![]() They watched as their parents and grandparents worked so hard and got so little. Many of them seem quite hardworking and commonsensical. Gen Zers and millennials, it seems to me, have a clearer grasp of what's going on. ![]() But I realize this only in hindsight: The emperors had no clothes. I shake my head at what my colleagues and I put up with - toxic work environments, management's constant gaslighting and gatekeeping, and the endless hoop jumping that was expected of us. Pensions disappeared, and mass firings became a regular occurrence. They seemed to care only about shareholder value and the bottom line. Those CEOs appeared to view employees not as an asset but a cost. That changed when certain captains of industry came along: Jack Welch of General Electric, then Lou Gerstner at my former employer IBM, and later others. Before that, if you were a good, loyal worker, you were pretty much guaranteed lifetime employment. That's about the time some companies began implementing mass layoffs. at a large state school, I began my career in 1981 as an engineer and scientist in corporate America. The emperors had no clothesĪfter graduating from MIT and getting my Ph.D. ![]() Now that I'm sitting on the sidelines of the workforce, I'm cheering on these younger generations with all my might. There might also be a sense that since we boomers paid our dues, we see Gen Z and millennial workers - particularly the ones forming unions and pushing back against corporate rules - as entitled.įrom my perspective, that couldn't be further from the truth. There might be a misconception that people my age - I'm in my 70s - view remote employees as lazy. Insider has verified his identity and past education and employment. This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with a retired baby boomer who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his privacy. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.
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