Here’s why one Gen Xer likes working with his Gen Z colleagues

• Gen Z can catch flak for being difficult in the workplace.
• But a Gen X boss at Duolingo recently broke down the good aspects of working with Gen Z on an episode of podcast “The Return.”
• There’s a growing consensus that Gen Z is bringing about a workplace reckoning. 

It’s not uncommon to hear managers complain that Gen Z workers are lazy, lack soft skills, or need constant supervision.

But Gen Xer Stephen Chen, general counsel at the language-learning app Duolingo, recently broke down the good aspects of working with Gen Z on an episode of Digiday’s podcast “The Return.”

Gen Z has pushed back on corporate norms, which the 49-year-old Chen said has helped create a better sense of work-life balance for all employees.

Here are Chen’s (positive) takeaways about the good of working with Gen Z:

• Gen Z is better at “acknowledging they’re full human beings,” he said.

  When he started out in the 1990s, there was a sense that bringing your emotions to work was “somewhat taboo.”

  “If you had issues, those were your issues, and you kind of just handled them silently without any mention of it at all,” he added. “You really weren’t allowed to talk about it.”

  The changing attitude of Gen Z workers benefits all generations, he said, as it is facilitating a more open environment for employees to talk about the stress or anxiety they’re experiencing.

• Gen Z has taught Chen the value of breaking the corporate facade.

  One of Chen’s duties at Duolingo is to place parameters around the content that his Gen Z colleague, 25-year-old senior social media manager Zaria Parvez, creates for Duolingo’s viral TikTok account.

  In the process, Parvez has helped him better understand the kind of content that users connect with, he said, adding that building that relationship with users can sometimes be paramount to being on-message.

  She’s also encouraged him to break out of his shell by casting him as a recurring character named “Legal Steve”  in videos on Duolingo’s TikTok channel.

• Having a good sense of work-life balance, which Gen Z typically values, improves overall workplace culture, he said.

  He appreciates how Parvez and workers who entered the workforce around the same time as her are “hardworking professionals” who are also committed to having “rich personal lives.”