Millennial Manager rant/advice
I’m 26F, and my manager is a millennial. I’m guessing he started his career around 2008, during the financial crisis, and from what I can tell, he didn’t come from a privileged background. He’s very much a hustler type.
He’s been at the company for about five years, and before my colleague and I joined, he was basically the main person handling everything in our area. I won’t say what field we’re in, but it’s busy year-round with no real slow season. I think he came close to burning out, which is probably why they hired more people. Honestly, he may have already burned out, but he would never admit it.
My colleague and I are both Gen Z, and I’m not sure if this is a generational difference or just a personality/work culture thing, but I am not willing to work more than 8 hours a day when overtime is unpaid. It’s not paid, not tracked, not compensated in any way. It’s basically just “your choice” if you want to do it.
To be clear, no one has directly told me that unpaid overtime is expected. But with the workload I have, it feels implied that I’ll sometimes need to work overtime, otherwise some projects will just have to wait.
I do my work carefully, meet my deadlines, and take my responsibilities seriously. But my mindset is honestly: I would rather get fired than burn out. We only have one life, and I’ve always felt that way. In previous jobs, when I felt myself approaching burnout, I found something new. Joke’s on me, though, because job hopping is exhausting too.
One thing that frustrates me is that because my manager has so much on his plate, things on his end move slowly. Reviews take forever, he forgets things, and he’s often 10+ minutes late to meetings. I do understand that he’s overloaded, but it still affects the rest of us.
So I guess I’m wondering: do other people have millennial managers who spread themselves way too thin and seem to expect everyone else to operate the same way?
And more importantly, how do I communicate to my manager that I’m not willing to work unpaid overtime? Should I say it directly, or just quietly stick to my hours and let the work wait? Or should I suck it up sometimes? I know myself, and I know that if I do that regularly, I’ll burn out.
Maybe I just needed to vent, but I’d really appreciate advice or even just hearing other people’s experiences.