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'm firmly within the Generation X demographic and my parents said the same about my generation and no doubt their parents said the same about them.

Silent generation sounds a bit pants after Greatest

Silent as in got on with things without whingeing and moaning?

I am tail end of Gen X and work in a team which is solely composed of Gen X and Gen Z. Works well for us! Don’t recognise my younger colleagues in your descriptions at all. Find them positive, willing to go the extra mile and innovative. Perhaps we just got lucky whilst recruiting but I think my Gen Z colleagues are fantastic. Or maybe it is the affinity between grandparents and grandchildren playing out! We have no millennials at all so just one huge X Z love fest.

All these things aren't Gen Z - they're just people. People are often annoying and inconsiderate, especially if you're responsible for managing them and can't just ignore their little ways -it applies to any generation. It happens that right now many of the early-career/ junior people who need to be managed are Gen Z; but exactly the same was undoubtedly said about all previous generations.

Yes I agree that it is entitled and a bit strange to expect people to make your tea for you and call them a snowflake if they don't. I usually offer if making my own though.

I find moaning about younger generations so boring and predictable. I was reading a book from the 30s and it has the same complaints about young people. Do people not remember what it was like when they were younger? And how older people talked about them?

Even now you get people moaning about “millennials” as just a word for young person when some millennials are 40.

I wondered what would come after Gen Z. Apparently it’s going to be Alpha. I guess we’ll see if that sticks.

I can't keep up with this! It's like the posts on Mumsnet where someone says "so I'm friends with friend let's call her A and then B made friends with A and now I feel like C or maybe even D because there's someone else who counts as C".

But then I'm one of those hated Boomers laughing all the way to the bank with the money I made from house price increases at the same time as our pension funds were wiped out in the crash of 2008 whilst simultaneously worrying myself sick over how my young adult children are going to survive.

Yup.

We raised ourselves, spent the 80s out on our bikes with no one paying attention.

Now we still pretty much do what we like with no one paying attention because everyone is shouting about Boomers and Millenials and Gen Z. Ideal. 😀

I just get shit done.

Oh god, I could have written this post! Everything you've said resonates. I'm in a newish role and this is the first time I have directly line managed a person under 25

Interesting you mention this, I stumbled across a TikTok about Gen X, also (I learned) called the Latch Key generation. It lead to some very interesting reading.

It was form a therapist who says a lot of her clients are Gen Xers dealing with ageing parents and the resentment they feel towards them being expected to care for them when they were largely left to fend for themselves growing up in the 70s and 80s when lots of women were joining the workforce and childcare options were few and far between

Haha Gen X here too. Couldn't agree more with this.

I've managed lots of younger millennials/upper Gen Z. Thoughtful, helpful, hard working, clever and endlessly indulgent of me banging on about my kids and having menopausal brain fog. Only one of them turned out to be a real wrong 'un and even then I could kind of see how it had happened. But then I always go in o it with the attitude that I've hired them, it's my job to get them up to speed and model team behaviour for them. And take the rap when they fuck up, because I'm paid four times as much as they are and if they're getting it wrong I haven't done my job properly.

If you hate the people you manage they will notice and they will perform badly for you. Absolutely basic psychology 101.

I'm Gen X and I know for sure I was a PITA in my first job. It's a culture shock after being a student. My manager hated me and I deliberately underperformed for her!

This poor person has to work 8 hours a day...

All this Gen X, Millennial, Boomer nonsense is just stereotyping disguised as being hip. Treat people as individuals and to hell with their age or their generation. It pisses me off that this kind of bigotry gets the social acceptance it does. You can post about trouble managing a Gen-whatever and the majority of people will just accept it and join the debate but the truth is it's no more reasonable than posting about supposed issues managing a gay person, a woman or a person of colour.

I think the pp who said something about Gen Z being an uncontrolled experiment with social media was spot on. And the pandemic made that worse.

self-admiring, emaciated fribbles is my new favourite insult

It is brilliant! Saving to use on my DC.

It’s not innovation and speaking up though to have a sulk when you are in an entry level role and object to doing things like setting up a room for a meeting. It’s just being entitled and lazy.

@WalkingThroughTreacle I think you are taking this way too seriously! 😄Technology and the historical moment can definitely have an effect on a generation.

My section, which works 24/7/365, are looking for two full time members of staff (multiple shifts) and one part timer (2/3 nights a week).

We are on our knees trying to cover nearly 100 hours a week across the clock

Almost everyone who's enquired after the job, wants to dictate their hours, doesn't want nights and can't understand why the part time job can't be days.

Because a role which helps to cover a 24/7/365 shift pattern means earlies, lates and nights.

It cannot be explained to them. It simply does not compute. We say "No" and they say "What?"

I think every generation of young adults is irritating to the next generation up in its own particular way.
My dad was a teenager in the seventies and he once told me about a row he had at the time with his parents. He apparently told my grandad to “get with it”, grandad grabbed his guitar off him and shouted “Get with this- get a fucking haircut and go get a fucking job!” 🤣

Im a geriatric millineal and have experienced managing boomers, millineals and gen x. People are people. There are good and bad in every generation.

FWIW I think younger millineals and gen z have have a rough ride over covid lockdowns. They've spent the years they should be spreading their wings and getting their independence shut away from the world and it shows. They seem insecure in friendships to me so some seem to be missing a 'tribe'. Many seem to have moved in with partners quite early during lockdowns and their relationships are very intense ( quite insular) from having so much time together.

I certainly feel a different generation to gen z, but equally I recognise that's the age gap rather than a fundamental difference. I'm middle aged and married with children - I've become my (boomer) parents!*

*just not as Rich!

@LydiaBennetsUglyBonnet that should be an easy one though. Team admin is either clearly covered by their job description, in which case you calmly point it out and say you know it's boring but it is in the document they signed when they took on the contract. Or it's not in their JD, in which case someone (not them) has cocked up and you're trying change the terms of their employment on the fly by lumbering them with all the boring stuff (how long would it take you to book the meeting room yourself?)

The Who released My Generation in 1965.

EXACTLY! I always say that there isn't really that much difference between stereotyping people according to where they were born and stereotyping them according to when they were born; yet the former is rightly considered as unacceptable and bigoted, whereas the latter is too often regarded as acceptable.