30 ms·

Gen Z does not dream of labor

• bloqs 5y ago
  The only thing that has changed is that it is normal to declare thoughts that were previously unacceptable, like not wanting to work, the more publically the better. Personalities still vary (big five - conscienciousness), some people live to work, others dont, but the latter just dont shut up about it anymore.
• fideloper 5y ago
  My favorite part of this article are the repeated ads for Upwork I was served. Pairs nicely the content.
  • jesushax 5y ago
    I make most of my money on Upwork but I missed this (ublock)
• 988747 5y ago
  • gunfighthacksaw 5y ago
    I’d just reply with ‘sneed’ but this isn’t Reddit. My more thought out counter would be that every generation since the boomers had this said about them to my knowledge. Even before the concept of ‘western civilization’ existed, you probably had older gens saying this about the youth of the British empire or whatever.
    • etchalon 5y ago
      "They have exalted notions, because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations; moreover, their hopeful disposition makes them think themselves equal to great things - and that means having exalted notions. They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones: Their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning - all their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently. They overdo everything - they love too much, hate too much, and the same with everything else." ~ Aristotle
    • JonathanMerklin 5y ago
      (I love the "sneed" lampshading.) This isn't Reddit indeed but if you want that to change on your browser and to turn your "probably" into an "undoubtedly", this post titled "The more things change, the more they stay the same: A collection of complaints about the youth throughout history" is one of the top posts of all-time on /r/history : https://old.reddit.com/r/history/comments/7btv14/the_more_things_change_the_more_they_stay_the/ https://old.reddit.com/r/history/comments/7btv14/the_more_th...
  • isoprophlex 5y ago
    Dunno man, sounds pretty fucking utopic to me. Sounds like they're the first generation to really get it after Tim Leary's failed experiment with forced consciousness expansion. “I simply want to live my life slowly and lay down in a bed of moss with my lover and enjoy the rest of my existence reading books, creating art, and loving myself and the people in my life.”
    • sodality2 5y ago
      It's important to remember it's only a utopia if it lasts. “Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.” I do not mean to quote this to insinuate we should put the youth through hell (I'm one of them!)... But I still believe this quote holds weight. Most high school classes these days are filled with kids scrolling social media the whole day. Is that utopic?
      • Forgeties79 5y ago
        Kids always waste their time in high school. The tools just change. You can’t possibly tell me you and your cohort were on average more focused than the current generation. That’s basically just teenagers for you lol
  • zaik 5y ago
    Like every generation before them.
  • _mhr_ 5y ago
    And the Boomers had hippy subculture. Was everyone a hippy? Plato complained about young people in his time too. For reference, I'm part of Gen Z, and no one I know doesn't want to work. It's just that everyone wants meaningful work. This article is ridiculous and unfairly generalizing.
    • giantg2 5y ago
      I'm a millennial and feel the same way. I'm just coasting at work after they've screwed me over a few times. I don't think any other company would actually be better. The work I do is meaningless.
    • robonerd 5y ago
      > Plato complained about young people in his time too. Athenian society was in decline during Plato's lifetime, falling out of the 5th century golden age. His observations were likely lucid.
      • _mhr_ 5y ago
        Fair enough. I was thinking of Plato's recounting of Socrates complaining about the proliferation of writing reducing young people's ability to remember things.
      • Forgeties79 5y ago
        He’s literally just griping about kids being kids in it
    • Forgeties79 5y ago
      It’s like no one remembers the decade of articles blaming millennials for all of our societal woes, calling us the “me me me“ generation. We see this over and over again every generation. “The new generation is clearly what’s wrong with the country, somebody do something about them.”
  • zozbot234 5y ago
    Ok boomer
  • 533474 5y ago
    Yea right...
• snvzz 5y ago
• civilized 5y ago
  "What $GENERATIONAL_MARKETING_SEGMENT thinks" > Presented by UPWORK
• lemoncookiechip 5y ago
  Yes, lets paint a whole generation of people with wide brush strokes.
  • criddell 5y ago
    Should we never talk about trends within a population?
    • robonerd 5y ago
      Stay focused on the individual, don't organize to acquire political power. That sort of thing is only for your betters. /s
    • azemetre 5y ago
      Is it actually a trend or is the media pushing another narrative that likely applies to 2% of the targeted population? Reminds me of this essay by Paul Graham: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
  • derevaunseraun 5y ago
    Wouldn't expect anything more out of vox tbh
• bluedays 5y ago
  It is interesting how I relate more with Gen Z than millennials.
  • gunfighthacksaw 5y ago
    As a 92 baby I feel like a cusper. Cynical, jaded and ironic like Gen Y and X but I’ve grown up on/in the internet and the accelerated mass culture in which we live. Honestly in high school I felt like an oddball but I think I’d be normal if not cool as a zoomer since I was there at the beginning of most of the memes.
