Dr Eliza Filby's Newsletter
Dr Eliza Filby
Sunday Times Bestselling Author and Award-Winning Speaker on Generations, Work, Wealth & Family | Host of It’s All Relative Show | Creator of the #MajorRelate Newsletter | Latest Book: Inheritocracy
Dear Readers,
Welcome to the 160 new readers since my last newsletter.
I’m Dr Eliza Filby, a historian of generations who explores how society is changing through the prism of age, tackling how we are evolving as consumers, workers and citizens.
In this fortnightly newsletter you will find articles written by me as well as insights, links and news on generational shifts in the workplace, consumption and society at large.?Helping you feel out of touch and up-to-date in equal measure!?
In this week’s edition:
When did our job cease to be our lifestyle?
I recently had lunch with a man in his fifties who has spent most of his working life in the publishing industry. Having a professional catch up, it wasn’t long before we hit upon the topic that most execs are talking about right now: dismay at Gen Z workers. The complaints were familiar: the lack of deference, unwillingness to work late, need for constant reward and hand-holding (his caricature not mine). He then reverted to a natural reflex, something that afflicts anyone over 35; comparing today’s youth unfavourably with an airbrushed take on our younger selves. He harked back to his ‘apprenticeship’ years in the ‘90s; let’s imagine lengthy lunches at the Groucho by day and champagne-filled book launches by night. Essentially, it was a tale where the commitment, hard work and training were propelled (and made attractive) by lots of alcohol and lots of fun.?‘That’s the thing, these kids don’t want to embrace the lifestyle that comes with the job’. But is he right?
Now I hate to generationally stereotype here but there is a definite type of Gen X’er, those in their fifties now, working in the creative arts broadly defined (journalism, TV, publishing, advertising, PR, fashion etc.) who will rhapsodize endlessly about the glory days of the nineties; back when pay was decent, business flights were the norm and the entertainment allowance would make even a Dubai playboy blush. It was a unique moment when all those hapless humanities grads who had been told they’d only be fit for McJobs, became the Masters of the Universe. When working in the creative arts made you the barometer of aspiration, power and cool. (There is of course a similar narrative now happening in tech; it is not floppy-haired English grads these-days but the Huel-sipping, jiu jitsu- wrestling computer geeks who have inherited the earth.)
Anyway, it was around about 2008 when the wheels slowly started to come off the creative party bus. First came the Financial Crisis when budgets were slashed, and then, the digital revolution which diminished everything these folks produced and ushered in today’s era of algorithm-defined creativity. The sectors and workers did not vanish of course, but the status, money, fun and the best bits of the lifestyle did. Millennials, who had grown up dreaming of glamourous jobs in TV, journalism and advertising, and joined expecting to find such rewards, were soon disillusioned. Tech meant that they needed to work harder and play less. The more entrepreneurial ones tried their luck as digital creators, becoming its pioneers, while the creative sectors themselves lost their meritocratic kudos and became workplaces where only the affluent could afford to aspire.
Gen Z who had grown up with their own publishing platforms and TV channels in their pocket did not suffer from such illusions and are less disillusioned as a result. But they are no fools. With the glamour, money and lifestyle diminished in these sectors; what is left but a lifestyle-equalling poor-work life balance? Gen Z’s increasingly transactional approach to work (which is in fact a return to how we once thought about labour) is perhaps more understandable in these circumstances. All the while the Gen' X’er peeps in their fifties, at a career stage where they are personally buffeted from many of these challenges, sit at the top of the tree looking down, perplexed as to why those in their twenties don’t lap up every opportunity like they once did.
In the knowledge economy, commitment and loyalty is so often linked to short-term aspiration and the ability to see our future selves. Where and who will I be in five, ten years’ time? Many Gen Z’ers currently look at frustrated and struggling Millennials and say ‘this is where your pursuit of purpose and late nights have got you; I’m unconvinced it’s worth it.’ Meanwhile, in the same vein, many millennials look up at Gen X’ers at the top of the tree and lament the fact that their leaders are probably the last generation to enjoy such fruits.
It’s not that the kids won’t embrace the lifestyle; it’s that they know the rules of engagement have changed. Each sector (and business) has its own story of course but this point is in many ways universal, and yes, even in tech. So however tempting it may be to compare Gen Z with our younger selves, it is not comparing like with like. We need to deal with and understand how they are, not how we would want them to be.
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NEW PODCAST ALERT
Jimmy McLoughlin OBE?and I have launched a new weekly podcast called?The Shift?on the future of work. The second episode has just dropped! Each week we take a couple of stories and discuss the change that is taking place in the context of the Great Resignation, hybrid working, multi-generational workplaces and emerging technologies. For employers, employees, HR bods and CEOs alike. Blue Collar, White Collar, no Collar, SME to Global, we cover it all on The Shift.
Thanks for reading,
Eliza