[Raghu M]

Originally Posted by d3mon

The best guys in the industry are making maybe 10-40L as fresh grads.

I may be wrong, but 25K is what an uber / private driver can make very easily these days. And any enterprising fresh grad with the skill sets that you are asking of can make a lot more with some sort of side hustles / upskilling. Why should they spend their energy in trying to deliver outsized results by going above and beyond in a job with linear growth and a blue-collar wage?

Working in a 3-5L job with no potential for exponential growth is not going to attract the best talent of the industry, and perhaps that's why some of the opinions in this thread are coming down quite heavily on the "Gen-Z" crowd.

My organization hires from the best colleges and pays a decent starting package. We are just not seeing the kind of problems that are being portrayed in this thread as being "Gen-Z" specific. Lack of attention and addiction to mobiles / social media is a worldwide phenomenon that's affecting all ages, not just Gen-Z.

If the question boils down to why should they spend their energy then that sort of mind set will take them nowhere. 10L to 40L? What industry are you hiring for? I don't think even Google or MS does that kind of hiring for freshers. They may be the cream and are needed for very specific and niche roles. That's not the case all over. I clearly did not generalize. There are some smart kids who are part of unicorns but majority of the crowd is clearly disoriented. Reasons that have no justification, after all it's their career. After a few years, it will be hard to repair the damage to their careers.

[Chetan_Rao]

Originally Posted by Samurai

...I still don't really understand what is happening here. But I cannot attribute this to the generational thing since this trend is very different than before. Well outside the standard deviation.

The post you responded to earlier that started this conversation, contained some very generalised criticism that does span generations. I validated it with someone NOT from a primarily technology driven industry, and their professional experience predates gen Z.

You're absolutely right what's happening now has some very specific differences from what's happened in prior generations, because there are very specific circumstances now that didn't exist before:

1. Technology is the biggest one. The internet has exploded just within the last 10-15 years far beyond anything technology was capable of in terms of reach before that.

2. Continuing from #1, tech-enabled gig work has created earning potential in ways that simply didn't exist before. Imagine a popular young tech reviewer's channel (e.g. MKBHD), or a popular make-up tips channel, or a popular travel vlogging channel, or even a popular video game streaming channel. It's hard work, make no mistake, but the reach and $$ potential is insane. Not everyone is or can be a freelance gig worker, of course, the broader point I'm trying to make is young adults today have a very different view of what 'gainful employment' even looks like, and the what/where/when/who/how of it, compared to prior generations.

3. Young urban adults of today, have grown up in times where their parents simultaneously had more money than the generation before, but also worse job & income stability, less time to spend with them and to focus on their education. Anyone whose exposure to jobs & work (whether their own or their parents') has only been post the mid-late noughties looks at it very differently from those older than them. My father spent his entire career in one industry, I'll probably need to find a second career when I cross 40 and cost & ageism makes me unemployable in my present work, and maybe a third if I live long enough into old age. Young adults today will probably work a half dozen careers spanning a few years each in their professional lifespan. Very different motivations, very different ideas of what 'longevity' is, very different expectations of what 'role progression' entails. When we think 'they're ruining their career', they're thinking 'I'm probably not cut out for this one, I'll work on and build another'. And another after that. Rinse and repeat.

We need to first understand and accept that there's a primary disconnect in how generations leading up to Z and Z themselves look at work, how we even define it, before we can have the discussion of how to enable the generations to work together as the workforce transitions from one to another.

I don't claim to understand all of it either, but as someone who does this for a living, I've spent enough time with this to know it's not as simple as 'they're just entitled coddled brats who want to do nothing and just want a free handout'.

They can be fantastically hardworking, creative, committed and focused, if/when someone makes the effort to sync with them. They don't respond well to 'do as you're told' or 'this is how we did it and has always been done'. It's not like we have a choice, avoiding them is at best short-term mitigation.

An anecdote from a workforce management industry event I share often when such discussions arise: if I drew a Venn diagram of business leaders who don't think much of 'youngsters' and hold their own generation in high regard AND business leaders tripping over themselves to replace said older ones with said youngsters, I'd have myself a circle, pretty much . Watch the hands, not the mouth.


P.S. All of that punctuated by the fact that gen Z is not a monolith, same as any other generation before them wasn't. Within my span of influence are kids who've never known scarcity of any kind and come from generations of well-educated, decently well-off families, and also kids that even in 2024 are still the first generation of their lineage to get a formal education and looking to make a career off it. They might be the same age but might as well belong to different universes of world-views, so I don't see the point in generalising entire generations as the ongoing gen Z narrative attempts to do.