    • novok 5y ago
      I think a lot of millennial nerds grew up with the internet that a lot of their peers did not in many ways, but with gen Z grew up with the internet wether they liked it or not. We are the pioneers that created a lot of this cultural landscape. So millennial nerds feel closer to gen z in this way than other millennials do. We also developed a cultural immune system to a lot of the bad shit of the internet, like “don’t feed the trolls” and now seeing the rest of the world learn this immune system badly and slowly makes us say ‘oh no’.
      • Mezzie 5y ago
        It's bizarre to watch, as a Millennial who got unrestricted internet access in 1993. I definitely have my 'oh no' moments. It does make me wonder what our social responsibility is here. As kids on the internet, most of our adults could be forgiven for not knowing what was going on, since they didn't understand the internet. We can see the trainwrecks coming, at least. Should we do something?
• causality0 5y ago
  It's a bit of a perfect storm. You have the rampant wealth inequality and abusive practices that came from decoupling worker productivity from worker compensation beginning in the 1970s with demography. 2022 is average year of retirement for the baby boomers, the largest generation. For at least the next two or three decades labor is only going to get more expensive.
  • bequanna 5y ago
    Labor will only get more expensive if: 1. We are too restrictive on immigration 2. Politicians keep pushing to hand out freebies for votes. Stealing the gift of purpose and motivation from many. Forcing them to be state dependents who live troubled, meaningless lower middle class lives in perpetuity.
    • causality0 5y ago
      We would need a radical change on immigration to make a difference. Net migration from Mexico has been negative for years now. We should make those reforms but we aren't going to.
  • hakfoo 5y ago
    It's harder to maintain the illusion of possible upward mobility. Let's look at a typical scenario. You graduate from university with 100k in student loans. Let's say you get a fairly decently paid entry-level job paying 75k. Great, you might be able to pay down those loans in 10 years, if not more. And when you're finally ready to buy a house, the ones that haven't been converted to rentals are all costing 8 or 10 times your annual salary. So you're asking someone at 21 to hope that everything works out and they might get the American Dream in their late 30s. Assuming there's no intervening major crises. Sure, there might be ways to slightly goose things, but they turn into terrible-quality-of-life stuff like "work 3 jobs", "live on rice and beans forever", or "constantly job-hop to seek out a higher salary." If these are your alternatives, maybe it doesn't seem so absurd to embrace stagnation. I'm in my early 40s. I did everything "right" -- I got a full-ride to university, studied CS, and acquired 15 years experience. I work for a mid-sized fintech firm and draw just over 100k. It's full remote since long before Covid, I generally work about 40-42 hours a week, and the technology is both interesting and feels actually important. I still don't feel like buying a new house is affordable on my budget. (Here's where you say "I should have been job-hopping every two years and making 400k at a FAANG by now/chasing an exit at some kale-as-a-service startup"). My parents were able to buy a house in 1988 for about 4x their annual salary, where the "salary" came from a modest skilled-trade worker. If I were to buy a comparable house in the same basic middle-class suburb, I'm looking at 6x my salary. I'm lucky in that I can live with them, pay down their mortgage, and be able to live reasonably well. But I sure as hell don't feel light years better off than my parents were at 40.
• burlesona 5y ago
  > “My dad got a job straight out of high school, saved up, and bought a house in his 20s,” said Anne Dakota, a 21-year-old receptionist from Asheville, North Carolina, who earns minimum wage. “I don’t even think that’s possible for me, at least with the current money I make.” I think this is pretty much the whole story. It’s very hard to be motivated to work when you could save your entire adult life and still struggle be able to afford such “entry level” things as a house or even a new car. People are willing to save and/or hustle for 5-10 years to get material rewards, but beyond that it feels pointless. Why be miserable grinding for two decades just so you can get one hand on the ladder? Instead people look for ways to have a life they find interesting or satisfying now.
  • vasco 5y ago
    There's also a bit of over romanticism regarding being depressed and everything being shit which I think throws boomers a curve ball. They see the existential dread response to lack of prospects and think people are like this because they don't have avocado toasts, when the only way out is to breadth first search for Google. If you don't want that, I don't know what your prospects are nowadays coming out of university. I don't envy the kids that had covid high-school or university either, that must've been a terrible experience.
    • MisterBastahrd 5y ago
      The average house sold in 1946 cost $5.25K. The median salary at the time was $3K. The average house sold today costs $374K. The median salary is $51K. You can argue that those houses that were sold back then were smaller, but they were also made of vastly better materials than modern home construction, and it's not like people even have the opportunity of buying those smaller homes unless they want to live in a slum.
