Global Trends

Why Gen Z Refuses to Work Like Millennials Did

There's a story making the rounds on LinkedIn. A millennial manager scheduled an urgent Friday meeting at 5:30 p.m.

By Malvin Simpson

December 15, 2025

Why Gen Z Refuses to Work Like Millennials Did

There’s a story making the rounds on LinkedIn. A millennial manager scheduled an urgent Friday meeting at 5:30 p.m. The entire team showed up. Except the Gen Z employee, who replied: “I have plans.” Not “I’m so sorry, I have plans.” Not “Can we reschedule?” Just: “I have plans.”

The manager was furious. The comments section exploded. Half the people called the Gen Z worker disrespectful and unprofessional. The other half pointed out that giving people 30 minutes’ notice for a late Friday meeting is actually what’s disrespectful.

This clash isn’t about one person being rude. It’s about two generations who fundamentally disagree about what work should look like. To understand Gen Z work culture and why it differs so dramatically from millennials, you need to understand what millennials actually did, and why it was completely unsustainable.

How Millennials Built the Trap

Walk into any office in 2015 and you’d see it everywhere. Millennials with their third coffee of the day at 4 p.m., bragging about how little sleep they got. “Rise and grind” posts flooding Instagram. LinkedIn celebrating people who worked 80-hour weeks. Responding to emails at midnight wasn’t just accepted, it was expected. It was proof you were serious, committed, passionate.

The message was clear: if you want to succeed, you have to sacrifice everything else. Your hobbies, your relationships, your health, your sanity. Work comes first. Always.

And millennials bought into it completely. We became martyrs to our careers, performing exhaustion like it was an Olympic sport. We one-upped each other with stories about all-nighters and weekend work sessions. We treated burnout like a badge of honour instead of a warning sign. Looking back, it was absurd. We were destroying ourselves to impress people who didn’t care, for companies that would replace us without hesitation.

We watched our parents lose their jobs in the 2008 recession and learned exactly the wrong lesson. Instead of recognising that company loyalty was dead, we decided to work even harder to prove we were indispensable. Spoiler alert: nobody is indispensable.

Where did that get us? We’re the most educated generation in history, and we still can’t afford houses. We work more hours than any previous generation and make considerably less when you account for inflation. We sacrificed everything for companies that view us as expendable. That was naive, and frankly, embarrassing.

Then the Pandemic Broke Everything

When COVID hit, whatever boundaries millennials had managed to maintain completely dissolved. People were working from their bedrooms, answering emails whilst making dinner, joining video calls in their pyjamas. The 9-to-5 became the “whenever you’re awake.”

Microsoft research found that the traditional working day was being replaced by what they called the “infinite workday.” People were working longer hours than ever before, but nobody wanted to admit it because at least they weren’t commuting.

Gen Z was paying attention. Many of them got their first proper jobs during the pandemic. They never experienced the clear separation between “work time” and “home time” that older generations took for granted. They saw their parents and older siblings working constantly, stressed constantly, exhausted constantly. And they watched companies respond to record profits by laying off thousands of employees anyway.

The lesson Gen Z learned was simple: loyalty doesn’t pay. Hard work doesn’t guarantee anything. You can burn yourself out for a company that will replace you without a second thought. So they decided not to play that game.

Enter: The Anti-Hustle Movement

It started on TikTok, like most Gen Z movements do. Videos with millions of views showing people doing the absolute minimum at their jobs. Employees filming themselves leaving exactly at 5 p.m. People celebrating “bare minimum Mondays.” The hashtag #AntiWork gained billions of views.

Then came “quiet quitting,” a term that confused everyone because it’s not actually about quitting. It’s about doing exactly what your job requires, and nothing more. No staying late. No checking emails on weekends. No going “above and beyond” for a company that won’t do the same for you.

Older generations called it lazy. Gen Z called it boundaries.

But let’s be real: there’s something deeply performative about filming yourself leaving work at 5 p.m. like it’s an act of rebellion. Gen Z loves to position themselves as revolutionaries for doing the bare minimum their contracts require. That’s not revolutionary. That’s literally just doing your job.

The “lazy girl job” trend took it even further. TikTok creator Gabrielle Judge posted about finding jobs that pay decently but don’t demand your entire life. Jobs where you can clock in, do your work, clock out, and actually have energy left for your real life. Not your “dream job.” Not your “passion.” Just a job that funds the life you want to live.

