As seen on IMAGE.ie. The generation facing the most workplace criticism started their careers on Zoom, in a housing crisis, with AI closing in on entry-level work. Career coach Sorcha Keogh makes the case for taking them seriously.
Gen Z has been bearing the brunt of critical media commentary lately. A viral TikTok from a US recruiter advising young candidates to leave their emotional-support-iced coffees at home before an interview has prompted a whole host of (predominantly negative) opinions, less about coffee and more about whether an entire generation is cut out for working life at all.
Generational criticism is nothing new, but this latest wave rests on a flawed premise. It judges a generation’s professional potential without accounting for the extraordinary circumstances in which their working lives began. It’s easy to join the pile-on, but it’s far more useful to look at what this educated, digitally fluent and ambitious generation actually brings to the table.
Missing out on osmosis
Think about what the first few years of a career normally involve. You sit beside someone more experienced and watch how they handle a difficult client. You overhear a phone call and learn how to deliver bad news. You get pulled into a meeting to take notes and quietly learn how decisions get made. You make small mistakes and get corrected. You sense-check your doubts with your desk neighbour. Much of what we call professional judgement has traditionally been picked up this way.
A huge cohort of Gen Z entered the workforce during the pandemic. Some had their Leaving Cert replaced by calculated grades. Others finished their degrees online. They were onboarded over Zoom, met colleagues as squares on a screen and were expected to absorb workplace norms that nobody was in the room to model. Internships were cancelled and graduate programmes moved online. The unwritten rules of office life went untaught because, for a long stretch of their formative professional years, there was no office. In a slightly dystopian twist, many of them spent those first years working from their childhood bedrooms.
That meant missing the pivotal early-career opportunity to learn by osmosis, and starting out at a real disadvantage as a result. It’s only right and decent that we offer them some grace, and recognise that their careers began in a way those of us who came before them simply can’t relate to.
Enter AI
Just as the office reopened, a second disruption arrived. The tasks that used to make up a junior role, such as taking the minutes, writing the first draft, pulling the research together and tidying up the slides, are exactly the tasks AI now does in seconds. That work was never glamorous, but it was how a lot of young professionals cut their teeth and learned the ropes.
Earlier this year, an IrishJobs survey found that 47% of employers had cut the number of graduate and entry-level roles they offer, citing rising labour costs and AI. AI is widely reported to be hitting entry-level and junior workers hardest.
The generation that lost its apprenticeship years to lockdown is now watching the bottom rungs of the career ladder disappear. Criticising them for gaps in their experience, while removing the very work that used to fill those gaps, feels a little unfair.
What they built instead
Despite their isolated start, this same generation learned to do things the rest of us were scrambling to figure out. They built working relationships entirely online. They taught themselves new tools because there was no one down the corridor to ask. They arrived digitally fluent at a time when plenty of senior colleagues were still asking if everyone could see their screen.
What they bring now is creativity, digital confidence and a willingness to question the status quo. Why is it done this way? Why do we need to be in five days a week? Why does this meeting exist? Being asked can be uncomfortable, particularly when the honest answer is “because we’ve always done it like that”. Plenty of organisations list “innovation” among their values, and if they mean it, Gen Z are well equipped to help them deliver on it.
Candour is a skill, and we’re legislating for it
Gen Z are often criticised for being too open, whether about their feelings, their boundaries or what they expect from an employer. It seems an odd thing to hold against them at a time when we need legislation to force openness about pay and expose the gaps between what people earn for the same work.
Under the EU Pay Transparency Directive, employers will have to share the salary or salary range for a role in the job ad or before interview, and they will no longer be allowed to ask candidates about their pay history. Ireland missed the June 2026 deadline to bring the directive into law and is still working on it, but the direction of travel is clear.
We are having to mandate openness about money because, for decades, employers didn’t offer it voluntarily. Gen Z, meanwhile, seem to practise it naturally. Rather than criticising their candour, we should be welcoming it.
They’re doing it all on a much harder footing
There’s another reason Gen Z ask about salary in the first interview: they can’t afford not to. Eurostat figures show that 61.7% of Irish 18- to 34-year-olds still live with their parents, well above the EU average. A two-bed apartment now rents for more than €2,200 a month on average, and for many, buying a home before 35 feels like a fantasy.
Seen in that light, a lot of what gets labelled entitlement looks more like arithmetic. Moving jobs for a pay rise, refusing unpaid overtime and asking hard questions about progression are rational choices in one of the most expensive countries in Europe.
They’ve also grown up in the shadow of crises they had no part in creating. Many were children when the 2008 crash hit, and they watched parents lose jobs, families fall into negative equity and older siblings emigrate. They then came of age in a housing crisis and started their careers in a pandemic. A generation shaped by that much instability is unlikely to have blind faith that loyalty will be rewarded.
They talk about mental health, which is what we asked for
For years, employers have run wellbeing weeks, launched employee assistance programmes and urged staff to speak up when they’re struggling. Gen Z listened. Deloitte’s 2025 global survey found that 62% of Gen Z are comfortable talking to their manager about their mental health, and that mental health is their second-biggest concern after the cost of living.
It seems contradictory to spend a decade encouraging people to talk about how they’re feeling and then roll our eyes when a generation actually does. A young colleague who says “I’m overwhelmed” before reaching breaking point is giving their manager the chance to step in early. That openness deserves encouragement rather than quiet judgement.
We haven’t exactly set the gold standard
Much of the criticism of Gen Z rests on an unspoken assumption: that the way the rest of us have been working is worth defending. The evidence suggests otherwise.
Microsoft Ireland’s 2026 Work Trend Index found that burnout among Irish workers has risen to 44%, up from 39% last year, and more than a third struggle to maintain the right work-life balance. Work-related stress is a very real and live issue.
Gen Z’s insistence on work-life balance isn’t a weakness. It’s a healthier, more sustainable way to work, and one the rest of us could learn from.
What I see in my coaching practice
In my own work as a career coach, the Gen Zs I meet bear little resemblance to the caricature. They are competent, ambitious, articulate and genuinely impressive. They know what they want from their careers and they can explain why.
What might surprise their critics is how careful they are: they tend to be conservative and risk averse in their career decisions, weighing security and stability far more heavily than the stereotype would suggest. I often wonder whether that caution comes from the instability they’ve lived through, both at home and in their working lives so far.
Whatever the reason, that combination of ambition and care, confidence and caution, is exactly what I think our future leaders need.
If you manage a Gen Z colleague
Give them the access the pandemic took away. Let them sit in on the tricky call, bring them to the meeting, and explain why you handled that difficult email the way you did. If AI is now doing the junior tasks that used to teach them, be deliberate about replacing that learning in other ways. Answer their “why” questions honestly, and if the honest answer is “habit”, take that as a useful prompt to look again. And when their directness catches you off guard, treat it as information before you treat it as attitude.
Write off an entire generation at your peril
Gen Z’s professional coming of age was unlike anyone else’s, and it has given them a perspective the rest of us simply don’t have. They’re also your customers, with real buying power and a sharp sense of what their peers want, and their influence will only grow as boomers and Gen X move towards retirement.
My advice to employers is to see the value in what they bring. Embrace their questions, their insight and their candour. Let’s take Gen Z seriously, whether they’re your cup of tea (or iced coffee) or not.