What Gen Z Really Thinks About Work, Loyalty, and Ambition

Per My Last Email

Hosts Kaila and Kyle sit down with Morning Brew social creators Annie Bennett and Meg Banistic to debunk common stereotypes surrounding Gen Z in the

Key takeaways

• Annie Bennett and Meg Baniewicz use an outsider's perspective on business jargon to create relatable work-life comedy for Morning Brew.
• The shift from Facebook to TikTok-style consumption has changed how Gen Z interacts with social connection and professional networking.

Main topics

• Gen Z work stereotypes
• Impact of social media on connection

Notable quotes

Everything you know about Gen Z is wrong.

Conclusion

The episode provides a nuanced look at how economic and technological

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Everything you know about Gen Z is wrong. Speaker 3 (0:02) Okay, Kyle, not everything. But today we have Meg Banowitz and Annie Bennett on the pod. They are Morning Brew social creators. They're very funny and they are our Gen Z correspondents. They're going to tell us what we've gotten wrong and what we've gotten right. Speaker 2 (0:15) And how you can best work with that generation. Let's get into it. Speaker 3 (0:25) Before we get into Gen Z and our generational differences, Kyle, what's your favorite thing about croissant? A Speaker 2 (0:29) warm, buttery, soft inside. The type of pastry that can cheer you up even on your darkest days. Those perfect crispy flakes. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Speaker 3 (0:36) You need to chill about your love of croissants. And I meant the other croissant, the workplace orchestration company that's used by the most dynamic HR and finance leaders to enable access and governance to co-working locations across the U.S. Speaker 2 (0:47) Oh, that croissant. Yes, don't even get me started. The ability for distributed teams to have instant access to a curated network of professional workspaces. that enforces spend controls automatically at the moment of booking and allows people ops to see ENPS move with access, where every in-person moment ties back to your engagement data so you can see how in-person access correlates with that sentiment without standing up a separate survey tool. Speaker 3 (1:07) Whoa, you might love this croissant more than the pastry croissant. I Speaker 2 (1:11) think I actually do. And for HR leaders who want to fall in love with another croissant, go to getcroissant.com slash PMLE. Speaker 3 (1:18) Croissant handles the sourcing, bookings, and vendors for your distributed teams all in one place. Try Croissant now and they'll host lunch for you and your team in a Croissant space. Go to getcroissant.com slash P-M-L-E. Speaker 1 (1:31) Meg and Annie, we are so excited to have you guys. Thank you so much for joining Speaker 3 (1:35) us. Excited to be Speaker 1 (1:36) here. Speaker 3 (1:37) So obviously you two are the funniest people alive. So we already have that established as, as everyone knows. Um, but you've been doing a lot more work life comedy for morning brew through both the regular morning brew social channel, but also through a new channel that just got developed called the D suite. Um, I'm really curious, like how that process has been and how you kind of come up with ideas. Like what's, what's funny in the Speaker 4 (2:00) workplace and what's not. I feel like we start when we think about like making a video that's going to work or that will reach a wider audience. We tend to just let it starts with conversations that we're just having about things that we're noticing in the office. And some of it, it's sometimes helpful for us because we're not as like immersed in business lingo that we can come in without understanding it and find the funny in it because we're so outside of that world. But we still obviously have a lot of interactions with people who really understand the business world. really immersed in it. And so I think that presents a lot of opportunities for comedy because we're coming in being like, what do you mean by use case? And how many times can you say AI use case before I go, what the hell are you talking about? So that's I think that's one of the ways that we kind of think about it. Speaker 1 (2:48) Yeah, totally. I think there's a lot of stuff that happened in the workplace. That's like, why the hell are we doing that? Like, like, I feel like that's when you take because I actually I used to work at a like very much like more traditional finance job. And some of the stuff I right now is still things that happen there that I was like, why the hell is this like this? And why is everyone like, yeah, that's fine. That's how things work. Because it's almost like. Like that is that makes sense as people are all doing this thing and then you get to a point and I think it's helpful to have an outside perspective that you'll look at stuff because I think that's we do a lot on AI that we're almost sometimes we're like we need to make sure we're making other things but that's just prevalently what is affecting everyone. And since we're not using AI in our jobs when we see something that's sometimes too much AI we're like why are we doing that? Yeah. Speaker 3 (3:33) Yeah. So basically you guys have this like you, a comedy first lens, but you're applying it to business. And that feels like you're, you're not just like, oh, this