To find managing gen z a massive headache

[Managinggenzoclock]

I’m a millennial and I manage a team of people. Some of them are gen z. It may be individual personalities but these are the things winding me up.. please excuse this rant. Is it just me? I manage people from late teens to early 60s. The younger group are by far the hardest work.

• Very interested in career progression and pay (not a bad thing but see below)
• at the same time not being willing to ever (I’m not talking often) work more hours or support a colleague
• not willing to recognise that anyone knows more than them, even those with decades more experience
• resisting hierarchical management structures
• making lots of mistakes (including repeated over and over) but not have the humility of inexperience/ youth which would make this much less annoying
• trying to patronisingly ‘educate’ people on contentious issues in inappropriate ways.

I think maybe I’m being too nice.

Sick of people barely out of school thinking they know it all. In my day, we knew our place and stfu when around older, wiser and more experienced colleagues.

But lots of older colleagues aren't wiser, that's the point.

I’ve just discovered I am a Cusper, Xennial, Echo Boomer and Digital Native.

So that’s totally going on the CV tomorrow.

Boomers are hard ass - they're strong and they work damn hard. They're also inflexible and insensitive.

Hard ass? Despite the stories they didn’t live through the war. And a lot of the men retired in their 50s… and a lot of the women never worked full time. They would love you to believe that though.

Totally agree with not adhering to a long working hours culture. However, when you have spent time on your personal emails, on line shopping watched a bit of netflix and done your social media in work time - then I do expect you to pay that time back and finish your work - which was incidentally all doable in your working hours. And yes I did go home earlier than you and finished my work in the allotted hours I am paid for......

Please dont tell me about recycling - I was recycling before your grandmother gave birth to your mother - brought up in Germany....

And yes I do believe that you can be confused about your sexuality but a set of plastic procedures and artificial hormones does not make you female -so please dont try and tell me about your PMT which is physiologically impossible for you to have etc etc.

And yes there were gay men and women in my youth - I think it is fantastic that this is not hidden and criminalised. However, that does not mean I have never had gay friends....

And yes I will tell you if you have made a mistake nd expect you to learn and correct your error. I am not harassing you I am trying to educate you for next time.

Don't get me started

By hard ass I meant emotionally resilient. This is a positive and a negative - they don't let much get to them but that's because they don't recognise it as a problem/issue. And you forget many of their parents and teachers were allowed to beat them.

Don't get me wrong they can be selfish and money hoovers, but not much gets to them emotionally so they can hold an even keel.

Also as with everyone they are individual. My parents are boomers and they are both still working in their 60s. They both grew up in poverty - stealing food and sharing a room with 4 siblings.

Not every boomer was living the high life, like not every gen X was abandoned, not every millennial is entitled and not every Gen Z is faking their MH issues.

I also want to point out that for those born after 1988 or so, every year of their adult/working life has been spent living under recession, austerity, the Tories, Brexit, Coronavirus, more recession etc… with astronomical house prices and crumbling public services.

We’ve never had a prosperous year, or even a relatively stable one. It doesn’t surprise me a lot of them think ‘fuck it’, working hard doesnt ‘pay’ like it used to.

No but they had it better than any other generation. 75% of them have retired mortgage free. How many subsequent generations will this apply to?

I have milliennial children and then the youngest who are over 10 years younger and are gen z. I think they are all pretty hard workers. One difference is the older 3 were only at the start of the internet whereas it was all pervasive for the younger 2. I think all of mine are quite resilient and hard working however and 4 are lawyers/trainee lawyers so that is a hierarchical career where genuinely you know very little at 23 and a vast lot more at 30 and even more at 40 as you do get better with practice so I don't think any new trainee lawyer would ever go around suggesting they knew more than experienced partners in their 50s so I suspect in this type of professional field the issues are not the same as in others and hopefully the survival of the fittest will mean weak newly hired people will crumble and leave and the best and toughest will remain as ever and as has been back to the beginning of time.

I don’t think they’re emotionally hard, I think proud and stubborn fits the bill more.

@Cuppasoupmonster maybe do, but you can't say they're entirely bad and horrible. They're all still people. Yes we later generations have been dunked into the shit but that doesn't mean their lives were easy. Many had very damaged parents due to the wars etc.

75% of them have retired mortgage free. How many subsequent generations will this apply to?

Everyone who’s paid off their mortgage before they retire - which will always be most home owners.

How many people in their 30s own homes compared to when the boomers were in their 30s?

Im Gen X

Millennials were annoying but these Gen Z kids
Are something else

I don’t think their lives were easy at all, but they had the enormous fortune of living in the most prosperous times this country has ever seen and have enjoyed enormous gains in their property without having to really do anything. Their retirement age is much lower, pensions are better, and good decisions went much further.

This is the joke, we do get shift allowances - night, Saturday, Sunday and Bank Holiday pay

We're NHS, have solid terms and conditions and we're entitled to all sorts.

Getting into the NHS admin means staff discounts, Blue Light cards a solid pension and relatively stable working conditions.

How many people in their 30s with boomer parents will have substantial inheritances by the time they retire?

Love this post. I mention earlier I'm HR. To say I'm glad my gender critical beliefs are protected is an understatement.

I'm gen z mid 20's female and work as a PM in the utility sector, I find the older generations especially the 50+ ladies to be incompetent at their roles and infuriating in their communicative manner. The ladies we have in our office are mostly admin, turn up late, don't do their job properly like sharepoint administration, make derogatory comments such as the fact I am a carer and we had a new Project support join the team early 40's who spoke about how she was part time due to caring for a terminal sibling and an admin turned to us and said 'not another one' and rolled her eyes. They expect everyone to agree with everything they say all the time because they are 'older and therefore wiser' which often isn't true and refuse to take any kind of feedback or support team members without urging them to do so. They have refused to engage with any male team members or younger female or other team members which has made the environment hostile to work in. I even found when getting a promotion to join a new internal team recently that one lady went out of her way to tell people at work that I 'had left and wasn't coming back' and other incorrect information then denied it to my face?

I don't even know what all the generations are

I’m a millennial and I’ve paid my mortgage off smug face

I also work beyond my working hours and can’t say no. Oh well. Can’t have it all

@Cuppasoupmonster many also had the massive negative of living in a time when women weren't meant to be equal, being LGBT was illegal and being an unmarried couple was frowned upon, when teen pregnancy meant your babies were taken away, they had no internet...

Yes they have benefited in many ways but they also dealt with horror in many ways too.

God, how do I, a millennial, recognise this and you don't?

Yes I have to say that the idea of uber competent hard-ass Boomers has not been my workplace experience. My experience of many of them has been bullying bosses, but then also people who hate change, plead 'I'm not good with technology' when processes are digitised, have tantrums about their performance being measured and work incredibly slowly and painfully in what should be a fast-paced environment. Obviously Not All Boomers, but sadly this has been my experience. All the senior managers in my workplace right now are Gen X and they are great. I'm a Xennial and so a lot of stereotypes of Millennials don't resonate with my experiences. I definitely had my lazy and huffy moments in my early 20s as well.

@JudgeJ if you mean killed in the war then no, they were too young to fight/die in WWII but older than the baby boomers. Falling between those two culturally important generations, and generally ignored/forgotten, hence silent.

From my own work environment I agree with you OP, I’ve literally experienced them wanting the power of being the king/queen with the accountability of a toddler.