Why do so many new grads seem completely disengaged from the actual field they chose?
I work in a pretty knowledge-heavy corporate role and I’m starting to notice a huge shift with some younger grads/new starters. Not talking about wanting work-life balance or refusing unpaid overtime......that part is completely fair and I wish my generation pushed more for those things. I'm talking mean a genuine lack of curiosity about the actual work itself or desire to learn.
Grads and younger new starters seem irritated having to read even just 2–3 pages of background material to inform a report. One person recently put a 1.5-page document into AI instead of just reading it. Anything beyond the immediate task feels like it’s treated as unreasonable effort.
A lot of us picked our careers because we were at least somewhat interested in the subject area. Even if work is still work, there was usually some satisfaction in understanding context, learning more over time, and becoming genuinely competent.
Now it feels much more like “just tell me exactly what to do so I can finish and don't have to spend an extra second on this” so they can claw back some time to much around on their phones. No interest in the wider industry, the why behind things, or developing expertise beyond what’s immediately required.
The problem is it makes mentoring really difficult. You can teach technical skills, but it’s hard to teach curiosity or intrinsic interest. It's confusing because they literally picked the degree and picked the job but seem to hate it?
For managers/senior staff here: have you found ways to actually get younger employees engaged in the work itself? Or is this just the new normal from burnout, cost-of-living exhaustion, tiktokbrain, universities becoming transactional, etc?