The backlash was immediate. How dare young people want jobs that don’t consume them?

But also, how convenient. Gen Z wants all the benefits of career success without actually building expertise or putting in the years that expertise requires. They want senior-level pay for junior-level commitment. They want to be taken seriously in meetings whilst simultaneously bragging online about doing the absolute minimum. You can’t have it both ways.

What Companies Actually Think About All This

Most companies don’t love this shift. Forty-five percent of hiring managers say millennials are their preferred job candidates. Only a fraction cite Gen Z as their top choice.

Even Gen Z managers say their own generation is difficult to work with. When asked which generation is most challenging, 45% pointed to Gen Z. That number drops to 26% for millennials.

And it gets worse. Some research suggests that business leaders more commonly need to fire Gen Z employees than other generations, with some Gen Zers not making it past their first week.

Why? Part of it is that Gen Z work culture prioritises authenticity over performative dedication. They won’t pretend. They won’t fake enthusiasm for meaningless work. They won’t stay late just to look committed. They won’t accept “that’s how we’ve always done it” as a valid explanation for dysfunction.

But also because many of them genuinely lack basic professional skills. They came of age during the pandemic, missing out on internships and early workplace experiences. They never learned how to navigate office politics, read a room, or understand when flexibility ends and responsibility begins. They confuse “setting boundaries” with “refusing to do anything remotely inconvenient.”

Meanwhile, millennials are still performing their exhaustion like it’s 2015, competing to see who can be the most overworked and underappreciated. They’ve turned their burnout into their entire personality. They’ll tweet about how capitalism is destroying them whilst staying late every night to finish work nobody asked them to do. Pick a lane.

The Mental Health Debate

This is where the generational divide gets most heated. Gen Z talks about mental health in ways that make older generations deeply uncomfortable. They’ll cancel plans because of anxiety. They’ll take mental health days without calling them “sick days.” They’ll tell you they can’t stay late because they have therapy.

Only 15% of Gen Z rate their mental health as “excellent,” compared to over half of that same age group a decade ago. But the difference isn’t that Gen Z is struggling more than previous generations. It’s that they’re actually acknowledging it.

Millennials worked through panic attacks. Gen Z takes the day off. Millennials powered through burnout until they collapsed. Gen Z recognises the warning signs and steps back.

Here’s where both generations get it wrong. Millennials treated mental health like it didn’t exist, grinding themselves into dust whilst pretending everything was fine. That was stupid and unsustainable.

But Gen Z has swung so far in the opposite direction that they’ve made “mental health” an all-purpose excuse for avoiding anything uncomfortable. Difficult conversation with your boss? Mental health day. Project deadline you don’t feel like meeting? Anxiety. Networking event that feels awkward? Can’t go, it’s bad for my wellbeing.

Sometimes work is uncomfortable. Sometimes you have to have hard conversations. Sometimes you need to push through stress to meet commitments you made. That’s not toxic hustle culture. That’s being a functioning adult.

The truth is somewhere in the middle. Mental health matters, genuinely, seriously matters. But so does reliability, professionalism, and following through on your responsibilities. Neither generation has quite figured out that balance yet.

Purpose, Pay, and Impossible Expectations

Gen Z cares deeply about working for companies whose values align with their own. Nearly 70% say company values are a key factor in their job decisions. They research companies’ environmental policies, diversity initiatives, and social stances before accepting offers.

And they’re willing to walk away if there’s a gap between what companies say and what they actually do. Research shows that about half of Gen Z workers have rejected job assignments based on their personal ethics. Some have rejected entire employers for the same reason.

This sounds noble until you realise what it means in practice. Gen Z wants meaningful work that changes the world. They also want high salaries, perfect work-life balance, complete flexibility, and rapid career progression. Oh, and they want all of this from their first job out of university.

Let’s not romanticise this. Yes, Gen Z is right that the cost of living is crushing and wages haven’t kept pace. Housing is unaffordable. Student debt is overwhelming. They watched millennials do everything “right,” get degrees, work hard, climb the ladder, and still struggle financially.

