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Millenials are Lazy and need to return to office now!
At least that’s what the CNBC article seems to have the purpose of suggesting. They love to create terms for these ‘trends’, and this time it is ‘quiet vacationing’. If we are to use the POSIWID framework, then the purpose of CNBC is to serve as a conduit for sewing seeds of distrust between employee and employer, thus provoking return to office mandates and worse conditions during one’s working life.
The result of which if an employer falls into the trap is this:
Judging work on psuedo-productivity signals
- Measuring clicks and mouse movements to make personnel decisions
- Making employees return to office so you can watch over their shoulder or judge commitment by how long they stay in office
This leads to
- Lower productivity – employees show up without passion and with disdain towards their employer
- Performative work – People zoning out during work, looking active but really just moving the mouse around
If employees are in fact ‘quiet vacationing’ as the article asserts, then there’s a pretty good chance that your business is mismanaged and/or you offer your employees incentives that are inadequate.
However, let’s be honest, it’s somewhat overcomplicated and one-dimensional to say that this is CNBC’s sole purpose. We would rather assert that they exist mainly to get views and please their advertisers, which often results in articles like the one they published this week. See “Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes us Despise One Another” for more context.
The Real Story
Here’s the real story. The story that is never reported because there are no economic incentives to report on it. In fact, it’s damaging to one’s career to take dissenting stance on this topic. So if you want to support us, maybe check out some of our favorite products on Amazon or sign up for our newsletter.
Anyways, the real story is that the Boomer generation created the idealistic interpretation of the American dream spurred on by the biggest economic boom in history as a result of the WW2 victory and strong leadership from the silent generation. They subsequently harvested all of that momentum, getting rich, and they forgot to plant any seeds for the future. Corporations focused on extracting all value without focusing on production. They outsourced the very basic means of production overseas. Person after person lost their livelihood and the country created a dependency on other countries. Politicians like Reagan created loop holes leading to more value extraction for quick and short-sighted financial gains. This allowed cannibalistic industries like private equity to thrive while restorative and productive industries (that actually produce things) suffered.
Now we suffer the consequences. Incentives to actually work have fallen in correlation to the fall of the American Dream.
Those who actually produce things make the least, while rent-seeking work generates the most returns. The working class has become disillusioned, and rightfully so. With the real-time communication and transparency possible with the internet, it is hard to hide the facts. Upward socio-economic mobility is worse in America than most countries, life expectancy is decreasing, our food is literally poison, and now 100% of men have microplastics in their… uhum… testicles. Need I go on? Politicians have given up on public service and started trading stocks on insider information, CEO pay has risen 1,209% since 1980 while employee wages have remained stagnant and productivity has soared. The richest men in the world produce NOTHING–they work at hedge funds, in wealth management, in private equity. They create value for the wealthy and they destroy value for the rest. They merely transfer wealth from bottom to top in a zero sum game.
And here we are, the top trending story on LinkedIn is a story about how Lazy millennials are. That they are ‘quiet vacationing’. How do we fight back?
Share this article and change the narrative.
