Sal, a New York-based compensation specialist who declined to provide his full name for privacy reasons, believes his generation is facing new hurdles in the workplace such as rising mental health concerns, and stagnant wage increases in the face of inflating living costs.
Despite these challenges, Sal, 24, said he is still expected to conform to an outdated working structure, putting in long hours without the payoff older generations had. “We’re graduating with a high amount of debt [from university] and then working a job that is burning us out, and it’s not even paying for this debt,” he said. “A lot of people my age are job hopping because they’re burnt out or cannot find longevity in their roles.”
Sal’s first year in his current role led him to seek therapy because the workload seemed to be a “constant queue” and he felt perpetually anxious despite “being in a spot that is better than most people in my generation”. He was diagnosed with a general anxiety disorder.
Sal’s great grandfather had stormed the beaches at D Day, fought across Europe, gone home, got a job a wife and kids by that age.
General anxiety, eh?
Grow a pair, manbaby.
His work is an endless queue? We used to call that job security.
He does know that when the queue is finished he’s going to be laid off?
Some people fret. Maybe Great-Grandpa fretted too. I refer you to my Principle of the Conservation of Fretting.
I used to fret about whether I’d ever be able to bowl an off-break that would turn from a good length. So I tried leg-breaks but they all came out as top-spinners. So I tried a medium pace leg-cutter and it worked a treat. Keep at it, laddie.
“Compensation Specialist”. So, someone who decides what the people who actually do stuff should be paid?
He’s right to be worried!
He should try identifying bad decisions he has made and resolve not to repeat them. Number One would be going into debt and spending a significant percentage of his life on ‘gaining’ a worthless credential.
“a New York-based compensation specialist”
Well done. You’re doing an information job from the most expensive place in the USA. Unless people are, for some reason paying more because it’s New York, that means paying higher rents for similar earnings. You’ll be richer doing the same job in Georgia or Utah.
Like I say to people… there is no longer any value to being a software developer in London unless you’re working in high-speed trading for the city. Outside of that, salaries are barely higher than Swindon, but with massive rents.
“Despite these challenges, Sal, 24, said he is still expected to conform to an outdated working structure, putting in long hours without the payoff older generations had. “We’re graduating with a high amount of debt [from university] and then working a job that is burning us out, and it’s not even paying for this debt,” he said. “A lot of people my age are job hopping because they’re burnt out or cannot find longevity in their roles.”
A big reason we got a payoff is that those jobs used to require a lot more thought. And we replaced a lot of that with software. Like bank branch managers used to decide what loans to give. Now, it’s centralised credit scoring software. This is the same with retail branches. A lot more is controlled by head office.
Also, almost no-one I worked with in my early days of Nationwide had a degree. The senior mortgage specialists (which was quite high ranking) joined with good A levels or even GCSEs.
“This traditional work culture is disillusioning gen Z as 94% of the generation are prioritizing work-life balance over climbing the corporate ladder, according to research by Deloitte.”
Work IS life. Whether that’s welding a ship or making up baby bottles. Going to the movies and sitting on a beach are what you do when you’ve done enough work and need a break.
The problem is that a lot of people have got it into their heads that bumming around is what should be most of life. They expect to visit a whole lot of old buildings around the world, or to see the fish at the Great Barrier Reef rather than going to the aquarium down in Weymouth.
No one is a specialist at anything at 24.
To be fair to Sal re your comparison to D-Day, Sal’s chances of still being a virgin at 24, never mind being married and kidded, are vastly higher than back then, unless he is 6’6″ and 24 year-old “compensation specialists” make six figures.
People like Sal are just saying the things they do, and behaving how they do because they have realised that its socially advantageous to do so. And in countries like the UK with employee protection legislation, financially advantageous to do so as well. They are just responding to incentives. Todays incentive is to claim victimhood which gets you special privileges. Remove those, and you’ll get less people claiming to be victims.
Back in the ‘50’s and 60’s (and later), it was common for people to have a second job -moonlighting- driving a cab or something. I recall an article from the 90’s discussing how people needed 3-jobs – the primary job, a second job at night, plus a 3rd job on weekends – to make ends meet (and for some families, 5 with the spouse working).