But wanting both purpose and pay isn’t the problem. It’s expecting to get both immediately, without putting in years of unglamorous work to build the expertise and credibility that commands higher compensation. One Gen Z worker summed it up in a viral TikTok: “What appears as having no work ethic is, in reality, a generation that’s grown up with gun violence, political instability, high cost of living, and housing and health crises. This has radicalised people. If my job can’t provide the basics for me and the world feels like it’s going to shit, then why am I working this hard?”

Fair point. But also: if you’re not working hard, why should your job provide you with everything you want?

The Real Impact on Companies

Companies are caught in the middle of this generational war, and they’re adapting, slowly.

The share of job descriptions mentioning mental health has nearly tripled since 2020. Companies are offering more flexibility, rethinking their approaches to work-life balance, and actually listening to what employees need instead of just telling them to work harder.

The organisations that are adapting are finding that some aspects of Gen Z work culture actually benefit everyone. Employees who maintain boundaries don’t burn out. Workers who take care of their mental health are more productive. People who feel valued are more loyal.

But companies are also discovering that Gen Z’s approach has real costs. When everyone does the bare minimum, innovation suffers. When nobody’s willing to occasionally go above and beyond, important work doesn’t get done. When every request is met with “that’s not in my job description,” collaboration breaks down.

The companies thriving are the ones that have figured out the nuance. They offer genuine flexibility and support, but they also expect genuine commitment and professionalism. They value work-life balance, but they also value people who understand that sometimes, not always, but sometimes, you need to stay late or take on extra work.

The companies struggling are the ones at either extreme: the ones still operating like it’s 2010, expecting unlimited availability and performative dedication, and the ones that have gone so far in accommodating Gen Z that they’ve lost all standards of professionalism.

So Who’s Right?

Neither generation has it figured out.

Millennials pioneered remote work, pushed for better benefits, and started conversations about mental health at work. But we also normalised burnout, made overwork a personality trait, and sacrificed ourselves for companies that didn’t care. We complain endlessly about the system whilst refusing to actually change our behaviour within it.

Gen Z work culture is right to reject hustle culture. They’re right to prioritise mental health. They’re right to demand better boundaries and more meaningful work. But they’ve overcorrected so dramatically that they’ve made themselves difficult to work with. They’re so committed to not being exploited that many have made themselves unemployable.

They film themselves doing the bare minimum like it’s activism. They treat every minor inconvenience as a boundary violation. They demand work-life balance whilst expecting rapid career progression. They want companies to demonstrate loyalty to them whilst offering nothing in return.

The world has changed. House prices have increased twice as fast as income since 2000. Young people are working multiple jobs just to survive. The old promise, work hard and you’ll be rewarded, has been proven false. Gen Z is absolutely right about that.

But they’re wrong to think the solution is doing the minimum and expecting maximum rewards. And millennials are wrong to keep martyring themselves for companies that don’t care.

What Actually Needs to Happen

The answer isn’t hustle culture. But it’s also not anti-hustle culture. It’s something neither generation has quite figured out yet: working hard on things that actually matter, for organisations that genuinely value you, whilst maintaining boundaries that protect your wellbeing. That requires discernment, not just blanket refusal or blind dedication.

The workplace doesn’t exist to validate your identity. Millennials need to stop performing their exhaustion for social media sympathy. Gen Z needs to stop treating basic job requirements like human rights violations.

Work is work. Sometimes it’s fulfilling, sometimes it’s not. Sometimes you need to stay late, sometimes you can leave at 5. Sometimes you push through discomfort, sometimes you prioritise your wellbeing. The skill is knowing which situation you’re in.

Companies need to stop expecting unlimited dedication from employees they’d fire without hesitation. But employees also need to stop expecting unlimited accommodation for doing the bare minimum.

Neither hustle culture nor anti-hustle culture is the answer. Maybe the real problem is that both generations are too busy defining themselves in opposition to each other to actually figure out what healthy work looks like.

Gen Z isn’t refusing to work like millennials did because they’re lazy or entitled. They’re refusing because they watched what happened to us. They saw us sacrifice everything for companies that didn’t care. And they decided they’re not making that same mistake.

But they’ve gone so far in the opposite direction that they’ve created new problems. The solution isn’t at either extreme. It’s somewhere in the messy, complicated middle that requires more nuance than either generation seems willing to offer.