Gen Z seems to be refusing to swallow the bullshit the rest of us grew up having fed to us. A shame I'll be close to aging out by the time they get much political power.
The Bullshit from decades ago was easier to swallow because at least people had a chance to make money and have a decent job while also paying a bit less for things like food, shelter or some luxuries.
Now people have no choice ... they get paid less, they have no security and they have to pay more for food and shelter.
People were always aware of the bullshit ... in the past we could put up with it because we could afford it ... now people can't.
Cost benefit analysis. I'm Gen-X and we had to deal with both Silent Gen "company loyalty" and Boomer toxic bullshit, but that was fine because we got a lot out of it and we were able tondo our own shit. In other words, a positive cost benefit analysis. Greed tilted that until it is now not worth it. Its funny how some people love capitalism until the system demands that they adjust. Sorry corpos, if you want a resource, you have to pay fair market value.
I agree with the article. Gen Z are more open to sharing their life with the world. I wouldn't say early generations just swallowed the bullshit. They just didn't have a platform to express it to the masses. In the 70s or 80s if you got fired, maybe you reacted the same way, demanding a reason and expressing your frustration. But the only people who witnessed that, were the ones in the room and later on your buddies when you told them the story.
Started with Gen X, which is why the baby boomers retiring is creating such a desperate demographic crisis. Nobody wants to buy into such an obviously corrupt system, which has rewarded every consecutive generation with less and less compensation despite the abundantly obvious massive advances in productivity. People are realizing that most of their work is not at all about generating value, but instead is all about occupying their time and energy in an apparent attempt to reduce competition.
2030 is my guess because roughly half of the kids from the 60s will be mid 60s then and retire or be unable to keep on hustling because of age while all support systems will get into absolute overload.
"I have, like, really given my whole energy and life over the last four months to this job, and to be let go for no reason is like a huge slap in the face from a company that I really wanted to believe in,"
First mistake was giving your whole life. Second mistake was believing in a company.
Having survived a layoff like the one they mentioned - people getting random 15 minute meetings, suddenly seeing their accounts decommissioned, etc. - it definitely sucks, and knowing they'll lay me off like that means I have no reason to have loyalty
I think most people make this mistake when first entering the workforce though, right? I know I did. Now, I get called pessimistic and cynical. But, I've got three decades of experience at various levels of company. With all that experience, I'd prefer to call myself a realist.
Recruiters aren't blind to it either, at least for more senior roles. They stopped talking about the "family" that they are, and how much more "fun" it is to work there. They also stopped asking me why I chose this company, and instead ask me why I chose this role, because they know I don't give a shit about the company. They cut straight to "here is the pay and benefits, we give extra for this that and that". It should be like that for all levels, from junior to director.
Millennial / Gen X cusp here. I feel like this really started with my generation. Many people no longer look for a job, they look for a job that allows them to make the world a slightly better place. Many of us have had that drilled into our heads from childhood.
Companies know this, so that’s what they sell when they’re hiring. And when you combine that with the cognitive bias for people wanting to do good through their work, this is the result.
This is effectively the only tool we will ever have against them, and we should use it before too much of the labor force is converted and automated, and the remaining employed shut up out of fear.
A company like Microsoft worth 3 trillion dollars (with a T), who spends billions to acquire another business in a strategic move, should not be allowed to dump the burden on the thousands of people they let go afterwards, just so the books look good.
They pull billions out of the company in profit, and then claim the company is broke and needs to distribute some losses socially. It's completely insane that we just allow this to happen in mass. I'm lucky I can choose my companies and I don't touch the big big corporations so it doesn't affect me, but we need to do something collectively fast.
I worked for them in a division that was very customer facing. We got told over and over things we needed to improve the experience weren't in the budget. I always vaguely waved my hands in the air with a "look at the piles of money" face.
I worked at Disney+ in IT for 5 years, they gave me a yearly incentive to stay with them, bonuses, and my 5 years of service pin... and then laid me off a month later.
As a millennial, I honestly have a lot of respect for Gen Z. I feel like they are slowly but surely figuring out how to stick it to the man and generate awareness of how the big corporations are slimy scum and don't see employees as "People". Go Gen Z!
Honestly they've been incredible. They've been politically active since they were teens and they care more about work/life balance than any other generation before (anecdotally). They've been dealt a shit hand but I'm rooting for them.
