Published on October 29, 2018
It’s more than two months today since I moved to Silicon Valley. These are early days of my relocation and I decided to carpool by leveraging helpful commute apps launched by young techies started in San Francisco and Palo Alto. This gives me very good chance of interacting with people of various countries, various companies, various age groups and different technologies of IT field.
Out of all these conversations; the most interesting discussions are with young boys and girls known as Generation Z or Digital Native or Gen Tech or iGen (usually born between 1990s and 2000s).
Here are the summary points I penned down during my casual talks with Gen Z while dealing with slow traffic and long wait lines on the roads of I-880 and CA-237…
- Seek strong leadership and mentorship. With compared to millennials, this generation is even more entrepreneur and they very well understand that strong leadership will help them here. They are always open for it and their expectations here are very clear and way high!
- Positive environment towards teamwork and collaboration. They believe in positive and open work culture. They enjoy transparent discussions that solves problems from root level and helps in collaborative success. They believe in giving visibility at every level including junior team members.
- Chance to learn new technologies and skills.This generation has learnt multi-tasking from their parents and they are even superior than them. They are Gen Tech, they have understood technology trends and span very well and are very receptive and quick at adapting new tools and technologies. They have understood very well that technology is a language of communication and logic resides on top of it!
- Flexible timings. They are responsible about getting their work done but they don’t like to bind themselves with fixed in-out timing and such other old school thoughts! They often want to leverage work from home policy too.
- Recognition through Money.They are very vigilant about their efforts getting converted into money in form of salary rise, bonus, shares and awards! They are also very clear on Extra Pay for Extra Work!
- Work-life balance.Work Hard! Have Fun! And no compromise here! They also believe in 9 to 5 jobs with full dedication when they are at work desk.
- Workplace comfort. They seek HR’s involvement for healthy and happy environment. A workplace with comfort beyond necessities is the requirement for them. HR’s role according to them is very important for making them comfortable at workplace. This includes policy comfort too. Working under the sky roof and resting with laptops on bean bags is much more relaxing for them!
- Job security.They were kids when they have seen their parents stress during recession times, so they believe in job security. Although reorg and layoffs are not scary for them, they want to do a job that provides security and they very consider this point for their job selections.
- Open for Inorganic growth. They are matured to take mergers, acquisitions and take-overs positively if they are done in the right way. As far as quick growth is concerned, they are open!
- Take Risk. They are higher risk takers than millennials. With awareness of all above pointers, they don’t hesitate to take calculative risk that can bring quick growth in their careers.
This is soon going to be the biggest workforce after 5 years. They will then march at lead and managerial levels and will set examples for their next generations.
They are clear in their goals and clear with their aspirations. They are ready to work hard but not at any compromise!
(Image courtesy: Csaba Balazs on Unplash)