      • kitten_mittens_ 5y ago
        I agree with the sentiment, but what was the median house price v. the average?
• derevaunseraun 5y ago
  This article just sounds like stereotyping to me It sounds like the author is just projecting their own values onto the upcoming generation, viz "Gen Z cares about X" when really the author just cherry picks stuff that reaffirms his/her values I refuse to buy into any of this "Gen Z thinks X" or "Millennials think X" BS. The armchair sociologists should go out and actually contribute something worthwhile to society as opposed to shitting out newspaper articles like this
  • ghayes 5y ago
    > Naturally, this has major consequences for social attitudes about work — and the viability of performing labor in times of crisis. What sets zoomers apart, according to common narratives, is their determination to be fulfilled and defined by other aspects of life. They expect employers to recognize that and promote policies and benefits that encourage work-life balance. At first, I thought this paragraph was a direct quote, as it definitely shows the author willing to make fairly strong claims on her own account. I feel the norm here is for the author to be neutral and use quotes and data to express the point.
    • derevaunseraun 5y ago
      > I feel the norm here is for the author to be neutral and use quotes and data to express the point. I think if we're bullshitting ourselves about (all) news media we can say it's neutral. But really it's just a bunch of assumptions. The appeal of news articles is like a reverse Occam's Razor: the more assumptions the better But at least the author is a little honest and says "according to common narratives" aka "I'm bullshitting"
  • JaimeThompson 5y ago
    >actually contribute something worthwhile to society Such as? We expect them to get buy on little money, no insurance in a lot of cases while they have to deal with the rude public, random scheduling changes, and being treated like trash by their managers.
  • droopyEyelids 5y ago
• coffeefirst 5y ago
  I don’t see how this is significantly different than ever prior counterculture disillusioned with the culture and economic expectations they inherited. The only thing they need is a new style of music to go with it.
  • Barrin92 5y ago
    because the counterculture of old actually had a "counter" part often with significant impact and organization. In Japan in 68 and 69 students shut down much of the university system for over a year[1]. And even though eventually dying down these movements had lasting impact on culture. It's where green political movements were born, sexual rights for women were gained, and so on. Gen Z 'counterculture' doesn't have a music genre because it doesn't need one. it's not pushing back or claiming anything, it's just nihilism with memes. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968%E2%80%931969_Japanese_university_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968%E2%80%931969_Japanese_uni...
    • seoaeu 5y ago
      “This generation’s counterculture isn’t like past generations’ counter culture” has to be one of the funniest takes I’ve seen on all of this. You’re right! But surely the same could be said of most prior countercultures as well
  • marssaxman 5y ago
    In the nineties, people said the same things about Gen X; "slacker" was the term.
• falcolas 5y ago
  Um, stupid question… Who TF “dreams” of being some billionare’s “labor”? Folks “labor” out of a lack of choice; so they might survive in this world. They labor for the chance to dream.
  • lilsoso 5y ago
    People routinely comment on this site about how they enjoy engineering and challenging problems, and how they dislike jobs with meetings, or not enough work, or fluff. Those people, perhaps without realizing it, often enjoy 'being some billionare’s labor'.
    • falcolas 5y ago
      I get what you're saying, but TFA isn't really referring to highly skilled labor. It's referring to filling the jobs that very, very few people actually want to do. The garbage collectors. The wait staff. Toll booth operators. Assembly line workers. Taxi drivers. Construction laborers. Truck loading/unloading. Ditch diggers. And so on. And even those with the coveted skills - they'd probably rather work for themselves than someone else. But either they don't have the business skills, or the financial means. That said, sure, speaking in absolutes is absolutely wrong. ;)
    • cuteboy19 5y ago
      Much of the discourse around antiwork is bait and switch. What applies to manual labor intensive jobs does not apply to engineering jobs.
  • bombcar 5y ago
    There was a time in this very country where factory jobs were quite aspirational, that people would move across the country to Detroit for a chance to make Mr Ford a bit richer. Because it promised a good life for their family; and they'd end up having pride in the work they did.
    • falcolas 5y ago
      To phrase this slightly differently, you might say they dreamed of a good life for their family; working for Mr. Ford was the best way for an uneducated father to do so. Is this a dream of labor? IMO, no. The work was the vehicle to their dreams, not the dream itself. Perhaps this is too fine a delineation, but that's my view of it. Of course, such a job - a job an uneducated man or woman can be the "breadwinner" for their family with - barely exists today. My own father made $40 an hour as a lineman for Mountain Bell (plus a pension), back in the 80's. That exact same job today pays minimum wage, with no retirement benefits.
• giantg2 5y ago
  I don't really identify with my job. Unfortunately, I don't have enough free time or free money to do the things I enjoy. So I that leaves me without a strong identity.