[antonylejos]

Very close to being a fresher in 2006, I was working in Mumbai. My take home salary was something around 24k.

With that I brought a flat in Vasai in EMI for 7 lac - EMI 7k.
Food from outside, travel, cooking some days - 5-6k.
Saving/giving to parents - 9k + every month, which was a good amount even at home.

I was a Tier 3 graduate.

Fast forward to 2024, with 24-25k salary, forget about buying a flat in Vasai-Virar, which is still an unwanted or chance to get trolled kind of exurb of Mumbai, the freshers cannot even afford to stay in a proper PG near the office.

When we got our first jobs, we upgraded our lifestyle and feared to lose it. So we worked hard to sustain the newly found life, and growth was a byproduct of it.

GenX employees, with 25-30k salaries, often downgrade their lifestyle if they are not getting financial support from parents.

and employers are complaining they are less motivated!!!


I am surprised, if they cannot understand why.

[YD14]

Originally Posted by Raghu M

4. The salary is never going to be satisfactory. We pay 20K fixed and allowances and incentives (not linked to performance) make up for around 15 to 20K additional. So, they have a take home of at least 35K but they seem to never be satisfied about it. I would jump at that no. if I were a fresher

Nobody can help their family while earning 35k in Hyderabad. You are lucky you are not a fresher. The very statement "I would jump at that no. if I were a fresher" is what generation gap is.

If you wanna hear from a recent graduate living in Bengaluru and who has a couple of close friends working in Hyderabad, read ahead. (It is not targeted at you but the managers we have met.)

A non-slum PG in Hyderabad/Bengaluru costs upwards of 10k. Add costs of lunch, tea and other daily food like fruits, milk etc (nobody can live on PG food alone, it is really that bad) and you end up spending 15-16k just on Rent+Food (provided there is cheap food available in office canteen, otherwise more). Add another 2K for travel (metro or bus), mobile recharge and that odd Zomato order probably once in a month. Mind you, this lifestyle is just about livable one, not a luxury one. You can move to a slum like PG and save more but you will have to pay with you mental health there.

You may still think, well they are saving about 15k per month what else do they need? Now consider this, my government college fees for 4 years of BTech was 13L total. Add more for Masters and then remember interest rates on education loans are above 10% in India. I am not gonna talk about coaching costs here. If you meet a fresher jumping at 35k, he may already have a home in Hyderabad. See it from our perspective, WFH can eliminate these costs and make 35k a more than comfortable salary.

Nobody in the management ever has the courage to ask freshers how are they doing in terms of living even when they have a casual chat. It's only my friends and people couple of years senior who care and give advice. I shifted from a slum PG to non-slum PG after getting advice from a guy who is 1 year senior. The apathy from more senior people just confuses me. Nobody wants them to put their arm around freshers but just a understanding that they are not enjoying heavenly luxuries or have it too easy in their present role would be nice.

Yes, I know most of the millennials lived in worse conditions when they started their jobs, but that is no justification to continue this trend. Once again this reflects the generational gap.

Every situation can be improved. Like hiring people without degree would solve both the useless degree and education cost problem, but alas these millennial managers are not great problem solvers. My otherwise friendly manager told me my BTech is useless and everything I would do at job would have to be taught to me here. Ok but then why do you hire only CS graduates from government colleges with 4 year degree and above 7 CGPA but not some BA guy from no name college? Or even a Mechanical guy who hasn't done anything related to CS?

And please don't tell me this was constructive criticism. Constructive would have been worded like "Your degree alone does not prepare you for this particular job, we would need to teach you most of the work related concepts here."

[Burgman_tales]

As some other BHPians mentioned as well, it's not a Gen-Z thing but a COVID batch thing. My company hires freshers from few old IITs every year. I have seen them year over year for many years. I see issues only with batch of 2022 and 2023 (haven't worked with 2024 ones). These guys completed most of their degree sitting at home online. They have massive gap in communication, professionalism etc, they do not know how to behave in an office environment at all and act like they are still in college. This was never the case for previous batches, so this is not a generation gap.

[Captain Slow]

I had a pleasure/fortune of interviewing one such specimen today! Everything went in the end this specimen is like - I want to work only 4 days a week ! I smile and tell him we will call him back !

