In the summer of 2024, Squarespace’s chief marketing officer, Kinjil Mathur, attracted criticism when she told Gen Z job seekers that they, like her, should be “willing to do anything” to land their first job.

“I was willing to work for free, I was willing to work any hours they needed—even on evenings and weekends,” Kinjil told Fortune. “You really have to just be willing to do anything, any hours, any pay, any type of job.” The online backlash to Kinjil’s statement was immediate and brutal, forcing her to walk those comments back. “I shared my own college internship experiences, and my words were misrepresented as career advice for a whole generation,” Kinjil later said in a statement.

The episode demonstrates a growing clash of values between the various generations in today’s workplace. While some still take pride in sacrificing their well-being to demonstrate their commitment, others—primarily younger workers—see things differently. “I think they have more of an attitude of work-to-live as opposed to live-to-work that many of us grew up with,” said Ravin Jesuthasan, the global leader for transformation services at the consulting giant Mercer, on stage in Davos in 2024. “This is particularly true in the West. They have seen the legacy of all these broken promises. In the old days and in many parts of the West, they would promise you if you worked for 30 years, you’d have this defined benefit pension, you’d have retiree medical care, etc. None of that exists today.”

One of the many points of differentiation between today’s young people and older workers is their perception of stress. Historically, Western workplace cultures equated stress with importance. If you were stressed, it often meant your job was more demanding and thus more important, encouraging some to complain about stress as a way to subtly communicate their value. Rather than seeing stress bragging—or talking about being overworked with a sense of pride—as a badge of honor, however, young people are more likely to interpret it as indicative of poor time management at best and an unhealthy relationship with work at worst. 

According to a 2024 study by researchers at the University of Georgia, those who brag the most about being stressed are now perceived more negatively by their peers. In fact, the research suggests those who stress brag are perceived as less capable, not more. After generations of equating time with effectiveness and busyness with importance, Gen Z has come to view the value of their time through a different lens. 

It’s not just that Gen Z grew up in an era when many of the traditional promises of work and loyalty had long since been broken, when individual time commitments had been largely divorced from actual results. Those born in the late 1990s through the early 2010s have also already lived through a once-in-a-century economic crisis, endured a once-in-a-century pandemic, and are regularly bombarded by what were formerly considered once-in-a-century extreme weather events. This generation, which is just entering the workforce, spent their childhoods hearing their parents panic over financial challenges during the 2008 economic crisis, had their brains shaped by an unregulated social media machine that has proven detrimental to their mental health, lost some of their formative years to pandemic restrictions and lockdowns, and continues to face a barrage of new challenges almost daily. 

More so than any generation before them, this group of young people has developed an appreciation for proper time management, mental health, and well-being. Their well-documented emphasis on meaning and joy has come to replace past generations’ keeping-up-with-the-Joneses, competitive pursuit of material wealth. People used to say that money can’t buy happiness, but the most anxious and depressed generation in modern history has internalized that sentiment.

© Fast Company