• endisneigh 5y ago
  Curious how all of the issues are resolved. If workers (as they should imo) get paid more, it will result in more inflation, resulting in their purchasing power on key things like housing effectively not changing as inflation adjusts the cost of housing to be more expensive. I'm also curious to see if companies run by Gen Z pay better or worse than Boomer run companies. If they're not I don't see how the situation will change for the next generations.
  • frankbreetz 5y ago
    The answer is to build more housing, it is simple supply and demand
    • endisneigh 5y ago
      Housing is not free to build, though. I agree in general that more housing should be built, but it's not some sort of silver bullet.
      • JonathanMerklin 5y ago
        It's usually seen as immoral to bring up in this context, but if you can't increase the denominator, you can try to decrease the numerator.
      • robertlagrant 5y ago
        It's fairly cheap to build if you're allowed to build, though. The issue is all the paperwork.
    • jm__87 5y ago
      Or just continue raising interest rates. At least where I live, the majority of the excess demand during the pandemic came from investors. It was easy to leverage up and buy more houses using home equity loans while interest rates were low and home prices were appreciating rapidly. Higher interest rates should in theory pop all of these asset bubbles we're seeing.
  • 5y ago
• PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > “I don’t have goals. I don’t have ambition. I only want to be attractive.” This apathetic declaration is the start of a TikTok rant that went viral for its blatant message: to reject hard work and indulge in leisure. It’s weird to see these opinions presented as a new phenomenon. Wanting to avoid work and indulge in leisure is a tale as old as time. It’s even a common theme among characters in ancient writings. What is new is the way people with these feelings can go online and connect with millions of other people who want to talk about these feelings as if they were the real truth about life. How everyone else is wrong if they don’t see it. Many of these forums become de facto “safe spaces” where rules explicitly forbid anything other than supporting and agreeing with these perspectives. It was easy to dismiss these as fringe movements when it was incels writing unhinged rants blaming women for all of their personal problems, but for some reason the media is trying to treat the “antiwork” style rants as something deeper. Of course, this falls apart when the content and actors are examined in any remotely critical manner, as famously happened when the antiwork moderator gave a disastrous direct TV interview without the carefully crafted veneer of journalistic thinkpieces obscuring the sheer absurdity of the echo chamber they’ve built for themselves. I grew up just barely before internet access and social media were ubiquitous. There was no shortage of people eschewing work and embracing lives of leisure right out of high school or college. I knew a large number of people who embraced “couch surfing” lifestyles or international vagabonding as their way of life. As far as I can tell, the difference was that by the time they reached mid 20s they were quickly running out of peers who would tell them it was a good idea to embrace such a lifestyle forever. The real world catches up and you notice that your real-world friends who work normal jobs and “settle down” are actually having a good time (on average) while the vagabonding lifestyle gets progressively less glamorous as you get older. Not so much in the social media era, where a new set of friends and confirmatory feedback is always just a few clicks away on your phone. Want to read posts about how it’s actually someone else’s fault that you’re not successful? No problem, the internet will deliver volumes of such content.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • civilized 5y ago
    A great trick to make an old pattern sound like news is to present an age-related phenomenon as a generation-related phenomenon. "Teenagers are acting like teenagers" can't be spun as news, but "Gen Z is acting like teenagers" can be.
• franczesko 5y ago
  Whether we want it or not, they our successors. Gen X was also written off at some point... I'm rather optimistic about the future - with or without labor
• deathanatos 5y ago
  > “I simply want to live my life slowly and lay down in a bed of moss with my lover and enjoy the rest of my existence reading books, creating art, and loving myself and the people in my life.” … and our article author thinks what, that Gen Z invented this? That generations before Gen Z "dream of labor"? Dreaming of labor is called a nightmare. I work to make ends meet.
  • derevaunseraun 5y ago
    > Dreaming of labor is called a nightmare. I work to make ends meet. I don't know... I think it's possible to think about work not as a zero-sum game but as an opportunity to grow and promote growth. But at the same time this is kind of a white collar mindset... it's hard to sell people on growth when the work is more demeaning
    • deathanatos 5y ago
      It might be, but it requires the cooperation of employers. And IME, that's not there. Flat or negative real-wage growth, no eye for long-term retention and employee growth, and uninspired work. It feels like if you want to get ahead, you're forced to jump jobs every so many years, as there isn't going to be an opportunity for that in one's current job.
    • dale_glass 5y ago
      In many jobs there's no growth to be had. Sure, here on HN, the average person is a programmer or sysadmin, and there you very much can have growth. Learning new languages and technologies, getting to work with high end equipment, etc. But exactly what growth can an Amazon warehouse worker expect? Your job is to take things and put them in a box. There's no advanced techniques, no special knowledge, no skill to be obtained besides learning to perform the same movements better than you did your first week, and which are useful nowhere else.