Back when I was in my 20’s, there were stories about how we would be the first generation worse off than our parents. Then, 20 years later came the same stories. Now those stories are coming again.
Every generation says the same thing. Woe is me, I can’t make ends meet.
Back in the 50s and 60s it was also common for people with full-time jobs to educate themselves at night school, which is how my father became a metallurgical engineer. This was before takeaway lattes had been invented.
I think he’s got a good point:
believes his generation is facing new hurdles in the workplace such as rising mental health concerns
Mental illnesses are epidemic now. When suicide prevention services for *children* are oversubscribed, we’ve got a real problem.
The tranny thing is one of the most disturbing mental health crises, but it’s far from being the only one. Our society is generating anxiety and other mental pathologies at a rate it didn’t in 1944. People still having unstable identities in their 20’s and later is seriously bad for them.
In 1944 people had normal worries, such as not being killed in the war. Other than that, society was healthy. People knew who their neighbours were, had much stronger family ties than generally exist now, and weren’t forced to watch – in silent horror, lest you be jailed – as their nation was being abolished in real time. They didn’t feel like foreigners in a horrible foreign land when they popped into the city. And most importantly, in the old days there was a sense that we were part of a society that had your back. They had a reasonable degree of trust in institutions, because those institutions didn’t want us dead and broke, our kids raped and brainwashed, and think it funny. You were not only allowed to be patriotic, to have a genuine love for your own country, it was encouraged. Not constantly mocked, slandered and attacked by insane liars who try to convince you that we have no history and no identity, except that of racism and evil.
All gone now.
Modern life in Western countries might as well have been designed to make people go nuts. Much of social life has been killed off and replaced with technologically mediated parasocial relationships on the internet. Younger people are feeling atomised, adrift, and hopeless. Work used to be a source of pride and identity for men, but that’s a mug’s game in today’s globalised economy where your employer is constantly trying to think of ways to replace you with cheaper Indians or AI.
Britain needs a doctor.
*TARDIS NOISES*
I mean a white doctor.
*DELOREAN NOISES*
*DELOREAN NOISES*
That gets you a Brown doctor. 😉
Weirdly, I used to know an American doctor. Gynecologist he was. Brown too (what is called “Black” over there). And he drove a DeLorean…..
‘who declined to provide his full name for privacy reasons’
Was it really necessary for me to have to read all that? I was fine with ‘Sal.’
Jgh – Great Scott!
Tim – the design of that car was incredible, to me it still looks like The Future.
Brushed steel and fingerprints…..also, the actual underlying car was not so incredible. Basically a Renault.
Tim – the Chieftain tank was reputedly very useful, if it broke down in the right location.
Early 80’s UK and European car manufacturing had a similar vibe, but John DeLorean did it in style.
Still the best car ever built in NornIron.
B-i_L used to have an Alpine Renault, went like stink!
Divvent diss Renault. The crappy little R4 van I had in Geordieland took all my kit, went like stink and could get through almost any snowdrift. Many’s the time I went out in it rescuing friends who’d got stuck, and I never missed a gig in it.
Er, then a wheel fell off on account of the rust. Ah well.
@ Steve
The problem with the (yoof of the) West is that they are too well off. Back in my father’s time (born late 40s), people still worried about starving so didn’t have time to wonder whether they were born in the wrong body or any of the other worries they have now.
AS – The problem with the (yoof of the) West is that they are too well off.
It really isn’t. For one thing, they’re poorer than their parents or grandparents were. One of the fun side effects of replacement migration is that a generation of British people has effectively been priced out of realistically being able to afford a house until they’re well past prime childmaking age. Also, they’ve been completely fucked over on pensions. They do have a lot more electronic gadgets and other toys, amusements and consumables than prior generations – shite consolation.
But more importantly, the problem isn’t caused by wealth so poverty won’t cure it.
Maslow’s hierarchy is deceptive. He puts “love and belonging” in the middle of the pyramid, because he’s ranking needs that motivate human behaviour. But it’s not a hierarchy of sanity.
For people to be sane and whole, they absolutely need love and belonging. Psychologically, it’s more important than most “safety needs” (such as financial security, safety nets, even health). People can be happy and dirt poor or even terminally ill, but you will never see someone who is happy who is not loved or accepted.
