in a rural area so it’s even harder since they can’t walk to each other’s houses (they’re so close to being able to drive!) They aren’t in sports for the most part, so they don’t have a built-in activity for socializing. I’ve made it my mission to get the friend group to hang out in person – inviting them over or to volunteer activities or live performances. I think it’s working.

  110. ElliottRook*

    I do wonder how many legitimate points these Gen Z’s are raising, though. Questions of strict start times, a dress code established in the 50s, and WFH etc etc ARE worth pushing back on in 99.999999999999% of jobs, they’re just silly made-up Puritanical traditions that really don’t make any sense to continue.

    Taking feedback, collaborative work, that kind of thing–that’s the area to focus on, that actually really matters.

    1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      That’s way overstating the size of the more privileged white collar bubble. A wide range of jobs genuinely have to be in person with fixed start times.

    3. Coffee Snob/Knob*

      Respectfully, if you are going into an industry that has these norms, you are not going to expect to make waves or change the culture in the first couple of years after entering the said industry. Change comes from biding your time, rising to higher management, then initiating change.

      Sure, I get that sometimes (qualifier: sometimes) a mass will effect change on the larger body. But in a relatively rigid industry with deep entrenching like finance as mentioned? That’s less likely to happen.

      The same way the company chose you to make you a job offer, you choose the company you want to work for. So if you know you are going into this industry, maybe even this job in particular, why do you want to join the company? Would you go work in a summer camp if you can’t stand the sun or heat? Or work in a plant nursery if you have a severe pollen allergy?

    4. RussianInTexas*

      The share of white collar workers in the US is under 50% of the workforce. So 99% of the jobs? really? As in, medical, industrial, retail, customer service, landscaping, food service, etc. I would like to see an EMT working from home.
      Most commenters here will be the first to complain if their kids daycare does not open on time, or their doctor does not have appointments at the time THEY need them, or not wearing clean scubs.
      The world does not revolve around office workers, and I am even one of them and working from home to boot.

  111. The kids are alright*

    Gen Z is the first generation to recognize immediately, as a group, that the relationship between employers and employees is adversarial, and that that is entirely because of the egregious bullshit employers have slowly conditioned workers to believe is normal.

    If they don’t give a shit about professional norms, it’s because they recognize – correctly – that professional norms mostly come from managers’ and executives’ pathological need for control, rather than any actual utility. They understand that their employer wouldn’t piss on them if they were on fire. They’ve just decided to drop the pretense.

    I am eagerly anticipating the younger generation bringing back collective bargaining.

  112. Clara*

    I’m 29, and started professional work post-grad at 21, so I had a few years’ experience of in office (5 days a week) before we had the pandemic. The key differentiator I’ve seen is that those who completed uni in the pandemic have gotten used to the idea that they work alone, wherever and whenever they want. They’ve grown reliant on self teaching, so don’t all fully grasp that professionally, there’s a lot to pick up from other people. The grads I encounter don’t even attend socials most of the time, which was seen as a big perk when I was in their place.

    Seeing the benefits of in person, collaborative work would probably help shift their attitudes here. If there’s any projects you could get them delivering, with others, where they have to work in office, I’d try to set them up with that. They might complain, but I think in the long run it’d help.

  113. Good Lord Ratty*

    This may partly be generational, but I (a mid-range millennial, 35) also know plenty of Gen Z workers who are conscientious, hardworking, and can take instruction. This specific set sound particularly spoiled and unprepared for real work, but while their generational circumstances may incline them in this direction, it certainly isn’t true of everyone in that age bracket. These workers need to be coached, and anyone who is coddling them needs to stop. The ones who can improve will.

  114. mpe1*

    “I feel that we’ve coddled this group of employees too much. They are less productive than their older peers and yet ask for much more.”

    I want to push back on this, just a little bit. From what you’re saying, OP, I think maybe *you* have coddled this group too much. It’s OK to be their senior, their manager, and their guide to what is expected of them. It’s also OK not to be their friend.

    As for being less productive than their older peers… well, yes. That should be the norm, right? Because presumably you *want* people to become more productive as they grow in experience, maturity, and professional stature.

    And as for asking for much more… well, yes. Why shouldn’t they ask for the moon? They might not get it (though they might – don’t underestimate them!), but if they are “deeply unhappy and seemingly unwillingly to adapt” maybe yours is not the right world for them.

  115. Grace*

    I work with college interns, and we’ve seen all these issues (and then some) since returning to work post-pandemic. I run a workshop every term about office conduct – it amazes me that I have to spell certain things out (like, EOD means 5PM not midnight) but it does seem to help.