• immigrantheart 5y ago
  How they gonna pay the bills?
  • Forgeties79 5y ago
    That’s exactly what they’re asking but for different reasons.
    • immigrantheart 5y ago
      Sorry, could you elaborate? I'm not sure why I got downvoted, I genuinely curious how they are going to pay the bills.
      • Forgeties79 5y ago
        I think before I elaborate too much I have to ask you a question: do you genuinely believe that most of Gen Z is actually refusing to work/is against the entire concept of working for pay?
        • immigrantheart 5y ago
          No, I don't believe that.
          • Forgeties79 5y ago
            Ok good to know that sort of makes this easier to respond to. So they’re not “rebelling against work” and the article as a whole is just so reductionist. What most are doing is questioning 1) what we find acceptable in a work environment and 2) what we find acceptable to pay people for a day of their labor. If you’re Gen Z, unlike middle to older millennials, chances are you weren’t raised with the “bootstraps” narrative quite as baked into things because their parents weren’t all able to pay for college with summer jobs or a house with an entry level job. They also are part of the first generation that is questioning if college is worth it. Left and right, up and down, all they see are closing doors and lack of financial mobility. So what’s the logical response to seeing a system that doesn’t seem like they can work within it? A call for change. “No, I won’t work for $7.25. No, I don’t want six figure debt to get a degree and maybe have a job. No, I can’t do what I love for pay because no one respects it since it isn’t STEM.” The list goes on.
• dotnet00 5y ago
  Looks like it's armchair sociology day on HN
• Jerred 5y ago
  As a Gen Z it's not that our entire generation is lazy it's that we've seen our parents give their entire lives to a company or industry just counting down the years to retirement. That personally is my worst case scenario for my career. Sure some people my age just want to be famous and not do any hard work, but I'd say the majority just don't want to be a "good employee" for 40 years just increasing the number every quarter for shareholders. There was another article on here the other day about how half of Gen Z wants to start their own business and I think that's more accurate. Or at least give that a shot before giving in to working for someone else all their life. It just seems archaic now to give half of your waking life to a company. Most of us would gladly give even more time just to start something that we get all of the profits from and therefore have more control over the whole of our lives. And I'm not talking about starting a billion dollar tech company, just something to pay the bills and save a little.
  • ushakov 5y ago
    i think the problem is that these folks browse social media too much and reject the reality the reality is that not everyone of them will end up rich, beautiful and famous... in fact only a tiny tiny minority will
    • hackerfromthefu 5y ago
      Hard agree, it's like a diet of pure sugar - it corrupts the body or in this case the minds expectations.
  • ghusto 5y ago
    If all of this is true, then I am with you guys. Don't give up your _one and only_ life to make someone else richer. Given the stories I've heard, and things I've myself seen, I'm not convinced it is true — not for _most_ millennials. I do hope I'm wrong though.
  • throwaway-m3232 5y ago
  • 5y ago
• literallyWTF 5y ago
  No one dreams of labor. The people who “dream” of labor dream of other people performing labor and getting rich off that. Shit article.
  • rvz 5y ago
    You should be unsurprised by the level of nonsense from such articles published by Vox these days.
• temp8964 5y ago
  Losing manufacturing jobs have many deep effects on the western societies which have not been fully revealed yet. There are comments here questioning has anybody ever dream of labor? LoL.
• vmception 5y ago
  I’m so glad everyone is finally laying off of the millenials We did it guys!
  • filmgirlcw 5y ago
    Finally! And we didn’t even kill work this time!
• immigrantheart 5y ago
  As an immigrant, no matter how many times the story about problems of work and wealth inequality and similar theme being brought up, I could never sympathize with it. I think I was raised in the time and place where working just doesn't ever get the luxuries of life. For example, working as a plumber and can afford 2 1/2 kids, a house and a car, that is always impossible. At least in my country. I think America is an anomaly for that such of things to happen. I kept wondering whether that was because America itself is outsourcing their inequalities to outside world, because they won the war. So to me, today's situation is just a reversion to the norm. Being a mere plumber with 2 1/2 kids in college and with a house and a car is never realistic to begin with. This type of situation was just a good times event, and only happen due to some abnormalities. But it is abnormality. I mean, the history of the world has shown that feudalism is the default choice. People can never be equal. People aren't born equal. Some people are born stronger, faster, smarter, more beautiful, etc. Equality seems to be just abnormalities. An unstable form. The stable form is feudalism.
  • blt 5y ago
    We will never make progress if everybody adopts this defeatist attitude.