I was thinking about this just yesterday. After watching Frankie's cultural observation on boomers, where he says that "boomers are the first generation in history that wanted to do better than their children", I asked myself what have us millennials done. I settled on this, we broke the generational cycle of abuse and bullying of our kids. The boomers parents, while the "greatest" generation, were raised by an even stricter generation of parents who believed in things like not picking up a crying baby, and probably resulted in Boomer parents that, thanks to WW2, were also an untreated PTSD generation. Alcoholism was just dad's being dad's and pre ww2 moms stayed home to keep home and hearth with a little help from the snuff tin. Several generations of war torn parents ignorant of how to deal with what they went through, raising more kids for the next war. From the civil war to Vietnam, every generation had a war or two on their plate. Then our small communities were randomly spread out into suburban experiments to support the industrial revolution. Now no one knows their neighbor, they just go to work. Then the millennials were sent to war. We had heard the stories growing up about how great our nations fighting forces were. Now it was our turn. We had the most righteous of reasons to fight. But this time, when looking to the boomers to lead us, we found a bunch of disfunctional brats. Their maturity was a ruse. They didn't know any better than we did on how to deal with this world. Their parents won the great war, setup the economy, spanked them, never hugged them, and then handed them the keys to the company and retired to Florida. So the bratty boomers without a clue bullied their kids out the door and into the world. There we stood, 18 and primed to take it on. But there was nothing left to take. Then the bubble they blew popped and we shipped out to Afghanistan, and then Iraq, and even after 20 years we still had nothing to show for it. No house, no good paying job, no health care, and a degree with the weight of never ending debt chained to it. The boomers are and always have been, brats. You see them out there on their Harley's brrrraaaaatttting around. So when we started having kids, we said no. No we're not going to beat our kids, no we're not going to shame them for who they love, no we're not going to "be a man" and shut up about our war trauma. But the brats still had all the power. They refused to let go of their toy. So we put ourselves to work on trying to fix the only thing we had the power to fix, ourselves. We started normalizing therapy, researching drug and alcohol addiction. We dug into the data. We acted like adults, we admitted we have a problem and we did the rigorous and SCIENTIFIC work of finding the solutions. We broke the cycle. We've really earnestly tried to raise thoughtful, honest about themselves, proud adults who ask why. We didn't ignore them, we answered them honestly, we admitted there's a problem. But we don't have enough time to set it right in our life time. The brats won't let go. We need Gen Z to carry the torch forward. Question everything, do the hard work, admit when you were wrong, be willing to change your mind when new data is discovered. I'm proud of these kids. I want them to do better than us. We got your back kid.
I asked myself what have us millennials done. I settled on this, we broke the generational cycle of abuse and bullying of our kids.
Dont mean to 'burst your bubble', but as a Gen-Xer who took allot of abuse from my Boomer parents, and ended up a 'latch key kid' to boot, I made sure to not pass that on to my Millennial children. At all. So that trend was happening allot earlier than you think.
Also, 'wall of text' is tough to read. Paragraphs are our friends. :)
I'm surprised some are defending the CloudFlare HR rep. How is it "confrontational" to ask questions? At that point, all I would care about is unemployment and setting the record straight.
I don't care what the source is, if there's a Gen [insert whatever] or Millennials might be to blame for [insert whatever] I'm already at a -10 on the trust meter right out the gate.
I didn't try my first avocado toast until like a year ago and lemme tell ya. Seeing as how eating it somehow went back in time and made me unable to afford a house, I expected it to be a lot more magical.
I see it plenty without the media stoking it. Here on Lemmy, etc.
It's the same dumb tribalism as always, often backed up by some real data or trends (that tend to get twisted)
No, not every "boomer" is spoiled and ruining America, and 75% of the people you call boomers aren't even boomers. Not every Gen Z is lazy and entitled and scrolling phones all day. Etc.
the way they alienate gen z as being "conditioned" to like social feedback on ticktok is really denigrating to me. As if every other generation was not conditioned to believe certain social taboos, mores and practices. Same old "young kids don't know shit" rhetoric. Which viewers at home will just ingest w/o any sort of critical thought process.
Also how quickly they can invent 'trends' we should be fearful of simply because some middle-aged reporter watched a couple similar videos online. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go eat some tide pods before my scheduled game of knockout.
Influencer or not, however, those who stream videos of themselves being fired from their job risk facing repercussions, such as violating severance agreements, the BBC reported. Job termination videos can also backfire on those who post them if viewers find the post vindictive or unprofessional.
