The 'Lucky To Be Here' Generation Could Learn A Lot From Gen Z
“I’m just lucky to be here.”
If you entered the workforce amidst mass layoffs, a 2008 financial crisis, or the trauma of a global pandemic, then you know the rush of gratitude you can feel for even securing a job. I know I sure have.
But there’s an insidious message behind internalizing this way of thinking. At worst, this scarcity mindset can make you feel like you have no control over your career ― and should just accept whatever scraps of benefits or assignments you’re given.
If you, like me, were a Millennial who grew up watching “The Devil Wears Prada,” then this movie became one of your earliest touchstones of a “lucky to be here” mindset.
I took to heart the film’s classic line of “a million girls would kill for this job.” Like Andy in “Devil Wears Prada,” my jobs felt like a never-ending intense competition. This was the era of “girl bosses” where getting ahead for women meant hustling at whatever cost to your well-being. You showed your commitment to the job by staying later and staying silent to abusive bosses ― and your promotion up this system was seen as a success story.
In my own case, I was so lucky to have a job that I did not think about the fact that a company should also be lucky to have me. I learned this lesson early in my career when my co-worker told me she had successfully asked for $3 more on our hourly salary when she mentioned her master’s degree. We had the exact same degree, but I did not negotiate my salary.
Back then, I felt lucky to even have gotten an interview. I was afraid that negotiating would retract my job offer. Reflecting on the money I lost out on over the year of not asking was nauseating. It was a harsh wake-up call I never forgot.
Why a “lucky to be here” mentality hurts you and your career.
The big problem with feeling like you are lucky to work at a certain company is how it disregards the personal effort and strategy it took for you to land that job, said career and leadership coach Phoebe Gavin.
With this belief, “We reinforce the idea that our employers are doing us a favor when actually it’s supposed to be a proportionate value exchange,” she said. “We provide value to the company so that it can reach its goals, and the company provides value to us so that we can reach our goals.”
A “lucky to be here” mindset is not just caused by generational recession-based scars. It might also be due to the cultural scripts you were raised with in your family, said Jasmine Escalera, a career expert at LiveCareer, a resume builder and platform for job seekers.
For her, feeling “lucky to be here” at her job came from growing up in poverty as a Latina with parents who had never held corporate jobs. She said her parents wanted her to “be safe and stable over unnecessarily striving to achieve more.”
But if you embody this “heads down, grind it out, get the work done” headspace, Escalera noted, this can foster burnout and loyalty to a company that is not necessarily beneficial to the employee.
“I’m hoping us Millennials are the last ones to really be diving into this kind of [‘lucky to be here’] mindset,” Escalera said. She noted that younger generations have the advantage of access to more information online that can teach them: “I have value and I am an asset.”
And it’s true. The young professionals I talk with are much more job savvy than I ever was at their age. They witnessed and participated in the #MeToo movement. They know what a toxic job is and that HR is not your friend. They have a much healthier view on work and promote anti-hustle culture on TikTok with “bare minimum Mondays” and “lazy girl jobs.”
For them, a job is often just a job. Gabrielle Judge ― the content creator who popularized “lazy girl jobs” ― previously told me that the term is all “about creating as much freedom and space in your personal life as possible through efficient work days, although not everyone will understand.”
I was so lucky to have a job that I did not think about the fact that a company should also be lucky to have me.
For insecure Millennials, learning to ask what your job can do for you is a good lesson. Just don’t take it too far.
“Most people over-index on insecurity, but there are definitely some folks who swing to the other side of the pendulum a little bit too hard when they’re trying to escape that insecurity and fail to look at their growth area,” Gavin said.
Jocelyn Lai, global head of talent brand at Duolingo, said that she has seen job candidates say that a company would be “lucky to have them” and have that attitude backfire. Instead, for her, the most successful candidates are able to share why their experiences with a past project have given them ideas on how to make the prospective employer’s projects even better, for example.
“Using your experience to backup your rationale, [and being] as specific as possible, it then focuses on the impact that you would bring, versus ‘I just want X amount of money,’” Lai said.
So don’t let the work speak for itself. Do share what your value is ― but be sure to back it up with specific examples.
Instead of feeling “lucky to be here” or leaning far into the idea that they’re “lucky to have you,” try adopting this small mindset shift instead.
Ideally, you go into a job negotiation with the mindset of “I want to make this work because we’re lucky to have each other. I want to apply my talents here to help the company move forward. And at the same time, Company, I hope you value my talent,” Lai said.
I believe this is the best shift away from “lucky to have me” or “lucky to be here” insecurities. It’s where you see your peers not as cutthroat competition for a dwindling number of jobs, but as allies. You mutually invest in each other’s careers to get ahead together. You hold each other accountable, because you know that their success helps boost the chances of yours.
Take the example of runner Shalane Flanagan, who won the New York City marathon in 2017. Flanagan purposefully practiced alongside her 11 teammates, and by mentoring her training partners, they all made it to the Olympics.
You embody the “lucky to have each other” attitude when you know you are stronger together than alone ― and that’s a mindset pro-union Gen Z workers know well. Support for unions has grown in every generation, but Gen Z in particular is more pro-union than any generation before it, as Aurelia Glass found in her research for policy institute Center for American Progress.
“Gen Z is really recognizing that unions are such a great way to work together with their co-workers to achieve better working conditions and wages, because the results have really spoken for themselves,” Glass told HuffPost. Case in point: For U.S. workers under 24, union membership has boosted their earnings by nearly 15% between 2016–2021, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
Elyanna Calle, a 21-year-old server in Austin, Texas, who is also the president of union Restaurant Workers United, has seen this generational difference firsthand. Calle has noticed that with older service workers, there can be the scarcity mindset of “Nothing’s going to change. This is just how it is.” while “Gen Z is absolutely more open to organizing,” she said.
So how do you break through those fears? Thinking nothing is ever going to change can be demoralizing, while remembering “I should have health care as a human right, or I should be able to go on a vacation and be able to afford it” can be an energizing message that helps different co-workers unify together, Calle said. Because then, “You start to get in this mindset of more like, ‘You know what, this is not acceptable.’”
In my view, this is why “lucky to have each other” is the best reframing. The self-assuredness of “lucky to have me” is when you know that you deserve more, but “lucky to have each other” is when you realize, “We all deserve more.”
And that’s the belief that can keep you energized and hopeful, no matter how lucky you’re feeling on a particular work day.