    • immigrantheart 5y ago
      Is there a solution to the great force of market dynamics?
      • blt 5y ago
        Whether or not there is, my statement is true.
        • immigrantheart 5y ago
          Well, it needs to be grounded in reality.
  • 1270018080 5y ago
• kzrdude 5y ago
  Who names & defines the generations? And why do we need the names? :)
• CommieBobDole 5y ago
  I'm old enough to realize that this is an eternal thing; journalist notices that young people are doing something and immediately writes an article about this new unique thing that young people are doing now that young people have surely not ever done before. Generally speaking, most people would prefer not to work if they could get away with it. Especially young people. Careerism among young people has always been an anomaly; it's always been common for younger people to have the dream of being an artist or a famous-for-being-famous celebrity or some sort of woodland hermit spending their days frolicking in a leafy glade. Some of them succeed, but most of them eventually give up and get a job and/or a career eventually when they get tired of sleeping on other people's couches and never having any money. The whole 'Generation' thing honestly seems a little arbitrary to me. I get that there are broad cohorts of people who are similarly affected by large societal trends and have something in common, but 90% of writing I see about generations and their attitudes or opinions is really just "young people be like this and old people be like that" filtered through an absolute blindness to anything that happened more than half a decade ago.
• ghusto 5y ago
  I'm torn on this. On the one hand, I'm tempted to say; life's hard, it's always been hard, and you're only feeling vindicated now because the Internet makes it easy to connect with other people who share or support your views — so grow up. On the other hand, I'm down with the sentiment 100%. Live to live. I get that, and I support it. Why work towards a career if the structure that supports that career has only been put there because it benefits people who are already at the top? Drop out and live your life on your own terms. I guess the middle ground would be: Be ambitious, have goals, have aspirations, but only when they support your happiness and the happiness of those around you. In other words; live life on your own terms, but make those terms less shallow. I think this is different to just living for yourself, for one important reason; it is more likely to benefit society, and therefore _you_ in the long run.
• nineplay 5y ago
  "Heading out to Eden, hey brother Heading out to Eden, hey brother Gonna live like a king off whatever I find Gonna eat all the fruit and throw away the rind" - Star Trek, "The Way to Eden" Every generation thinks they invented sex and every generation thinks they invented utopias. They'll outgrow it.
• shahbaby 5y ago
  What dreams can you have from labor that doesn't even provide enough to own a home? Less to gain => less invested.
• droobles 5y ago
  Tech is an exception to the rule, I've told friends it's tech or die tongue in cheek. Most of my friends aren't in tech, and all of them are convinced they will never own a home or get ahead in life, and so find it unwise to start a family, so might as well live it up now as there is no social safety net and most of them don't have employer insurance. A lot of jobs will hire hourly and cap the worker at 34-39 hours as well to avoid providing benefits.
  • kupopuffs 5y ago
    Where you do live? in the US 30 hours is the minimum. I hope they know their local law
    • droobles 5y ago
      Late reply, but I live in Missouri. Many of these places could likely be reported but I'm not sure the information is widely spread enough and if it is they still fear losing their main source of income to fight it.
• f0e4c2f7 5y ago
  The spirit described in the article while now misdirected is potentially incredibly powerful. The slight perspective change needed is not a rejection of success, but a rejection of the conventional notion of success. https://www.businessinsider.com/learn-excel-tiktok-miss-excel-six-figures-how-i-started-2022-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/learn-excel-tiktok-miss-exce...
• tough 5y ago
  Labor for thee, Capital for me
• spamizbad 5y ago
  I think there are several things driving this, not necessarily generational: Many employers (not the tech industry) enjoyed a weak labor market for roughly 2 decades. And each time when things began to heat up a recession would come by and cool things down - flooding the market with newly unemployed qualified candidates. This sustained discrepancy caused many employers "people management" skills to atrophy. Treating employees badly was OK because 1) Where else are they going to go? 2) Even if they quit you can just hire someone else who is likely just as qualified. Because of this, anti-social behavior among management never seemed to impact the bottom line, so it became embedded into the culture of these businesses - "That's how we've always done things here!" Things changed sharply in 2020. You had the pressure of Baby Boomers retiring. And unlike other generations, many Boomers actually saved for retirement; employers did not have the power to retain them. Second, COVID pulled a ton of people out of the workforce for several reasons: needing to provide childcare, death, "long COVID", etc all pulled people permanently or semi-permanently out of the labor pool. At the same time, consumer spending shifted placing additional demand on many industries that were now shorthanded (and short-supplied). The problem is many of these companies do not have the ability to attract and retain employees. On your local news you might've heard a sob story of a local employer having to cut hours or close-up shop because they "can't find anyone wiling to work" - but if you dig a little deeper you'll find they have a reputation in the community for being a bad employer. People do want to work - just not for them. And because there's no longer a cushion of qualified labor that has to settle for their anti-social work environment, they can't hire anyone to operate their business due to their poor reputation among the local workforce. If you're young, your first step into the labor market is likely going to be one where you're asked to pull double-duty by an organization that, again, has a poor reputation. Their first experience in the workforce isn't at some friendly company, but rather a hostile employer who drove experienced labor away, forcing them to "settle" for someone with no work history. Thus giving these young workers probably the worst (modern) experience possible of what it means to be in the workforce. Thus the aggressive job-hopping - it's not a candidate problem it's a company problem. So how does this get fixed? Well, if the labor market stays hot long enough, many of the anti-social companies will just get out-competed by ones able to attract and retain skilled labor. In this situation the rising tide will NOT being lifting all boats.
