Ask HN: Why do boomers love work so much? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why do boomers love work so much?

4 pointsbigJavaLava4 comments

There's an interesting trend I'm noticing. Most of my fellow peers (millenials who work in software) kinda dread work in general. We're missing any sense of "higher meaning" and fulfillment and working 40 hours a week seems very dated and uneccesary. There's greater priority over doing impactful things and not being a slave to work. Oddly, many of the other people we work with seem content with working 40+ hours, taking a standard 3 week vacation and just repeating day in and out. Many of them also been with the same company for 30+ years which is insane! What's the generational divide?

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I think it's that earlier generations had more of an implicit promise (mostly since broken, but don't tell them that) that loyalty to a company was a way to a steady paycheck and a pension. If they're older, they also are more likely to have a family to support, and missing paychecks when you have that going on is not a good look.

By contrast, I'd be hard-pressed to think of any millenials--especially in tech--that have worked at a company that wouldn't fire them the moment it made financial sense to do so, that would give them a meaningful stake in the growth of the company, and that have actually realized that the "impactful work" meme is just a way for companies to promise compensation that conveniently never results in a transfer of money.

The love to work for work's sake bit...I get what you are saying. But

>Many of them also been with the same company for 30+ years which is insane!

Why is this insane? More and more unusual these days, yes, but what is insane on the face of it? If you could have stability (good for raising a family, etc), lifelong relationships, and didn't have to "re-prove" yourself over and over again...isn't that desirable?

I see the don't-get-comfortable job-hopping trend more as a reaction to instability and a fear of being left behind...not some merit in itself. I'm not entirely convinced either that in most cases B-shop will provide you with so many more skills and new experiences than A-shop. For sure there are sometimes quality differences, but how much more often is it the same tune with different costumes and maybe a couple different accompanying instruments?

I guess I'm saying is job-hopping really some "good" millennial virtue...would we really want it this way if it wasn't a necessary evil?

Job-hopping is how you get paid more, since most companies (especially startups in my experience) just flat out suck at compensating you for getting better at your job.

I agree, maybe not insane but definitely not the norm nowadays.

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