The 37-Year-Olds Are Afraid of the 23-Year-Olds Who Work for Them
As a millennial with a habit of lurking on TikTok, Jessica Fain understood that skinny jeans and side parts were on the steady march toward extinction. But when Fain, who works as a product manager at a large tech company, heard that some of her favorite emojis might also be confronting retirement — namely that laughing-sobbing face — she decided to seek the counsel of her junior colleagues.
“I heard that using this emoji isn’t cool anymore,” Fain, 34, said she wrote in a water-cooler-type Slack channel.
“Yeah I only use that emoji at work for professionalism,” she recalled a younger employee replying. “H8 2 break it to 2 u Jess.”
Fain is old enough to remember when millennials determined what was in vogue: rompers, rose pink, craft beer, Netflix and chill. Now, she gets the foreboding sense from colleagues that her AARP card awaits. Subtly yet undeniably, as generational shifts tend to go, there’s a new crop of employees determining the norms and styles of the workplace. And they have no qualms about questioning not just emoji use but all the antiquated ways of their slightly older managers, from their views on politics in the office to their very obsession with work.
“I feel very sure that I’m uncool,” said Andy Dunn, 42, who co-founded the upscale apparel brand Bonobos, once the uniform for a subset of millennial men. “I’ve come to accept that.”
It’s a fault line that crisscrosses industries and issues. At a retail business based in New York, managers were distressed to encounter young employees who wanted paid time off when coping with anxiety or period cramps. At a supplement company, a Gen Z worker questioned why she would be expected to clock in for a standard eight-hour day when she might get through her to-do list by the afternoon. At a biotech venture, entry-level staff members delegated tasks to the founder.
And spanning sectors and startups, the youngest members of the workforce have demanded what they see as a long overdue shift away from corporate neutrality toward a more open expression of values, whether through executives displaying their pronouns on Slack or putting out statements in support of the protests for Black Lives Matter.
“These younger generations are cracking the code and they’re like, ‘Hey guys turns out we don’t have to do it like these old people tell us we have to do it,’” said Colin Guinn, 41, co-founder of the robotics company Hangar Technology. “‘We can actually do whatever we want and be just as successful.’ And us old people are like, ‘What is going on?’”
Twenty-somethings rolling their eyes at the habits of their elders is a trend as old as Xerox, Kodak and classic rock, but many employers said there’s a new boldness in the way Gen Z dictates taste. And some members of Gen Z, defined as the 72 million people born between 1997 and 2012, or simply as anyone too young to remember Sept. 11, are quick to affirm this characterization.
Ziad Ahmed, 22, founder and CEO of the Gen Z marketing company JUV Consulting, which has lent its expertise to brands like JanSport, recalled speaking at a conference where a Gen Z woman, an entry-level employee, told him she didn’t feel that her employer’s marketing fully reflected her progressive values.
“What is your advice for our company?” the young woman asked.
“Make you a vice president,” Ahmed told her. “Rather than an intern.”
Gen Z doesn’t hesitate
Starting in the mid-aughts, the movement of millennials from college into the workplace prompted a flurry of advice columns about hiring members of the headstrong generation. “These young people tell you what time their yoga class is,” warned a “60 Minutes” segment in 2007 called “The ‘Millennials’ Are Coming.”
Over time, those millennials became managers, and workplaces were reshaped in their image. There were #ThankGodIt’sMonday signs affixed to WeWork walls. There was the once-heralded rise of the SheEO.
Millennials point out that for a generation of workers who entered the office during and after the 2008 financial crisis, and felt lucky to land any type of work, it’s unsurprising to see a premium placed on “hustling.” Gen Zers, meanwhile, are starting their careers at a new moment of crisis — in the midst of a pandemic that has upended the hours, places and ways we’re able to work. A fall 2021 survey of Gen Z job candidates from recruitment software company RippleMatch found that more than two-thirds wanted jobs that will indefinitely stay remote.
The generational frictions are now particularly apparent in companies run by and catering to a largely millennial demographic.
Gabe Kennedy, 30, founder of the herbal supplement brand Plant People, noticed as he recruited Gen Z employees that some had no interest in the rigid work habits that felt natural to his mostly millennial 10-person team. He and his co-founder were accustomed to spending late nights in the office obsessing over customer feedback and sharing Chinese takeout. His youngest employees preferred to set their own hours.
Kennedy interviewed a Gen Z candidate for a full-time position who asked if she could stop working for the day once she’d accomplished the tasks she’d set out to do. He responded that her role was expected to be a nine-to-five.
“Older generations were much more used to punching the clock,” Kennedy mused. “It was, ‘I climb the ladder and get my pension and gold watch.’ Then for millennials it was, ‘There’s still an office but I can play Ping-Pong and drink nitro coffee.’ For the next generation it’s, ‘Holy cow I can make a living by posting on social media when I want and how I want.’”
Ali Kriegsman, 30, co-founder of the retail technology business Bulletin, wasn’t sure, in the past, how to respond when her Gen Z employees insisted on taking days off for menstrual cramps or mental health: “Hey I woke up and I’m not in a good place mentally,” went the typical text message. “I’m not going to come in today.” Instinctively Kriegsman wanted to applaud their efforts to prioritize well-being — but she also knew their paid time off could undercut business.
“As an entrepreneur, I want to call out of managing my team sometimes because my period is making me super hormonal,” she said. “But I’m in a position where I have to push through.”
Managers, like Kriegsman, understand the instinct Gen Zers have to protect their health, to seek some divide between work and life — but some are baffled by the candid way in which those desires are expressed. They’re unaccustomed, in other words, to the defiance of workplace hierarchy.
Lola Priego, 31, CEO of the lab-testing startup Base, had to laugh when a Gen Z employee sent a Slack message assigning her a task to complete. Priego interpreted this as a welcome signal that her 15-person staff doesn’t find her intimidating, but another member of upper-level management was horrified.
Polly Rodriguez, 34, CEO of the sexual wellness business Unbound, said: “When I was entering the workforce I would not have delegated to my boss. Gen Z doesn’t hesitate to do that.”