"Generally speaking, such moves are a double-edged sword. The literature on whistleblowers, a more extreme form of publicly sharing bad practices, shows that people get stigmatized for doing so," Ben Voyer, an ESCP Business School professor who founded the Gen Z Observatory, told Business Insider in a recent article.
"Generally, society doesn't reward people that engage in behaviors that some may see as a betrayal. Pushing such content online is a way to get moral support on the one hand, and a little revenge on the other hand," he said.
If you're confused about who to blame, remember that one side debates on whether they should purchase a mega yacht, or have a more reasonable "support" yacht trailing the main one for their helicopter/staff.
Company loyalty when you are getting fired is something really weird. What would it even be based on? I understand parting on good terms etc, but loyalty? There wouldn't be any space for loyalty in such a situation even in feudal contracts.
I’m still partial to dragging them into the street since it worked quite well a century but this is a good step towards lighting that powder keg.
What exactly worked quite well? The USSR and other "socialist" countries worked well only for those outside their territory, acting as some kind of counterbalance, I'll admit that.
What was inside was an even more extreme form of what you call "corporate overlords", because there wasn't even an illusion of choice, your path changing employers would be similar to transferring between places in a military, the new employer would see every shitty thing the previous one decided to write about you, and they wouldn't care what you have to say about that generally.
I was watching Wendover's billionaire social calendar last night. They have ships whose sole purpose is to transport their yachts from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean so they don't have to deal with actual transoceanic sailing. Like they literally load the yacht onto the ship like a big cargo rig.
I've been hearing about how older generations always hate younger generations all my life. How I must be destined to grow in to some crochety old man by 40.
I gotta say these kids seem like they're headed in a pretty good direction, they're funny, they're not taking shit, frankly it seems like it's going pretty well.
Yeah dude. I'm Xilenial, was told how I would grow up and be just like them. No, really, becoming old is a choice. My younger brothers are full on MAGA and hate-filled. They look and act older than I do by a long shot. I work with teams of Gen Z students and stay young by being around them.
You can age without becoming old. Some people chose to be old, and those types tend to hate younger folks and also hated the older people when they were younger themselves.
They are also not fundamentally brain damaged by years of the inhalation of lead and then being irradiated by one of the worse nuclear disasters of all time.
As an older GenX I thank the Millenials for that. Generation Z seems to love their consumerism a little too much but at least they seem to know who's screwing them and its not the poor folk.
I quit Lowe's a few months ago and they mistakenly gave me an exit interview. Not only did I put my grievances in writing, but I was adamant that the "HR" person typed what I was saying verbatim.
There's no point in those interviews unless you say what needs to be said.
P.s. Chris, you were the worst manager I’ve ever had. You’re a terrible human. That’s why the entire department left and got hired at another company… the one I went to. The entire department, Chris. I made that happen.
I'm of the opposite opinion. Exit interviews are just a way a company can further pretend to give a shit what you think, while not actually giving a shit. Do you really think what you say will make a difference?? If they didn't listen to you while you were working, why would they listen to you if you've quit? It's all smoke and mirrors designed to make you feel good while giving the company marketing material to say, 'we listen' when they don't. HR is on team company. They are not your friend. The odds of them actually doing anything different based on an exit interview is zero. If anything, they'll use what you say against you to frame it as 'clearly he/she is not a happy person' so they just dismiss what you say. Just like they did when you were working for them.
I deny them that chance so I don't do them.
Fuck them. Leave and say nothing and just be happier at your new job. They had their chance and blew it. You don't owe them anything and you're better off channeling that energy into something more in line with what makes you happy.
Even if the HR person did type it verbatim and show it to you, they're just going to turf it the second you leave and spin a tale that makes their boss happy.
There's zero chance that the upper management who needed to hear what you said actually heard it.
There’s no point in those interviews unless you say what needs to be said.
" Yeah great, well I generally come in at least 15 minutes late. I, uh, use the side door, that way Lumberg can't see me and, uh, after that I just sort a space out for about an hour. Yeah I just stare at my desk, but it looks like I'm working. I do that for, uh, probably another hour after lunch too. I'd say in a given week I probably only do about 15 minutes of real, actual, work. Oh yeah, let me tell you something about TPS reports. See the thing is Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care. It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime. So where's the motivation? And here's something else, Bob, I have eight different bosses right now. Eight, Bob. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation, is not to be hassled. That and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that'll only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired. Listen, I'm going to go. Uh, it's been really nice talking to both of you guys. Good luck with your layoffs, all right? I hope your firings go really well."
