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Generational clash at work

Generational clash at work

In medio stat virtus: notes on the generations at work

Every few months, someone declares a winner in the generational wars. Boomers are quietly clearing their desks, GenXers get cast as the burned-out workaholics who ruined work-life balance for everyone, and Gen Z arrives with boundaries, a therapist on speed dial, and a healthy suspicion of anyone who says “we’re a family here.” I sit right in the middle of this, as a GenXer who genuinely loves her work, and I keep thinking the Latins had it figured out long ago in medio stat virtus. Virtue stands in the middle.

So let me make the case for the middle, with a few numbers, a couple of confessions, and a quiet plea for all of us to stop yelling across the open-plan office.

What they say about us GenXers

The accusation is familiar by now. We are the yes-people. We answer emails on vacation, we let the job creep into dinner, we treat our careers like a personality trait. There is some truth in it, and the data does not let us off the hook. In one study, 38% of Gen X workers admitted to working while on vacation at least sometimes, and only 4% said they never do. Guilty, occasionally.

What gets lost is the rest of the picture. When the same generation was asked to choose between meaningful work and a big paycheck, 71% picked meaning. Asked to choose between family and career, 78% chose family. We are not the cartoon. We are people who came up in a moment when showing up early and staying late was how you proved yourself, and a lot of us internalized that as loyalty rather than self-harm. Almost 8 in 10 of us also feel like the forgotten generation, sandwiched between the boomers who get the headlines and the younger crowd who get the trend pieces.

My own confession

I will own my part of this. I have always cared about work, and I do not plan to apologize for it. My work helps define who I am, it sits near the top of my priorities, and in the early years of my career, I traded away personal time that I will never get back. Here is the thing, though: the balance sheet still comes out positive. I do not regret it.

That mindset has a specific origin for me. I started as a freelancer before spending two decades in the corporate world, and as a freelancer, you are 100% responsible for everything. The accounting, the reporting, the sales, the credit management, the awkward chase for an overdue invoice, all of it lands on your desk and nowhere else. I wrote more about that solitary, liberating reality in Freelancing and Networking and in Hiring a Freelancer vs. FTE. That total ownership built an internal engine, and it carried me through some genuinely toxic situations, including the startup disillusionment that taught me that culture beats everything else. When you have had to be your own entire company, you do not fold easily.

What Gen Z got right

Now, the part where I hand the microphone to the younger crowd, because they have earned it. Gen Z drew a line that my generation never quite dared to draw. They decided that mental health matters more than the next bonus, and the numbers show they mean it. Around 47% say they would accept lower pay for better balance, and in some surveys, more than 80% say they will not sacrifice their mental health for a bigger paycheck. Fewer than 6 in 10 rate their own mental wellbeing as good, and 40% report feeling stressed or anxious most of the time, so this is not a fashion statement. It comes from a real place.

I concur with them, fully. The boundary is healthy, and frankly, I wish someone had handed me that permission slip at 25. The financial pressure they carry is heavier too: 48% of Gen Z said they did not feel financially secure in 2025, up from 30% the year before. They are balancing higher anxiety against higher costs, and they are still insisting on a life outside the spreadsheet.

Where it gets complicated

And yet there is a flip side. Sometimes the boundary tips into something that, from the other side of the desk, reads as sloppiness or the bare minimum. The clean line between “protecting my energy” and “doing as little as I can get away with” can blur, and older colleagues notice. This is exactly where I think both sides are arguing past each other. Protecting your well-being and doing excellent work are not opposites, and the 80% road to perfection is a useful bridge here: the Pareto principle says good work delivered now beats perfect work delivered never, which is a standard that a GenXer perfectionist and a balance-minded Gen Zer can actually meet.

The truth, as it usually does, lives in the middle. My generation could stand to log off more often. The younger one could lean in a little harder on the days that count. Nobody has the whole answer.

The reliability comeback, real or hoped for

There is a story going around that companies are rediscovering the 50+ crowd, hungry for reliability, institutional memory, and people who actually answer the phone. The evidence is mixed but encouraging in parts. Around 70% of older workers report a deep commitment to their employer, and firms such as IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce, and Cisco have developed programs to attract and retain experienced staff. The honest caveat is that age bias has not vanished, and plenty of long-tenured people are still being nudged toward the exit at their peak. I am not sure how durable the comeback is, though I very much hope we all get recognized for what we actually bring. The job market itself keeps shifting under our feet, something I touched on in AI and the labor market and in the job hunter’s heartbreak.

Diversity is the actual strategy.

This is where someone like Barbara Bailini, a long-time leader at eBay Italy with more than 25 years in the business, is worth listening to. I can say that with some bias, because Barbara is a former colleague of mine across countries, we worked together in Italy and in Switzerland, and she remains one of my closest friends to this day. She has spoken often about diversity and inclusion as something you build on purpose, through concrete actions rather than slogans, creating workplaces where everyone can express their full potential. Under that thinking, eBay Italy earned its Great Place to Work certification, which is a reminder that mixed, respectful teams are not a feel-good extra. They are how good work gets done.

On a happier and more personal note, eBay is sponsoring a concert in my hometown this year, and it happens to fall on Barbara’s birthday. I cannot wait to go with her and host her at my place. Cross-generational, cross-country friendships built at work are exactly the kind of thing I am arguing for, and ours is living proof.

I feel this personally. I love spending time with younger colleagues, and their fresh perspective, plus their rooted values around sustainability, wellness, and uncompromised ethics, are things I learn from and grow with. They, in turn, can borrow some of the grit and ownership my generation accumulated the hard way. Put a GenXer’s stamina next to a Gen Zer’s boundaries, and you get something better than either alone.

So no, I will not pick a side in the generational war. I will stand where the Latins told me to stand, right in the middle, learning in both directions. In medio stat virtus.

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Chiara Bonifazi