That isn’t unusual. If you take the derogatory term before it’s used on you as a slur, you own it, not your detractors.
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I see many more young people who are being intentional about their work life balance, and that’s a good thing. When I joined the workforce - over 40 years ago - you were expected to be in the office for at least 40 hours, and many jobs entailed more. BUT you couldn’t do much work at home and it was pretty darned hard for your office to get into your home to bother you. We didn’t have to make boundaries - they were simply there!
Then came pagers (remember those??), cell phones, laptops, internet. In some ways, these were great because they allowed flexibility. But they also allowed that wall between work and personal to become permeable. And sometimes non-existent! Sure, it’s great that I don’t have to be in the office to join a 6AM call with colleagues on the other side of the globe, but to the extent that it’s a normal occurrence (and it is), that’s just another part of the day that’s not all mine. I can take vacation, but if something comes up, I am on a teams call, not on the beach/in a museum etc. And most important, not getting a few weeks of being completely away. Trying to set those terms for one’s life is important. I am guessing that even the influencer often has to kowtow to someone else’s schedule from time to time.
Deciding how much money she needs is important. Women have been paid less and not at all for the work they’ve done, so again, good for her for naming her terms. I hope she’s not naive - health insurance is cheap when you’re young and healthy, saving for college doesn’t matter if you don’t have kids, and retirement- well, the sooner the better! Forget how!
If there is good coming out of this, it’s the discussion and the realization that how we work can be a choice - that will have many implications. When you’re young, yhough, is a great time to experiment with it.
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My daughter just left a job that was wfh 3-4x a week, commute 1-2x per week. Summers are a 4 day work week.
Good salary, excellent benefits, unlimited PTO, flexible schedule allowing her to take off whenever needed, nice people, they would have paid for grad school at their affiliated college (if the degree was related to the job). She clocked in at 9 and stopped for the day at 3-4, but didn’t have a lot of work to do during all of those hours so was able to exercise, cook, etc. She was also permitted to take off and attend conferences within the organization, which she found to be extremely interesting.
Be careful what you wish for. Although there were aspects of this job that she liked, she didn’t enjoy much of the work and didn’t feel like she was making a difference in people’s lives (that is important to her). The job started to affect her mental health and she would have left if she was not returning to school. It was a great job, but not for her (isolating, not what she wanted etc).
The grass is not always greener, and there are a lot of variables that come into play.
WL balance is important to my kids, and they have/will have careers that offer it.
My career has a good WL balance, as I work from 8-3 and then leave. I do check emails, but that is my choice. It was bad during Covid when I worked from home- I worked 7:30-5:30 with one 15 minute break to eat a sandwich. If I had to use the bathroom I was late for my next appointment.
Nothing is perfect, but we all try.
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Wow!! I used to read her blog back in the day. Sad to hear.
Why? This woman’s choice of career had nothing to do with her battles with depression and alcoholism. If anything, it provided her an outlet.
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This interests me! I think a lot of people don’t appreciate what they get from going into the office. There’s a change of venue, there are people, an exchange of ideas, someone who can show you a tech trick you didn’t know to ask about, structure, a way to immerse in a different kind of task. Those are all good things that don’t come from getting work farmed out to you at home.
But it also comes at the cost of a commute, people interrupting you, the inability to start a load of laundry or throw something in the oven, or to have a beloved pet at your side.
Staying home here and there - to wait for a delivery, to tend a sick kid, is not the same as working remotely on a normal basis. And going to the office when most of your colleagues are remote isn’t like going to a bustling office.
The good comes with the bad. Some jobs are much easier to do on a solitary basis. But even then, you don’t want to become that person that people are saying “oh, I forgot he worked here!”
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For me the interesting part of the editorial was not the snarky, condescending judgment on a generation of workers seeking a better work/life balance but after that when it gets more into a discussion (with quotes from some experts) on how what we would have once thought of as “stress” being defined as “anxiety” and turned into a medical condition (the article notes the difference between clear clinical anxiety and people who are just stressed) with people seeking to avoid it at all costs. There is an interesting point about the productive aspects of some amount of stress as a motivator (just like our body having pain for a reason) and that seeking to avoid it at all costs can have negative implications.
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Perhaps that is a better perspective. Some people don’t want or can’t have stressful jobs; others are ok with stress for the tradeoff involved.
Yes, and what one person finds stressful, another finds enjoyable or motivating.
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And while some people enjoy working 50 hours a week at company job, other people do not enjoy doing that.
I think there are enough people who enjoy working 50+ hours a week on-site to fill all those jobs. And I know there are enough other ways to work/live to support the people who enjoy more autonomy in their week-to-week lives.
Everyone can win, as long as they plan. Unfortunately, what ends up happening is very few take a long look at how their want their lives to be and make a conscious plan to create their desired life.
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@Econpop, exactly! And sometimes, you need some experience to work it out. Not having a boss can be great and being your own boss can be hard.
This reminds me of hearing someone say “I’d really like a job outdoors.” To which the response was “Actually, having had one of those, I think you just want to BE outdoors.” It made me laugh at the time but was so on target.
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Gifted, a response by a Washington Post Columnist
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When I was coming out of college the term was slackers and well before that there were the hippies. In society for the most part we don’t like non-conformists.
There is a another term or trend going around called girldinner. That is where you really don’t make a full dinner and you just graze on whatever you might have in the frig or pantry. Some people really don’t like all the work that goes into making a full dinner and if you are single you definitely can eat however you want. My better half detests making dinner after all these years. She also detests coming up with what we will make for dinner. Please note I am one that will help for sure. We have a rule first one home from work starts dinner. D23 will make dinner some as well. And sometimes it is a team effort. We will be empty nesters in 3 weeks and we are planning on having many girldinners.
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I know a college grad who had a job tweeting. She worked part time as a tweeter, somehow got paid a little, and had no interest in doing more.
Her parents (my ex friend) didn’t have an issue with it. They gave her a car, paid her bills etc. Rooftop dinners all the time, etc.
Some of these “lazy girl” jobs have people who enable them, and they live an entitled life without realizing it.
Although some may be self supportive for now, my guess is that there is not an abundance of these jobs.
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One of the key points in the response is that these young workers have never been through rough economic times
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Yet…
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Wait, what? Did they just spontaneously generate the past year?
What times in the 21st century have not been tough?
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With the ratio of inflation of expenses to stagnation of incomes, I would say Gen Z has only experienced rough economic times. When we launched in the early 90s, the American dream of homeownership, mom staying home with the family, etc… was still attainable. I don’t think kids starting careers right now see those things as available to them.
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I am just jumping into this thread so didn’t read every response, but I hope that I’m not the only one who sees the term “lazy-girl job” as akin to a clickbait headline, designed to get attention but lacking nuance. The influencers I know work really hard, but part of the brand is making it seem like they don’t.
Some people would say my younger son has a lazy-boy job – he works really hard for a few months a year at a really fun job that often doesn’t feel like work, but his boss has him on retainer so most of the year he works fewer than 7-8 hours a week for him. Pretty sweet gig that allows him to follow his dream aspiration in his spare time – which is a lot in the off season. He went to a highly-selective school, and all his friends in law school and banking jobs totally envy him. One told him, “You’re the only one in our group who is doing what he really wants to do.”
It’s stressful in a way to be a parent of such a kid, knowing how he’s missing out on some of the advantages of corporate life. But he truly seems happy and never asks us for money so I’m happy for him.
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@Youdon_tsay - he is truly living his dream and I love following his life 