Not many, but habit formation certainly breeds longer term path dependencies. With less kids socializing in college around miller lites and kegs, there will probably be less casual drinkers who port over to wine and less serious wine drinkers like us lot. This is a good thing for society in general.
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To be fair, the service industry can have a decent chunk of people with that mindset. On the other side, the overwhelming majority of the service industry works their asses off but that doesnât hide the fact that there will be a subset that do what you said and Iâm not sure itâs really a generational thing
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I think it might be more a job market thing; if people know if they quit they can just get another job. Iâve seen two people quit while actually making peopleâs food at our neighboring chipotle. Itâs a really poorly run restaurant so I get it, but still.
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In law, I chalk it up to younger associates realizing how simply awful the job is, and not wanting to put up with it the way older lawyers did. I donât blame them - being massively overpaid doesnât mask the fact that the job sucks.
We olds just canât accept the fact that the nature of work and expectations of it continue to develop.
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Iâve managed people since the mid 90s. Just a lot of slackers out there all along. Thinking back to when the job market wasnât so hot in the early 2000s I would commiserate with other business owners about how difficult it was to find motivated and competent employees. I doubt internal drive has changed much over recent generations. As someone else noted, it seems each generation thinks they work harder than the current one. Perhaps some of whatâs being felt today is just a shift in how money can be made.
Well in medicine theyâve changed to the 80 hour work week for trainees relatively recently so undoubtedly people work less hard then they used to.
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I have previously suggested there is an oversupply of restaurants, at least here in Los Angeles. I got shouted-down quickly. My position remains unchanged.
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Itâs a marketplace decision. Seems to work itself out, right?
Iâve put in many 80+ hr wks myself and consider myself a pretty big slacker. I love not working. 80+ or really even 60 is a lot for most people and maybe not really that healthy. Most are not willing to do that much and thatâs nothing new. Generally speaking, IMO, it makes it easy to surpass others who have more innate skill or IQ if one is willing to grind it out.
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I think it was Moby or some other NY restauranteur that put it well back around the mid 2000s. âMy employees do the minimum amount of work in order to keep from being fired.â
The 80 hour work week LIMITED hours to 80, they were unlimited prior to that. Realistically many trainees work more than that even after it was put into place.
If you donât like working this is the wrong field to be in.
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Maybe. Or maybe just figure out a way to do it without the same number of hours. And if someone outcompetes you, then you have the choice of stepping up or stepping aside.
Anyhow, isnât this about the broader workforce?
Maybe itâs different in your fields, but âhours workedâ is very difficult to measure because people can do all kinds of things while they are âat workâ. Previous generations put in lots of face time âat workâ but that didnât mean they were actually working hard the whole time.
My instinct is to agree with @TGibson that internal drive and other personality traits are fairly evenly distributed across generations. But they do get expressed differently.
One generation difference Iâve noticed is the younger folks are less willing to tolerate bullying and abuse. They may go too far with some workplace expectations, but on balance thatâs a positive shift.
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Yeah, thereâs an easy solution, you can spend more years in training making minimum wage.
I think itâs broadly applicable to most fields, except in medicine the consequences can be greater for patients lives.
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Thatâs not my experience.
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Wasnât part of the reasoning behind the 80 hr residency cap to reduce doctors mental fatigue and thus, in theory, provide better, more consistent care to patients? It wasnât purely about some docs wanting to take more time off so they could lounge about, was it?
In theory, but in reality that was pretty bullshit. For all intents and purposes itâs led to additional years of training for trainees increasing their debt and theyâre graduating far less prepared than in the past. One of the worst decisions ever made in the profession.
October 4, 1984, the day medicine died.
Citation?
Also, as youâre well aware, the prior generation said the same things about your cohort.
I think itâs probably true that the prior generation worked harder, at least in medicine.
A long way from medicine, and strictly anecdotal: When I bought my new house, a lot of work of many kinds needed to be done⌠construction, carpentry, electric, plumbing, painting &&&.
About half of the people who worked on the jobs were Gen Y. They showed up on time at 8, didnât slack, took half an hour for lunch, cleaned up before they left between 4 and 5. No loud music. No cussing. No attitude. I can think of one exception, slightly slacker.
Of course I had a selected subset⌠my contractor doesnât hire subs who donât get the job done. But I had to hire a couple on my own, same story.
These people are all making good money by blue collar standards.
Again, just anecdotal.
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