is. what is accepted so why would i make fun of it it's like oh this is why is why are we doing this yeah Speaker 4 (3:47) and i think there's a lot of um like we talk to we have friends who are also in you know the business world and so it's interesting to watch they're like learning about what their day-to-day looks like specifically how it relates to ai um that i feel like i've noticed over the past year there are a lot more people who have integrated that into their daily work and their daily workflow and so for us i think seeing that it's very again kind of having an outside perspective on that because that's at this moment, it's not very useful to us and our work. But it's, we can kind of have fun with it and then still be able to kind of follow the kind of the cultural conversations around that without, because we are still so outside of it. I Speaker 2 (4:30) feel like you two and Morning Room in general, like particularly the social team has their finger on like. cultural pulse, the zeitgeist. Outside of AI, what work-life themes do you feel like are very resonant that get a lot of engagement? People clearly are like, oh, you've hit on something that I feel and you've articulated in a way that's extremely resonant. Are there other themes outside of AI that you think are popping off right now? Speaker 1 (4:59) Totally. I think there's an overarching one that's always like, when... things and maybe this will be too broad I'll see if I can get my thoughts together on it but like when things happen at the workplace that someone would never do to you one-on-one but because a company said it it's fine I think those are really good a lot of that is like rejecting like PTO or like how you speak to like a manager might have spoken to an employee like before that's like that's just not how people should interact but because it's at a company it's fine I think we see a lot of that and then there's a lot of just like Speaker 1 (5:32) I'm in a meeting and I hate it. Yeah. Speaker 2 (5:35) It's like when things are so artificial where you're like, if you took this out of a company, like you would be like, what the fuck are you saying? Why are you doing that? And Speaker 1 (5:41) there's like a weird like social contract where like you don't speak up about it and that's fine. That actually makes sense why you wouldn't say anything about it. But I think everyone's taking note of it. So I think a lot of that usually. does well. Yeah. I think that's a Speaker 4 (5:54) big part of it is the way that, um, companies, uh, also like companies, PR techniques and how they interact with people, because there's just so much, I think over the, I would, I feel like over the past just 20 years or 30 years, there's been so much more work in like the calm side of being, uh, you know, leading a company. Um, and that presents in some ways, a lot of opportunities for them to explain why they're doing what they're doing. But at other times, if you're so like, If you are a PR team and you're so up your own ass about how your company is good, you are not able to do a good job explaining it to people who don't have that same perspective. And I think that that kind of that dichotomy is really fun to play with. It's really interesting. Speaker 2 (6:36) I think it's a great tactic, too, for leaders. Like the more transparent and like plain, normal language you Speaker 3 (6:42) use, Speaker 2 (6:43) like then people actually understand what you're saying and are more receptive to it. Speaker 3 (6:46) Absolutely. I think it's also like these days and with this new generation. of individuals like joining the workforce, whether it's like later millennials and earlier Gen Z, like it's so obvious what is bullshit and what is not in most cases. And like, I think there was this like inspirational or aspirational element that maybe previous generations would buy into that it felt like fake it till you make it. And now it's like, why are we faking it? Like what, just be real with me. Tell me what we're really doing. And I think something that's really fun about your, you know, social videos is that you're pointing that out in places where maybe it Speaker 2 (7:27) hasn't been pointed out yet Speaker 3 (7:30) generally. And so I think that's what's really fun and what really resonates with people. I also think you guys do a really good job. Speaker 2 (7:38) We're complimenting everyone. Love your fits. Everything Speaker 3 (7:42) about you guys is awesome, but I really like when you take stuff that's not work-related and apply it to the office. So one of my favorite videos that you guys have done recently that's work-related is the World Cup. Speaker 3 (7:56) time clock. That was a, that was a Meg. That was a Meg hitter. It was so funny. It was like, you know, everyone's getting up to leave and then, you know, Uber pulls out a thing that says like a ref, like five o'clock plus 20 minutes. And then everyone's like, ah, and like goes back to work. Um, and I think that's just like such a fun, unique way to like apply what's happening in real life to like what's happening in the office. Speaker 1 (8:16) Yeah, totally. That and I'll give also our coworker, Ethan, some credit on coming up with Speaker 4 (8:22) that. Speaker 1 (8:23) But yeah, I think that is one of my favorite ones to do because I think that's also like with like the whatever commentary,