Gen-Xer here, and I agree. I'm impressed with all of the younger generations, from you guys to the Zs. Gen-Alpha is still fairly young, but no reason to believe they won't also follow suit.
Word of advice, don’t give yourselves to corporations that pretend to be human. Don’t give yourselves to ANY corporation in fact. They’re trash, the idea is trash, they don’t care because they’re not paid to.
I have been working since I was 9 years old. I have never cared about a company and have always been a fuck you kind of guy to companies since I was a product of child labor.
I have managed businesses and they intentionally fuck over employment. It’s BAKED IN. Every manager that I know goes through being promoted and cutting off your old job friends. It’s a corporate tactic. Get the cool manager to lead and fuck over the employee because they trust them. It turns people into shit bags. And normalizes shitty people. I have watched it and left District managers in the cold several times. It’s hilarious to me because many companies are shit.
I have worked in several industries too. It’s all a scheme to shit on labor. And it’s been this way since before my dumbass parents time. They let it happen because they just “something something boot straps.” Fucking weak morons.
Don’t waste your time. Just do good enough and save your money so you can find something better to do.
Fuck corporations, especially the weirdos who run them. They were never intended to be around forever, the rich have just molested the system to their benefit. Don’t play their games. Record it and report it.
I feel for this woman I really do, but, I don't feel like she did her research beforehand. Had she, she would've immediately seen that cloudflare is an absolutely despicable, corpo nightmare, a shining beacon of what every publicly traded company aspires to be. She could've seen this coming. Or she did and choose to ignore it, thinking it wouldn't happen to her.
Been at my current company for 9 years. It's pretty great, never had a knife in my back or anything.
And still I remember every day that it's a company, whose only goal in existence is making money, and if a set of numbers on a sheet are balanced in a certain way, I'll still lose my job, regardless of my reputation, work ethos or anything else.
Keeps me grounded I can "believe" in my company without having to really drink the kool-aid.
I've also been concerned about negative outcomes for people based on the videos I've heard about and the one I saw posted before, but that's what makes them so brave. The more they do it and the more such videos are normalized, the less harsh companies can be in retaliation.
Management being assholes is not as much a generational thing (at least, not as much as it seems) as the nature of what corporations expect of managers. The few amazing managers who somehow remain human while doing their job, who are good mentors, etc., are outliers.
I just don't get what the end game is for this. Let's say all of gen Z quits tomorrow over this. All of tech will simply move to Brazil, Eastern Europe, and India.
Since there's really no social safety net, and we don't give a fuck about the homeless...they do what exactly?
For example...the fortune 50 I worked at for a while has enough money to stop selling all their products and still be solvent for about a century at their current spend.
If they faced a general strike, they can hold out for generations. How long can the average American hold out for?
This general audience of this site feels like 15-25...they don't realize the kind of power the big players have.
Brittany is a narcissist who got fired because she makes everything about Brittany.. she didn't even allow the HR guy to finish a sentence before she had to actually interrupt him and start explaining why they were wrong.. you got fired because you don't listen, Brittany baby..
I get that no one likes to be fired, especially if they feel that they were let go unfairly, but this seems like it will result in missing out on other job opportunities afterwards. If I was a hiring manager and saw a video like this from a prospective employee I would just throw their application straight in the garbage. If they will post this then who knows what kind of private company details they will post about if I were to hire them
I hope that these videos encourage others to leave, get their bag, or not apply to companies that employ shady at best firing policies. If I saw a person standing up for themselves in a place where corporate culture squashes out hope and individuality, I'd be more likely to hire them if my corporate culture actually matched the vibe of the person recording themselves getting fired.
Yeah, name and shame companies firing people for nothing or to pad quarterly profits. Not everyone can afford to be choosey in their employer but for those that can I hope stuff like this starves those companies of talent.
I hear you. I think this is one of those things that becomes effective when most of your candidates are likely to have posted something like this at some point. Kind of like participation in a strike (or any union activity) only becomes useful when most other employees are also participating.
The problem is half the time they are being laid off, but the company frames it as a firing so they can save money. Getting fired by your previous employer will destroy your job prospects far more directly than some video on social media that only a few percent of recruiters will ever even be aware of. It makes sense to take a unified stand against such a bullshit practice.