    1. Momma Bear*

      On behalf of their future employers, thank you.

      My college offered a “business dinner 101” class that was optional but very helpful. It was more than “don’t get drunk at dinner” but also went over some typical office norms. I may never have had to eat onion soup in front of my boss, but knowing how to determine business casual was a very useful tip.

  116. rusty eulberg*

    Your crew of twenty somethings are perfectly normal.
    this isn’t generational — I’m genx, i acted this way, I have seen millennials act this way, and now we’re seeing Genz doing the same.

    the only real difference is they have some collaborative skills that Genx didn’t and millennials were just developing. It’s basically ad-hoc unionization.

    Allison’s points are the right responses, but the collective actions of genz might be able to get them privileges that were denied us older generations. I can only hope they can — since so many of the ladders to success that Genx, Millennials, and Boomers had have been removed — they are building what they have been denied.

  117. Me*

    I find that many of the workers in this generation are wonderful, but many have this strange combination of entitlement and fragility. They expect things to be set up the way that works best for them regardless of overall corporate goals, but they also start decompensating at the drop of a hat when they are asked to do something the tiniest bit out of their comfort zone. They require a lot of mental energy and hand-holding on the part of their manager.

  118. Lizard Lady*

    There IS a generational problem! I see it in my family, where the generations are (largely) progressively less and less resilient and capable, even amongst siblings in the same household. I started to list off factors, but it was turning into a novella. But one thing: consider how kids occupy their time and how it has changed over the years, for ALL ages. The meaningful human interaction is decreasing, I feel. Also the expectations for success- we got a little too comfortable with saying “It’s okay if you can’t.” Sometimes that is fine, but it often needs to be “It’s okay if you can’t YET, you can keep working on it.”

    I like Hyaline’s comment way above. It’s not just the pandemic, and it’s not being unfair to say generations are developing into adults with different (and fewer) competencies than previous generations.

  119. PlainJane*

    Hmm. Part of this may be that during the pandemic, there was a general feeling that the new conditions were going to rewrite the rules of the workplace. They thought that, rather than being slow to onboard and requiring extra training, they were going to be the leading edge of a work revolution that would change the very way work was understood. It may have come as a bit of a shock when other people decided to push back on what they saw as unequivocal advances. Why would you insist on office time, when they’d proven that remote was fine? What difference did it make to arrive at 8am, if you did better work at 2am and then slept until 10? Generationally speaking, I’m X and being in public service, I knew I wouldn’t see any changes (desks must be staffed fo the public), but I was interested in the idea of radical changes to work culture, so I was definitely following this, and admit to being a little disappointed on the pushback myself (again, despite the fact that neither the revolution nor the counter-revolution affected me!). It’s hard to go from “You’re about to change the world forever!” to “You need special training just to catch up with everyone else.”

    They were also raised in an environment where the idea of “putting yourself first” was an article of faith. Not in the narcissistic sense, but in the concept that, if you are mildly uncomfortable, it must be addressed and corrected immediately. They need to adjust to a world where people are often uncomfortable, but I’m not surprised that it’s taking a while.

  120. Maple*

    I’m Gen X and worked in an office where I was the youngest, so my coworkers were Boomers. I was raised by Greatest/Silent Generation so like many of my peers I know with older parents, we “stuck it to the man” in our younger years by job hopping and what have you, but once we got “real” jobs we sucked it up and mostly did what were told.

    COVID happened, and all the about-to-retire folks fled early. The new batch we hired was…fascinating. The one straight out of college was a disaster. The older ones (Millennials, I guess) really wanted to mold the job to their preferences vs. shutting up and learning the ropes before having an opinion. I’m not a big authoritarian, but I also think it’s a handy survival skill to learn to read the room before you complain.

    Since the work style basically skipped a generation or two, the transition was *harsh*! A couple of other people who were left from the old guard and I didn’t know how to express “can you just shut up and do your job?” in a way that wasn’t as rude as that, but still got the results we wanted. I even got told to F off by one of them when I tried to convey our office’s particular work standards that had stood for decades. Hey, I get it, we did need to modernize, but telling the olds to F off was mostly about them personally and their precious feelings* and not about doing the work efficiently.

    *I adore precious feelings, just not at work, if I can help it. Don’t cross the streams!

  121. nnn*

    I appreciate the nuance of Alison’s scripts here. A simple and upfront “This is what it is, you can proceed accordingly” without veering into “You’re bad and wrong”

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