So, the deprecation of authentic, organic community – family, neighbourhood, nation, church – undermines the stable identity humans need to thrive. People need to feel like they belong to something bigger than themselves. We are social animals, after all. Running the same firmware as our noble Neanderthal ancestors who lived in tribes.
And, the destruction of relationships and the death of love – you’ve probably seen the shocking statistics about how many young people don’t have sex because they can’t get a girlfriend. Which in turn feeds into the frighteningly low birth rate. Or they have the opposite problem – plenty of sex, but it’s all sterile and ultimately masturbatory fucking because they’re unable to pair bond or can’t find the confidence required by non-chavs to deliberately bring a baby into this world. There doesn’t seem to be a “dating scene” anymore, they have Tinder instead. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of love around, we have Love Island instead.
Young people in general aren’t pathetic, spoiled snowflakes. They’re our children and they need our help.
“It really isn’t. For one thing, they’re poorer than their parents or grandparents were. One of the fun side effects of replacement migration is that a generation of British people has effectively been priced out of realistically being able to afford a house until they’re well past prime childmaking age. ”
In terms of home ownership this is true, in terms of being in a house, which is warm, comfortable, nice food, etc they’re richer.
“And, the destruction of relationships and the death of love – you’ve probably seen the shocking statistics about how many young people don’t have sex because they can’t get a girlfriend. Which in turn feeds into the frighteningly low birth rate. Or they have the opposite problem – plenty of sex, but it’s all sterile and ultimately masturbatory fucking because they’re unable to pair bond or can’t find the confidence required by non-chavs to deliberately bring a baby into this world. There doesn’t seem to be a “dating scene” anymore, they have Tinder instead. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of love around, we have Love Island instead.”
Dating is colossally fucked up by how much women care about being acceptable to other women, and that elite women who come from money can afford to have a fancy career and children are saying “have a career”, encouraged by the sort of alcoholic narcissist women that work in media, and school teachers who have zero investment in the outcome.
Elite women used to be about being wives of rich men with a load of kids. And the primary goal of women was to bag a husband. Old Disney fairytales are early training for little girls: be kind, clean the house, be fun, don’t get fat and a man will put you in a nice house.
Women went to work until husband/children. Very few thought “career” It was what you did after school and until then. So they didn’t invest a load of time and money in trying to get there. Leave school, maybe do a secretarial course for a few months, then into work. Focus on getting Mr Right. So finding the guy to settle down with early.
Now we have this bullshit of “career” women doing a uni course, then going to work but actually very few of them really care about the job. They’re nearly all 9 to 5ers. So that investment doesn’t pay off.
And we’ve also massively inflated the size of the wasteful public sector, stuffed full of women. The sort of thing that neighbours used to do, or churches becomes state, and done badly. With women being paid and their husbands being taxed to pay for it. Instead of women looking after grandad, they now work in a public sector job, which is barely worth doing, paying for childcare, and their husband is taxed up the arse to bring in immigrants to do care work. It all makes GDP look great, too, because a woman working is +GDP and hiring someone to do childcare is +GDP and buying a car they now need is +GDP. They might be just as well off looking after the kids but that gets measured as zero GDP.
“Young people in general aren’t pathetic, spoiled snowflakes. They’re our children and they need our help.”
But a lot of parents don’t. Lots of them encourage their kids to go to uni, without even spending 5 minutes googling “how much do photography graduates earn”. I tried to explain to some parents I know that photography was mostly a waste of time and money. Do it as a hobby. Sell photos for beer money. If you’re really good and lucky, someone will pick you up. No-one at Vogue cares if you have a degree or not. Mario Testino has a degree in economics. Helmut Newton was taking photographs at the age of 16.
Ah… Good old John Z. DeLorean… “The man who gave a whole new meaning to de-coking an engine”. 🙂
30 years of television shows based around “normal” families living in mansions, two-doctor parents, college funds . . .
Sorry, kiddies. While life can be hard, it was just as hard or worse for your parents. We didn’t all grow up with the Huxtables, or even the Cleavers.
Gamecock grew up without color TV, computers (though his dad had the first IBM 704), cell phones, microwave ovens, electronic ICE ignition, cable TV, satellite weather, internet, etc.
My generation created them. You’re welcome.
TBF, National Geographic Magazine was still good.