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.

I've tried to work out if they are genuinely more entitled or if I've just got old. The uni students I work with make incredible statements about what they should be entitled to and are genuinely outraged if they don't get it. But here's the thing, often they are accommodated. I think when I was at uni I tried it on just as much (asking for extensions, not wanting to turn up to lectures, spending all my cash) but I also just got told no. Often the students now get told yes, and therefore they think it's their right. It's us that's done this, not them.

'Twas ever thus.

Try being HR to them and their boomer management
They are definitely the most anxious, everything triggers them and they get signed off for mental health issues if they've failed to do their job because they didn't listen the first time.
Couple that with management from the workaholic generation who went to work in the deepest snow with one arm cut off and both legs tied

I guess some do need to learn to be a bit more humble and allow themselves to learn from mistakes

I'm gen X and we weren't allowed to make mistakes. If you did, you were sacked.

Hilarious that millennials are now complaining about about the "youth of today".😂 I'm generation X and everything you say about generation z, we said about you.

You did indeed.

Excellent username.

Ha! :)

Then none of you would have had a job.

To quote Mike and the Mechanics

Every generation blames the one before
All of their frustrations come beating on your door

at least I think that's how it goes, I've got brain fog at the mo

Good luck.

Oh how I hate these threads that stereotype people by their age, or any other characteristic! If you had written an intolerant or offensive post about people in their 60s or 70s, MN posters would have jumped on you, quite rightly. But young people are fair game for any mudslinging going. Horrible!

Young people today, eh 😉

Does anyone else who is Gen X feel like we get off lightly?

I rarely see it aimed at us as it is with the other groups

I'm old and I had exactly the same issues with millennials especially young men when they were younger and I remember a particularly challenging batch of graduates who would be in their 40s now (what does that make them?).

IME most don't really start applying themselves until 25, which, coincidentally, is when the brain is finally fully developed

Perhaps it's because Millennials got so sick of working hard and bending over backwards only for other people to get promoted over them because they had "years experience" and had been with the company "forever" but were lazy and absolute arseholes to everyone in the team.

I've seen it happen to others plenty too, not just me. Ambition means fuck all in a lot of places if you aren't in with the clique.

Does anyone else not have a clue who all these people are? Or indeed what they are?

historyhustle.com/2500-years-of-people-complaining-about-the-younger-generation/ this has been the narrative since time began!

“Children; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. They no longer rise when elders enter the room, they contradict their parents and tyrannize their teachers. Children are now tyrants.” Socrates, circa 470BC

“What really distinguishes this generation from those before it is that it’s the first generation in American history to live so well and complain so bitterly about it.”
The Boring Twenties, Washington Post
1993

“We defy anyone who goes about with his eyes open to deny that there is, as never before, an attitude on the part of young folk which is best described as grossly thoughtless, rude, and utterly selfish.”
The Conduct of Young People, Hull Daily Mail
1925

“Whither are the manly vigour and athletic appearance of our forefathers flown? Can these be their legitimate heirs? Surely, no; a race of effeminate, self-admiring, emaciated fribbles can never have descended in a direct line from the heroes of Potiers and Agincourt…”
Letter in Town and Country magazine republished in Paris Fashion: A Cultural History
1771

Who's gen X?
Am I (50)?
No idea tbh...I'd much rather it was "people in their 20s/30s/40s etc" I can work that bit out.

Maybe but I feel like that's because we are quietly getting on with doing the work:) Looking after the anxious young adults and the elders in a pandemic.

I am only half-serious; no need for anyone to yell.

We were young pre-social media, which helped. But there were definitely lots of articles about the slacker generation and how we'd all had our brains fried by watching MTV, which seems very quaint now.

I don't think its age specific but just any staff now who claim to have a mental health condition/ disability that means they cannot take responsibility for anything, are unable to take constructive criticism, are entitled to do little or no work based on their need for adjustments which amount to basically not doing anything they find hard or challenging.

I say 'claim' to have as I am sure there are many people with genuine illness but there are many more for whom this nasal gazing attitude is just too convenient and easier than actually having to do any work.

I would love to know if there was ever a generation that felt the next was better than their own

And the person above your reply wonders why millennials/Gen Z need to take a mental health day after making a mistake. We saw Gen Xers above us getting fucking sacked for it.

That's why "triggers" us so much. That's why we can't afford to sit and be humble about it. The fear has been engrained from watching other people literally losing their jobs because they made mistakes.

Found the Gen Z!

Do we work together, OP?! I manage about 50 people and 90% of those are Gen Z or younger millennials, and despite the protestations on this thread there is such a wide gap in behaviours between the older millennials and those younger. The audacity, the expectation of constant pay rises and promotions without an understanding of how it should be linked to hard work and experience, the toys out of the pram if there each and every whim is not proactively anticipated and indulged. I find it exhausting

Nope

but looks like you’ve outed yourself as a bit of a dummy