Will Humphreys argues that new graduates aren’t lazy but financially constrained by large debts; they prioritize time and flexibility (e.g., preferring 20-hour workweeks) and face employer misunderstandings about their motivations and capacity to work. The excerpt highlights tension between owners’ expectations and graduates’ valuation of life balance given overwhelming financial burdens.
Chapters
The problem is the debt. It's the focus on the money that they have to have because they have taken so much ridiculousness around that to get to the point where we were with much less debt, with way more opportunity. So that when I hear. When I hear owners talk about this next generation being lazy, I get really defensive. Yeah, they are actually more passionate because they wouldn't have signed up for this if they weren't. And there is this other thing that you hit upon that I agree, which is that, like, there's a different value in terms of time where people are legitimately wanting to have this whole thing about PTs not wanting to work full time. That's a real common thing that we're seeing. A lot of people are coming out of school saying, I just want to work 20 hours a week. And the owners are like, well, how are you paying your bills? We still don't know the answer to that. I know, but they're valuing time and flexibility above anything else, possibly for what you said, which is that they've got this money thing that's overhanging them to the point where they can never get out from underneath it, so they might as well enjoy life while it is.