Gen Z and a New Relationship to Work

“In the long term, it is likely that the workplace will diversify and, in turn, settle into four or five different buckets on a continuum from traditional and non-traditional, with less representation at the extremes.”

In “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” Joan Didion, reporting on late 1960s San Francisco hippie culture, wrote:

“Anybody who thinks this is all about drugs has his head in a bag. It’s a social movement, quintessentially romantic, the kind that recurs in times of real social crisis. The themes are always the same. A return to innocence. The invocation of an earlier authority and control. The mysteries of the blood. An itch for the transcendental, for purification. Right there you’ve got the ways that romanticism historically ends up in trouble, lends itself to authoritarianism.”

Attitudes toward work were similarly shifting. The free love, psychedelic-driven “tune in, turn on, and drop out” credo was a reaction to Cold War-era conformism and overt repression (such as McCarthyism). People were questioning the status quo in ways we would arguably not see again until the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the political upheavals with which it coincided. Combined with widespread teleconferencing, the pandemic proved that virtual work was at least ready for beta testing, if not prime time. However, as with distance learning and telemedicine, we are still determining where it works and where it falls short.

There is serious doubt today surrounding the notion that education and hard work will lead to financial success; people graduating with undergraduate and graduate degrees find themselves uncertain about how to make a living. They are often also in chronic debt. The FIRE movement (Financial Independence, Retire Early) reflects an effort to wise up and free oneself from the shackles of the past. While some may hear this as “old wine in new bottles,” complaining that each generation finds its own names for the same old thing, others believe that fundamental changes are afoot.