[Raghu M]

Originally Posted by YD14

If you wanna hear from a recent graduate living in Bengaluru and who has a couple of close friends working in Hyderabad, read ahead. (It is not targeted at you but the managers we have met.)

A non-slum PG in Hyderabad/Bengaluru costs upwards of 10k. Add costs of lunch, tea and other daily food like fruits, milk etc (nobody can live on PG food alone, it is really that bad) and you end up spending 15-16k just on Rent+Food (provided there is cheap food available in office canteen, otherwise more). Add another 2K for travel (metro or bus), mobile recharge and that odd Zomato order probably once in a month. Mind you, this lifestyle is just about livable one, not a luxury one. You can move to a slum like PG and save more but you will have to pay with you mental health there.

You may still think, well they are saving about 15k per month what else do they need? Now consider this, my government college fees for 4 years of BTech was 13L total. Add more for Masters and then remember interest rates on education loans are above 10% in India. I am not gonna talk about coaching costs here. If you meet a fresher jumping at 35k, he may already have a home in Hyderabad. See it from our perspective, WFH can eliminate these costs and make 35k a more than comfortable salary.

Glad you brought these points. The average cost of doing B.Tech in the Telugu states (even if you score farther of 50K rank in EAMCET) is around 2 to 3 lakhs maximum and most of the students get a fees reimbursement. I am not sure which govt. college charges 13L for an engineering degree. Maybe you can share the details here. My company doesn't even hire B.tech freshers, so the argument of paying these interests and calculations is not relevant. An MBA in the Telugu states can be done in under 3 lakhs (max) and that can be recovered in a couple to 3 years doing a job.

Coming to fresher salaries, I saw someone comparing the 25K to an Uber driver. I can hardly understand what sort of comparison that is. If an employee makes 35K a month and grows by 10% standard hike for 4 to 5 years, he would be making a healthy 50K. Will we now compare the salaries to someone selling samosas or vada pav? (no offence meant towards any business or job here). Am sure they make healthy money. Now if he wants to stay in an upmarket PG or rent a flat is not the point of discussion.

The entire process takes time. When you are not from a very good college, you need to work hard to make your way to the top. Agree the salaries may be low but given the global scenario, getting an opportunity to prove yourself is a privilege. Once you make your mark, you can always command what you are worth. Not to debate you but doing these calculations and sharing managers mindset doesn't solve the problem. If you read my post carefully, we have a mild hybrid in place. That was planned to ensure employees do not take the pain in daily traffic and spend additional money on food etc.

[Noctis]

Originally Posted by antonylejos

When we got our first jobs, we upgraded our lifestyle and feared to lose it. So we worked hard to sustain the newly found life, and growth was a byproduct of it.

GenX employees, with 25-30k salaries, often downgrade their lifestyle if they are not getting financial support from parents and employers are complaining they are less motivated!!!

Well said, it's an often missed fact that the rewards do not align with the expected levels of motivation anymore. Starting salaries have mostly remained flat over the last 1-2 decades while the cost of living has shot up exponentially.

Ideally they should still put in more work and tough it through the initial years to make a mark, but that's easier said than done for a fresher and frankly how many of us had such maturity at that age.

[Ays7]

When it comes to Salaries for freshers, if you are not in Organised sector, it actually is in doldrums.

As an Advocate, I know countless law firms who hire fresh graduates at stipend or salary of as low as 10K a month and subsequently bump it off to 15K within 3 months or so. And this is Mumbai. A lot of firms do not pay interns anything except conveyance expenses.

And this will be true for thousands of bottom tier law firms in Mumbai, one that have 8-10 people operation. Unfortunately, it is what it is. The bright ones move up the ladder quickly, start their own practices or make money that is more than a living wage. The mediocre ones are unfortunately always in a rut, fighting for survival from month to month.

I cannot stress this enough, most of the graduates are simply unemployable. The standards are deplorable. Remove the top 20 law schools in the country and the bottom just languishes.

These students, their motivation levels aside, often have a romanticised notion of a law firm, many have grown up watching courtroom dramas and are in for a rude shock when they approach the real world. Most of them end up disillusioned and quit and a few get on with the grind.

Are they part of Gen - Z? Yes, very much so. Do they think they are entitled? Not all of them. Are they employable? Very few. Employing a fresher often means training them for a scratch and it takes years rather than months. The good ones move on and the firms have to hire new ones at dirt cheap pay. The cycle goes on and on.

The IT Freshers who often get 3-5 LPA package are a matter of envy when it comes to these law graduates, for whom a starting package of that kind would really be a dream.

