As Gen X and Boomers, we believed in the world of work and its promised rewards. However, freshly redundant from her job in the public sector, Bianca Zander asks: is this the end of work as we know it?
Redundancy is in the air, and for many of us in the public sector, that ship has already sailed. As a life experience, job loss is up there with death and divorce, but it’s comforting to know that being laid off in 2024 is far from a personal failing. Not only are we experiencing a period of mass redundancy across many industries, driven by political and economic forces along with technological advances, but the structure of the workplace is going through a seismic shift. Almost everyone you talk to – CEOs and artists to retailers, lawyers, tech bros and public servants – is feeling skittish and uncertain about the future of what we call work.
With so much in flux, and little in the way of solid ground, a moment of collective anxiety makes sense, but what’s waiting for us on the other side? And is there any chance this brave new world of work could be better for us?
We really drank the Kool-Aid
If you’re part of Gen Z or even a Millennial, the only mystery at this point is why it’s taking the old farts so long to get with the program. But for my peers in Gen X and our boomer bosses, this is head-spinning stuff. Remote working and ChatGPT and the gig economy are not what we signed up for and like an entire generation afflicted with Stockholm Syndrome, we would prefer to return to the safety of an oppressive work culture that demanded loyalty and self-sacrifice in return for rank and moolah. At least we knew the rules—at least there were rules.
When it came to work, Gen X was the last cohort to really drink the Kool-Aid. We threw ourselves into careers that promised to buy us houses, fulfil our ambitions and give us status. We worshipped at the altar of productivity and climbed that corporate ladder like it was leading to nirvana. We worked so hard, and put in such long hours, that the only thing we had enough energy to do at the weekend was drink ourselves into oblivion. This endeavour was seen as heroic, with the added pressure for women that you were failing feminism if you didn’t also lean in and raise a family. For the most part, we got what we wanted, but it was often at the expense of our health, marriages and hobbies.
It started with sourdough
Did someone say ‘hobby’? What even is that? A hobby is something your grandad did in his shed with a lathe in 1976, after he got home from the railways, and these quaint pastimes lay completely dormant in the New Zealand psyche until they were reawakened in 2020, when the country went into lockdown, and no one knew how to pass the time. Kiwis who had hitherto been career men and women were suddenly searching their souls and peering into the back of the fridge for a sourdough starter and I’d wager that we’ve never fully regained our zest for working for the sake of working. Pause. Breathe. Be honest. Have you?
Sure, we all still need to earn a living, but not on the same terms. Even us oldies, who barrelled through our thirties and forties on the verge of burnout, are seeking balance and purpose and prioritising our mental health – unheard of even a decade ago.
Post-Covid, nearly everyone with an office job works some of the time from home. For parents and caregivers and dog owners, hybrid and remote working has been a godsend, doing away with expensive and complicated childcare arrangements and unlocking hours in the day that were previously spent commuting. But all that working from home and staring at a Zoom screen has, according to recruiters, also destroyed our confidence and, from personal experience, created social atrophy and isolation. We can all agree that remote working is convenient, but is it any fun?
On a recent episode of New York magazine’s Pivot podcast on the future of work, remote working was described as a disaster for people in their 20s, who are trying to establish their careers, and missing out on mentoring and developing the soft skills that could only be passed on in person – and usually by the people who are working at home with their kids and dogs. However, out of all the generational groups surveyed by Forbes, young people were the ones most likely to prefer working from home.
The post-Covid workplace exposed fascinating generational differences. When management issued the order to return to the office to boost productivity, it was the Gen Zs and Millennials in my public sector workplace who stubbornly refused. We took on some new hires from Gen Z who were awesome and hardworking but made their priorities clear: their social lives and their mental health came first. I quickly came to admire their boundaries, and got used to the way they would openly, and sometimes shamelessly, tell you why they needed a day off. (Among the best excuses I ever heard were comforting a flatmate whose boyfriend had dumped her; and to recover from a puffy face after trying out a new moisturiser that morning).
Bring on the new world of work
Much has been written about how Gen Z and Millennial bosses are reinventing the workplace, installing a flatter corporate structure and introducing siestas, slump hours and even hairdressing appointments to their Outlook calendars, and frankly, as someone who could never quite swallow the Kool-Aid at the same rate as many of my peers, I’m here for it. Gen Z are the smart ones – showing the rest of us how it ought to be done. What a relief to see the dismantling of an archaic corporate system that was designed to suit no one but early birds and the patriarchy.
Young people in the workforce are living with enormous generational inequality. The social contract, based on the idea of a meritocracy, used to be that if you worked hard enough, you could get ahead and achieve a level of financial stability that included home ownership. But nowadays, home ownership and financial success have less to do with merit and more to do with how rich your parents are. Could anything be more demotivating? You no longer have to be a Marxist to question a system that sees the majority of workers, locked out of the housing market and grinding away for the benefit of a few at the top, while the world is burning to the ground.
Melting ice caps and late-stage capitalism aside, is AI coming for our jobs? Already this year I’ve had two potential clients ask me politely if I know how to get ChatGPT to do the job I’m pitching for instead of me. (I do, and I’ll send you my invoice, thanks very much). In a cost-cutting environment, actual humans are too expensive. Statistics from Forbes show a seesaw. Since ChatGPT was released, AI job listings have gone up 42 per cent, while listings for IT jobs have gone down 31 per cent. Pivot’s take was that short-term job destruction would be balanced by a raft of new AI start-ups and niche businesses enabled by the technology. For example, an app that helps you buy second-hand sneakers from around the world.
Side hustles, the gig economy and personal branding are all here to stay, but there’s no need to feel intimidated by these buzz words because for the most part, it’s all smoke and mirrors. I heard recently of a bunch of 20-somethings who were laid off by a tech start-up, and by the end of the week they had bunged up a gorgeous website and were calling themselves an ad agency. Behind every beautiful digital storefront is a sweaty human in a hoodie and crocs, and everyone, young and old, digital native and luddite, has the same basic anxiety about staying afloat.
Post-redundancy, it took about three weeks for the frenetic ticker tape of emails and zoom calls and chat windows to stop running through my head, and about two months to fully decompress from five years of full-time work. From this quiet place, I have asked myself the question, what next? I’ve picked up some side hustles, as you do, including, hilariously, some work on a new app, but after several months of going slightly bonkers in my kitchen, I’m ready to go to work in an office, where I can talk to other humans and put in an honest day’s work on something I find vaguely meaningful. I don’t even care if it’s real or a simulation, so long as there’s good company and it pays my bills.
Bianca Zander is a writer based in Tāmaki Makaurau.
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