Learned the phrase lie flat reading this story on Bloomberg. Its interesting to the consider the impacts on the lives of folks who go against the tide of their generation. If the zeitgeist supports and welcomes a lie flat mentality, for someone who wants to work harder and earn more than their parents did, scale up the upward mobility ladder and so on, they would lead a very lonesome existence. Reading this made me think of my mentee B. She is twenty four and doing well in her career- working hard but not crazy hours, being rewarded for her work but not in ways that make headline news.
B is in a very comfortable place in her life - she has learned to do her job well, earns very decent money and lives in a relatively low cost city. Her parents are in a town two hours away from her so she does not feel displaced from everything she grew up with. She would be able to afford down-payment on a modest house if she wanted to own a home but she is not quite there yet. In the meanwhile she lives frugally and is saving for bigger, better things including higher education. Every time I talk to B, I have to remind myself she is only a few years older than J - not at all my generation. She will definitely not lie flat, not now and not in a very long time. She has too much energy and too many dreams to do that. Yet some of the generational trends apply to B as well:
The vast number of people quitting their jobs in the U.S. and Europe is a sign of a structural, psychological shift, according to Qualtrics’s Granger. He says people are being driven to “work on something that’s going to be meaningful, have a higher purpose. We’ve seen a lot of evidence for that.”
She does seek work that is meaningful and having higher purpose. What is unique is how she has been able to find those things in the framework of her current job with a technology company that is not in the business of saving the world. B has been able to advocate for younger employees like herself to be considered for roles that would typically require 15+ years of experience.
The company has realized that folks like B if paired with a senior level employee to help offload the easier more mundane components of the job can in a year learn enough to start taking on the primary role in lower complexity projects. B is doing exactly that and got promoted recently. She has opened the door to this career pathway in her company and that to her is meaningful work with higher purpose. How easy it is for her relate to her generation is another matter.
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