[Siddarth_Ramani]

This thread is absolute cinema, the senior members have no clue on reality and the sense of entitlement is unreal. I'm a 2002 born CA finalist, the woes of that degree is a topic for another day. Cost of engineering is 3L? Yessir that degree will not get you any job, If you do get a job with that degree, you could have gotten it without a degree as well. Engineering fees for 4 year in a good reputable tier 2 college is around 20L (Source : Cousins and friends) add living expenses, useless projects and stuff for another 5L, you are looking at 25L debt. With 35k take home I don't even wan to run the budget.

There may have been an odd case or two of GenZ employees being lazy, that would apply to your generation as well. We also had a 26YO CA who worked herself to death because of managers of your generation, wonder where this generation was then. With that pity of a salary, there is nothing to look for, let's not even talk about housing prices. It feels illegal to even think about owning a home with current market.
I also noticed another comment, "you have to work hard if you didn't get good college. That is because we are competing with 3x population for education and jobs which you guys had for the same salaries as 15 years ago" have some sense of reality.
"I would jump at that opportunity" No sir you would not, be glad that you are not a fresher in this market.

I have a friend who is a proper seasoned tech-geek, he was building stuff in his college, he took BSc physics instead of Comp science and now he doesn't have a job. I have his resume with me, wonder if anyone can help me get him a job if it is that easy.

[Gaur]

Originally Posted by Siddarth_Ramani

Cost of engineering is 3L? Yessir that degree will not get you any job, If you do get a job with that degree, you could have gotten it without a degree as well. Engineering fees for 4 year in a good reputable tier 2 college is around 20L (Source : Cousins and friends) add living expenses, useless projects and stuff for another 5L, you are looking at 25L debt. With 35k take home I don't even wan to run the budget.

20L for a 4 year engg course in a tier 2 college ? which state is this in ?
My B.I.L is currently in 1st yr engineering in a reputable NAAC accredited college in Mumbai and his annual fees is around 1.45lac since i assisted him with the admission process i understood that majority of colleges in and around mumbai have fees around 1.5lac with top colleges being around 1.9lac-2.2lac.

Also there is no relation between cost of engineering and getting a job/quality job infact i would go on to say even high marks in engg has not much to do with getting a good job, yes a good college and good marks definitely gives you an edge but i have seen back benchers (including myself) doing good in corporate world.

Regarding cost of living and starting wages i agree its a bit more difficult now then what was say maybe 8-10yrs back particularly if you get a job away from your hometown, but that has been the case more or less earlier as well.

For reference i started my career as a GET in 2011 with a annual salary of 1lac which was ~8k per month that too in another city, my dad even joked that his drivers earn more than that every month but i was determined to join as it was the domain that i wanted to work in and it was a good entry point, intial few months were quite tight, after paying the rent (sharing with friends), food, travel, miscellaneous.. is was often left with around 500rs at the end of the month but fortunately we soon had a mid term hike which made things comfortable.

I know its a tight market out there but hanging on and more importantly being clear on what you want to do helps.

[vinit.merchant]

Originally Posted by Siddarth_Ramani

There may have been an odd case or two of GenZ employees being lazy, that would apply to your generation as well.

I agree to a lot of what you say. There have been lazy population in every generation. But I have noticed that there is greater sense of entitlement in the Gen Z batch of lazy population, which did not exist earlier.
At the same time I have also seen extremely smart % of population from the Gen Z and also seen how awesome they are at their work as compared to the older gen.

The scale is tilting towards the extreme on both sides, I am afraid.

Originally Posted by Siddarth_Ramani

This thread is absolute cinema, the senior members have no clue on reality and the sense of entitlement is unreal. I'm a 2002 born CA finalist, the woes of that degree is a topic for another day.

I was pursuing CA when you were born and started my career @ 2004.
Passing % for CA back then was in single digits (below 5%). It is in double digits now.
I remember my days as an article, back then our pay scales were fixed at 250 rupees a month for first year, 500 for the second and 750 for third year.

I am still a CA finalist, as I could not complete & I am completely aware of the woes of that degree. In fact, % of passouts has increased multifold from my time.

I also noticed another comment, "you have to work hard if you didn't get good college. That is because we are competing with 3x population for education and jobs which you guys had for the same salaries as 15 years ago" have some sense of reality.

You might be competing with 3x the population for education, but as far as corporate jobs are concerned, the opportunities are multifold now as compared to the early 2000s.