If they are in some way dodging contracted benefits like severance, are in any way defaming the employee, or are trying to prevent unemployment claims, it is going to be illegal to invent cause. People really misunderstand "at will" and think it means that an employer can fire you for any reason at all. It doesn't. It means they can fire you for no reason at all. They cannot fire you for a protected, illegal, or fake reason, and they still are going to have to honor your contract, make good on the unemployment, et cetera.
There really isn't any difference between a "no cause"/at will termination and a layoff. Maybe some fine technical points, but for the layman it's the same thing.
And in many states what a previous employer can say to a future employer as part of a reference check is limited -- in Cali, for example, any "malicious" statements can get you in a lot of trouble. If you suspect a previous employer might be doing this, talk to a labor lawyer.
Recording and trying to go viral with these exit interviews is the wrong response if you feel you are being wronged. Sure, record it (if it is legal to do so), but definitely do not upload anything until you have talked to a labor attorney.
If I was a hiring manager and saw a video like this from a prospective employee I would just throw their application straight in the garbage.
You probably wouldn't be a hiring manager very long with that attitude. I don't get the appeal either, but I don't do tiktok so. Just from the linked piece, it sounds like it's becoming increasingly common.
Quite a leap to posting private company details online. Where are those stored by the way? Office 365? SharePoint? The cloud?..
If I was a hiring manager, I wouldn't be looking at people's social media because I only care what their expected compensation, experience, and/or education is. Everything else past their CV is irrelevant unless they need a security clearance or will be working in a sensitive environment.
Good soft skills are also pretty important for a new hire. You often want someone that can be a good communicator, can get lots of different people aligned on an initiative, and can handle conflict in a constructive way.
A lot of employers peak at social media for clues about this stuff. If someone is a jerk online, they might also be a jerk in the office once they get comfortable.
I would. I want to hire someone I could have lunch with, communicate without awkwardness, and be able to appropriately empathize with whatever their situation is.
That being said, posting their firing would get them bonus points from me. I love people that stand up for themselves, have an opinion, and aren’t afraid to be wrong.
If a company is firing you, fuck their "private company details." You should have zero loyalty or obligation to an entity that's potentially going to make you go hungry/homeless. Criminal disclosures will be covered by law already, so all you're doing is slurping up the boot juice and perpetuating the culture of silence that allows companies and capital owners to pit workers against one another
I never said anything about protecting the company that fired you. I have no idea where you got that. My point was that if you do something that proves to potential employers that you're going to cry on social media every time your unhappy about anything, it means they're going to be much less likely to hire you
I get both sides of the argument here. I think we need to have this big reaction because companies have held so much power over employees for so long - I'll avoid ranting about worker-owned cooperatives here - but the past few years I've surprised myself by moving into a bit of a "slippery slope" camp with these things. Not to say it shouldn't happen, but that we need to be prepared for the follow-up.
Hopefully related example, in education: There were some really big push backs recently where I am over bad treatment of the students in highschool, all legit. The school board ignored it for a long time, it got bad, they finally took it seriously. Then they overcorrected and stopped believing teachers at all and started jumping straight to firing at almost any complaint. Then students started weaponizing complaints, and now teachers are getting fired for trying to enforce deadlines and for giving low marks because students are complaining about how deadlines, grades, and meeting grading requirements are detrimental to mental health and well-being, and now there are a bunch of these students from this board in my university classes failing hard and filing complaints about courses being too difficult and other things despite them having glowing reviews just a few years prior.
I guess what I'm getting at: I think it's fair for someone to choose not to hire people like this because it's possible that the people willing to stand up and make an important fuss over these things might not know where the line stands between a worthwhile complaint and a non-worthwhile one, and might make a company look badexternally even though it's doing good internally, just not to someone new to the workforce's expectations.
I also think it's fair to go the opposite direction, because ultimately we need major change in the way companies/everything are structured that lead to these nasty layoffs and poor conditions and if someone does raise issues where there aren't, hopefully we are prepared enough and in the right enough to take it seriously, but weather it and act in everyone's best interests.
I’m a hiring manager. I have trouble even imagining the kind of person that would just throw a lead into the trash because of a recording of them getting fired. Who does that? What do you possibly have to gain by doing that? Because you have a lot to lose, especially if that candidate got far enough in the process for you to be researching their background. Nobody gets that far unless they are a very good fit.