  • 5y ago
• frontman1988 5y ago
  American boomers grew up in lot of privilege after winning world war 2. Now is a different time where the world is more competitive. A lot of jobs in manufacturing have gone to China, in the services sector to India. Dancing off on Tiktok and working at Starbucks won't give you a comfortable life like your parents had. So better start grinding those leetcode questions like the rest of the world does. American hegemony is all but over.
• ozzythecat 5y ago
  > American workers across various ages, industries, and income brackets have experienced heightened levels of fatigue, burnout, and general dissatisfaction toward their jobs since the pandemic’s start. The difference is, more young people are airing these indignations and jaded attitudes on the internet, often to viral acclaim. I left Amazon after a 10+ year career. I was encouraged to hire foreign nationals from specific countries, because their visa situation makes it harder for them to leave Amazon without having to leave the country. When my own people were being let go for no reason at all, I was told not to interfere. I was directly mentored on disconnecting myself from individuals in my organization, because it would help me do what’s “right for Amazon”. I sat in an off site with various leaders from the broader company. American workers just won’t work as hard, I was told. We need to expand our engineering pool to other markets, to cut costs and because those people have a lower standard of living and will work harder. I am quoting multiple Amazon L10s. Those 10 years, I was miserable. I cut off from my family. My friends eventually stopped calling. I became more and more isolated. I put on excess body weight. My mental health suffered. To be clear, I’m immensely privileged and left Amazon with a boatload of money and assets. In retrospect, I was part of a machine that exploited people. That’s where my money came from. Gen Z needs to realize that being smart about this and simply “dreaming” isn’t enough. My former Amazon bosses are ready to replace Americans with workers on the global market. They have no empathy, and they openly view it as a weakness. It is LITERALLY a rat race.
  • shahbaby 5y ago
    If anyone is still thinking of joining Amazon, take a close look at your team. If you're the only local at your level and not willing to grind as hard as the Visa holders then you're probably being setup as the sacrificial goat for the PIP gods. In that situation it's not worth joining since within a year you'll probably need to start interviewing again.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • s5300 5y ago
    > My former Amazon bosses are ready to replace Americans with workers on the global market. They have no empathy, and they openly view it as a weakness. It is LITERALLY a rat race. >> have no empathy, and they openly view it as a weakness. You should hire a 3rd world troll farm to stalk these people everywhere they go urging them to kill themselves. Only way to repent for your sins. Edit: >> On the issue of empathy, I think this quote from Captain G. M. Gilbert at the Nuremberg trials sums it up; "In my work with the defendants (at the Nuremberg Trails 1945-1949) I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.” << So yes, the world is likely better off with them dead :)
• deleted 5y ago
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• nonrandomstring 5y ago
  I think these young people are being cynically manipulated. Who benefits if the youth eschew active living? Who gains if they exchange self-worth for the selfie-stick, and a life of preening vanity? Social media feeds on this disenchantment. Sure, if you resent exploitation and wabt to "go Galt" don't learn programming so that you can slave for soulless big-tech, go and learn programming so you can burn it to the ground. Or go and work for a charity, volunteer to start putting the world right at the most basic human level. Do anything but what feeds the vampire machine that grows strong from your disaffection.
• hamiltonians 5y ago
  someone for the past week made $100k with elon verifed twitter crypto scam. way better than any salaried job. just do that for a job. side hustles are better than jobs. Unless you work for google, jobs have low pay and too many restrictions and requiremnets. crypto, amazon, shopify mean more opportunities and control.
• oh_my_goodness 5y ago
  It's absurd to label a whole generation this way.