"I would jump at that opportunity" No sir you would not, be glad that you are not a fresher in this market.

We also had a 26YO CA who worked herself to death because of managers of your generation, wonder where this generation was then.

Jobs were far and few during the 2000s and 6 days work week used to be a norm and during peak times, a few working Sundays were not questioned. And we did not get any OT for these. Don't even ask me the number of hours that we put in a week. We have never blamed the previous gen managers for this, because this is how the normal work culture used to be.

The big 4 were known to extract every bit from their employees even back in the day. It has nothing to do with the generation of manager, but rather to the culture practiced in those organizations. Thankfully I never got to work in the big 4 during my early days, but even back then these were the most sought after.

When IT & ITES industry jobs gained momentum around 2005, they brought in the 5 day work week and this was a relief for our generation workforce. We quickly shifted to ITES industry.
The industry has grown so much that today there are multiple IT parks in all Tier I & II cities and some have expanded to even Tier III.
So the opportunities available per eligible graduate is much more that what it used to be back in the day.
My starting salary was 1.2L per annum which translated to ~8k per month.
This wasn't a great amount for those freshers who were from outstation.

[Chisels121]

This thread shows how many GenX or even early millennials are disconnected from reality.
Any I repeat any decent engineering degree costs you more than 10 lakhs and there is no doubt about it. People who say that GenZ are not hardworking are wrong . My own GenZ cousin who is an investment banker and an IIT graduate works 72-80 hours a week. After seeing his condition me and my younger cousins(we are also in IIT and NIT)are shit scared about ourselves as he didn't even remember his own parents' 25th anniversary. To top it all off he is a COVID graduate. Times are changing for the worse and seniors should acknowledge the fact that freshers today are pressurized than they were but would they? No.

[warrioraks]

This seems a multi-pronged problem, only part of which can be attributed to GenZ. Here is my take on it:
1. Overall growth sentiment is worsening and silent layoffs are the norm. The same is reflected in companies pushing for RTOs expecting some willful attrition. So GenZs which are new hires are just collateral damage.
2. Part of GenZ population is an entitled bunch, primarily the ones coming from 2nd-3rd generation wealthy families. It is hard to keep them engaged and motivated when money is no longer the driving factor. However GenZ coming from less affluent backgrounds are hungry for success but are directionless and distracted. They need some patient handholding and timely nudges to mold into good corporate citizens. This guidance is missing which brings me to the next point.
3. Leadership crisis in mid-management - A lot of people have grown to manager positions with inadequate leadership skills. Even when it is known that the next generation expects a more purpose oriented work-culture rather than an authoritarian regime, there is little to no initiative on part of the mid-management professionals to change the leadership style. Employees are still seen as resources to be exploited which is sub-optimal for the longer run and things start breaking.
4. Combine this with the post-Covid hiring where almost half the employee base for a lot of companies could have been hired at the time of 100% work from home, the clash in ideologies, lack of alignment on professional standards and friction in setting up strong teams starts making sense.

At the heart of the matter, the equilibrium with respect to work-life and professionalism is shifting rapidly in India. It will take a few years but eventually a new equilibrium will be achieved.

[JediKnight]

The present economic structure is unfavorably biased against young people. It favors asset owners (typically old people) and exploits workers (typically younger people). Wages for freshers have gone down when adjusted for inflation where as asset prices (stocks/real estate ), corporate profits has skyrocketed over the past few decades. It is very easy to dismiss youngsters as lazy. Quoting myself from a different thread.

Originally Posted by JediKnight

Very interesting take on how the economy is especially oppressive for young people. Though the talk is on the US economy but similar trends are emerging in richer parts of India.

• Every economic policy designed to transfer wealth from workers (young people) to asset owners(old people).
  
• Average housing cost pre-pandemic 2,90,000 USD in just four years it is now 4,20,000 USD and interest rates have gone from 3 to 7%
  
• Many young people have given up saving for houses as it outside their reach.
  
• Many young are not marrying and having kids as it is unaffordable. 60% of people 30-34 in 1990 had one child now it is 27%
  
• Economy/education/housing weaponized by rich out of reach for majority of young people.
  
• People under the age of 40 are on average 24% less wealthy then they were 40 years ago. People over the age of 75 are 72% wealthier.
  
• Divorce reduces your wealth by 60% overnight. This is a serious issue in developed countries where divorce rates are very high. E.g. US divorce rate is around 50%

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jdbP30_kNk