Gen Zs are lazy. Millennials are even lazier. I can’t stick with either of them

These guys don’t care about work. They are so entitled and they just want everything to come easy without having to put in the work. The only thing they talk about is work-life balance and bastardized  “Mental Health”, using it as an excuse to get out of doing anything worth the while. 

They have simply put those with real mental health issues at risk.

As a matter of fact, these are the worst people you could ever work with. 

This sounds familiar to you doesn’t it? 

But how true is this?

The story of how Gen Zs and Millennials are so lazy and entitled and don’t want to do anything has become so popular that everyone believes it as the gospel truth. As a matter of fact, if you look up the text “Gen Zs are lazy” you’re sure to find a gazillion people who believe this.

But is this actually true? 

It’s not! 

At least, not from my perspective.

Let’s start with this. I’m a 46 years old Gen X dinosaur and I’ve lived and worked with my generation and the generations before mine. My mother was a boomer. My uncles and some of my elder relatives are boomers (the ones that haven’t kicked the bucket yet). Most of my friends are Gen X.

I’ve had an incredible fortune and sometimes, misfortune, of working with Gen X, millennial, and Gen Z humans and I can comfortably tell you that practically everything you read online including the early part of this article is completely false.

In my life, some of the best people I’ve ever worked with and currently work with are young people. 

Let’s talk about Lendsqr. The average Lendian is 25 years old (yes, I run a professional kindergarten) The oldest person as of the time I’m writing this article is just 30 years old and I can say for a fact that these are the most hardworking people I’ve ever met in my life. 

I remember when we had a fraud case (or why do you think I’m strident about fraud?). Lendians came to my house at 2am and we battled the fraudsters, won, and got some of our money back.

These young people take so much initiative, and with extreme sense of ownership. They sometimes cry, not because someone is hurting them but because they care so much about their products or whatever they are working on. This is the power of commitment. This is the power of ownership. 

These young humans I’ve worked with have so many things in common: They are smart, they’re extremely hardworking, they’re not entitled, they go the extra mile and the list goes on and on.

When I counter some of my friends who believe that Gen Zs are lazy, we dive deeper into the fact that refutes these misconceptions, everyone starts seeing that the notion of lazy young people is an absolute balderdash.

Let’s even take a step back and look at the world we live in. Some of the biggest organizations and the biggest value creation that we’ve seen have come from these so called ‘lazy’ millennials and Gen Zs.

Zukerberg founded Facebook when he was 19 years old; with his diapers sagging behind him The Collision brothers were kids when they started Stripe, and they’ve built an incredible and valuable company. Coming to Africa, PiggyVest was built by young people who crawled out of the cribs to get it up and running.

All over the world, young people do amazing stuff.

The problem is that Social Media, just like I’ve done right now, has so influenced our thoughts with clickbaits; the internet traffic runs on clickbaits of bad news.

It’s all false. Gen Zs are  probably the best generation and the most hardworking I’ve seen so far. 

Now let’s talk about the so-called humans who ain’t lazy. I’ve had the fortune of a fast career in banking and sometimes people tell me that “you guys were lucky then, everyone was fast” but that too is a lie. My generation and the ones before mine had tons of very lazy people as well.

The truth is people have always been lazy. I have cousins and uncles that are lazy (Emmanuel, I’m not talking about you). I have family friends that are lazy. At the same time I knew people that were hardworking who did incredible things. I know a guy that’s probably 3 months older than me, and at the time when I thought I was good, that guy was god! 🙇🏿‍♀️ 

Every generation has hardworking and lazy people. However, Social Media has helped shine the “laziness” spotlight on the current generation and amplify click baits to prove this point.

Today, you have people who go on TikTok and talk about the easy life. What people don’t know is that they spend so much time and effort to even create the content, in a very hardworking manner. You look at the Kardashians and you think they are lazy people. Just try to go to social media and create videos. Then you’ll see that it’s not so easy. 

For example, we’re currently creating videos in Lendsqr for an initiative., which has been dragging for months and we haven’t gotten it right. Yet, you have people consistently putting out amazing video content online. And I’m scratching my head and thinking, “How do these low life millennials do it on TikTok?” I honestly respect them. These guys are hardworking.

To the dead ass old guys like me, trust these guys, they’re the best people you can have in your team. The older guys are getting tired. They already have gray hair and they have a few more years before they die off.

It will be the worst thing you’ll do for your business if you don’t recognize the value and the power and the ingenuity of these young people.

If after reading this, you still think millennials are lazy, then there’s only one thing that is sure, you are mentally lazy.