• notacoward 5y ago
  “For millennials and for some members of Gen Z, they’ve witnessed two recessions, back-to-back. This is a very different labor market experience than what their parents and grandparents encountered.” I don't for a moment deny that kids entering the workforce today are entering an environment that's challenging in many ways, but this particular claim is inaccurate. Let's take a look at the list of US recessions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_United_States#Great_Depression_onward https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_Unit... We're not in a recession now (though that could change very soon). The most recent recessions are 2020 (COVID) and 2007-2009. Just over ten years in between. Turns out that's the longest recession-free interval in the nation's history. Back to back, my ass. I graduated from high school just before the 1981-82 recession, but I was fully in the workforce for the next four - every six to ten years. By the author's reasoning, that would mean I had it far harder than today's kids. Recessions are not the problem. (They're a problem, but not relevant to OP.) The problem is wage inequality, and stagnation of wages for the lower echelons even during good times. Today's kids are not facing economic uncertainty because of a few events, but because of a continual downward slide in the value of low-end wages vs. low-end expenses over decades.
  • jm__87 5y ago
    I agree with your last point on growing wealth inequality and lack of upward mobility, but I would say the global financial crisis and pandemic are notable because of the severity and consequences of each event. I don't blame gen Z and millenials (of which I am one) for wondering what global catastrophe is lurking around the next corner and changing their behavior in anticipation of it.
• danielsokil 5y ago
  I've been thinking a bit about this problem lately, And one thought is we could have a different structure for organizations, where everyone participating (employed) automatically becomes part of the company as a shareholder. However, it's not clear yet how many shares should a person hold? Can we relate the value a person brings to the amount of shares? This structure could motivate people to be part of a company, as the company grows, the value of your shares increases. Let's say that model does work, I'm going to guess it won't be that beneficial to most. The majority will probably sell at any opportunity they get, and a small percentage will continue to hold as the company becomes more valuable.
  • ushakov 5y ago
    i've been on exactly same thought for a long time now the effect you get by offering ownership is that existing personell will be more motivated to work harder and stay at your company for longer (so that the shares can vest) this still won't solve the problems described in the article however
• syngrog66 5y ago
  prediction: growing percentage of young Americans first "home" purchase will in fact be a car purchase. more and more will buy a vehicle they can live in because home prices have boosted drastically, even rents are up, and with renting you throw cash away you could otherwise save towards buying a home thus, a generation who expects and plans to live in cars at least those not born with a silver spoon in their mouth or who otherwise can get high paying jobs. which describes the vast majority of American youth
• rubyist5eva 5y ago
  we are doomed
• mmastrac 5y ago
  I saw a tweet that found this same statement, spaced approx 20 years apart, about the kids of the day. I wish I could recall where I saw it.
• stjohnswarts 5y ago
  I think the celebs on tiktok have a vast megaphone for like 1% of gen-z. I'm not the worried. If they become a little less consumerist/capitalistic I would say that's great. I don't see any decrease in people going to school or trying for jobs though, so I am unconcerned and recommend that you also be less consumed.
• honkycat 5y ago
  The contract is broken. There is just no hope for the future. Living on the streets can feel like a better option. Everyone is getting hired on as a contractor and getting shitty health insurance and getting treated like dirt. Everything is too expensive. College enrollment is dropping down the toilet in a time we cannot hire enough public defenders to run our courts. Hospitals are closing due to lack of doctors. Health costs will bankrupt you. Rent is INSANE. .2% of the US population is homeless. Meanwhile the conservatives are whipped into a frenzy over the same "cancel culture" BS the party has been propagandizing for decades. The 1% are killing the earth and stealing everything you produce and laughing while you bleed in the streets. But yeah, lets obsess over a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the populations sexual preferences. The oligarch class of this country would rather let the whole thing burn than compromise ANY of their privilege.
• jsiaajdsdaa 5y ago
  I am 30 years old. I graduated with a degree in history. I taught myself how to program, got married to a programmer as well, and now we live in a very desirable area. My suggestion to anyone who does not dream of labor: if you don't want nice things, that is fine. Nobody is stopping you from living in a low cost of living area that may or may not have its issues. But if you desire things in life, there should not be a mechanism that magically redistributes these things to you, or makes them available to you at a "fair" price. No, the only "fair" thing is that you work for the money needed to purchase what you want, and you have the freedom to choose both what you do for work and what you want.
• EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 5y ago
  Frankly, I also dreamt of a life of not working 40 years ago when I started up ... just there was no tiktok to express my desires). I suspect most people would not work given the possibility. And it doesn't come from work per se, but from hierarchy, compulsion and humiliation that comes with most jobs.
• lakomen 5y ago
  Who actually dreams of labor, seriously. When you're young you don't dream of working for the man. You want to do your own thing live life.
• JohnClark1337 5y ago
• pyuser583 5y ago
  “Labor” usually means unions, not jobs.
• smokey_circles 5y ago
  Old grumpy person upset some young people don't value work as much as they do