Millennials: “They experienced their boomer bosses and said to themselves: I’ll do it differently.”

From the Handelsblatt archive: Millennials are 32 to 45, well-educated, often managers - and are increasingly questioning their lives. Why? And what makes them different from Gen Z?

Ms. Burkhart, the “Millennial Career Crisis” is currently being discussed up and down on Instagram and Tiktok. How come?

Millennials supposedly did everything right: degrees, internships, overtime. Security, career, advancement and prosperity were promised. Now they are experiencing a real crisis because that promise has been broken. The cost of living is immense and the situation on the job market is extremely bad. According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Millennials save around 14 years for the equity they need to own a home. The baby boomers needed seven.

So Millennials feel like they've been cheated?

Above all, they are very insecure. According to consultancy Deloitte, by 2025 almost half of Millennials felt financially insecure. And that despite the fact that this generation has always delivered. The Millennials have contributed, but there has been no return. This inevitably leads to the question: What am I actually doing here? Millennials are now processing their crisis in the same place where they have publicly documented their coming of age: on social media.

We are talking about a “career crisis”. What does all of this have to do with the job?

For decades, the promise was: Anyone who is willing to learn, loyal and makes an effort at work will be promoted, can afford a nice home and will be secure in old age. For the baby boomers, this promise held true, even for blue-collar workers, they had little reason to question the system. Things no longer hold for Millennials: They do at least as much, but get much less in return. That's why many of them are looking for ways out: by changing jobs, becoming self-employed, working part-time or even moving abroad.

Dr. Steffi Burkhart is a generation researcher and holds a doctorate in health psychology. She researches generations, new work and the smart interaction between human and artificial intelligence.

As a keynote speaker and source of inspiration, Burkhart is a sought-after voice in German-speaking countries. Around 100 times a year she appears on stages in business, top administration, politics and science, from board forums to employee events.

However, many Millennials have also followed the traditional career path and are now in management positions. On Instagram and Tiktok, influencers parody how they behave as bosses: perfectionistic, ambitious - and at the same time trying to be liked by everyone in the company at all costs. Are Millennials Really Like This?

This picture has a kernel of truth. Millennials have seen their boomer bosses and said to themselves, “I’ll do it differently.” Rigid hierarchies, culture of presence and top-down leadership – they no longer want any of that. You want to lead empathetically, create psychological safety and explore new digital paths. But at the moment they are still sitting between two chairs: pressure to achieve results comes from above, while Gen Z's legitimate claim to boundaries and meaning comes from below.

It's virtually impossible to be loved by everyone.

Yes, anyone who wants to be liked by everyone in this sandwich position is under constant tension. It's no wonder that the commitment of younger managers has fallen, according to market researcher Gallup. However, the parodies on the Internet evaluate symptoms instead of asking about causes. Millennials' behavior is not a character defect, but a reaction to the context.

What do you think?

By context I mean the situation this generation is in as a whole. Many Millennials started their careers around the financial crisis, then experienced the pandemic, war in Europe and rapid and high inflation. Now the AI ​​is also questioning the expertise it has laboriously built up. Unlike their predecessors, millennials have been exposed to this VUCA reality from the start of their careers.

This stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambivalence.

Yes, all of this is what the working world is like today. Long-standing dogmas, beliefs and established systems that previous generations were able to cling to no longer work for Millennials. You now have to find new solutions to new system problems.

And what does research say about the Millennial Career Crisis?

Millennials are proven to be very perfectionistic. This makes them more susceptible to dissatisfaction. A large study for which researchers evaluated data from several thousand students over almost 30 years has shown that the feeling that others expect perfection and performance from them increased by a third among the students surveyed - exactly in the years in which Millennials went to university.

What else do we know about the Millennial crisis from surveys or studies?

That they feel extremely impaired in their life planning. According to the consulting firm Deloitte, more than half of Millennials are currently postponing major life decisions such as marriage or starting a family for financial reasons.

What advice do you have for millennials who are so dissatisfied?

The big levers lie with politicians and – this is new – also with companies. But no one has to wait for something to happen. That's why my first tip is: Redefine success. Career is no longer a ladder, but a portfolio of skills, network, health and time. Anyone who only measures themselves based on the next title, career step or goal will sooner or later burn out in this accelerating reality.

What is the alternative? Job titles and salary increases are indicators of success in business, aren't they?

A few years ago I heard the dm founder Götz Werner on a stage, and one of his statements stays with me to this day: Most people do not bring the movement between contradictory poles into a harmonious rhythm, but rather think in dual terms in terms of either/or. It's actually about finding your own rhythm in life between these poles.

What did Werner mean by that exactly?

It's not about choosing between two poles. One should oscillate between them, as when inhaling and exhaling or with the changing of the seasons. The extreme always makes you sick: only full throttle or only withdrawal, only new things or only tried and tested things. And the benchmark is not the separation of work and leisure. The benchmark is whether you spend your life doing things that you want.

What other tip do you have?

See yourself as the CEO of your own life. Harvard happiness researcher Arthur Brooks advises managing yourself as professionally as you would a company: consciously controlling your own emotions instead of letting them control you. He warns against a real addiction to success. Anyone who defines themselves only by achievement, title and recognition exchanges themselves for a symbol of themselves, and each successive success gives them less in return than the previous one.

And what helps against this addiction to success?

Brooks says: Contentment doesn't come from having more and more, but from consciously controlling your desires. For example, by aligning your career with your own values ​​instead of the next title. At Stanford University, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans teach something similar with “Designing Your Life.”

What's behind it?

They advocate approaching your life like a design project and trying out what suits you with small prototypes instead of waiting for the one perfect plan. Especially for perfectionistic millennials, thinking about your future in possible scenarios can be a huge relief. Today there is no longer one career goal or one predetermined path to get there. The career ladder from before no longer exists. For young people this means: They can follow a certain vision - but they should always have alternatives in mind.

What distinguishes Millennials from their successors, the current 16 to 31-year-old members of Gen Z?

To explain this, you also have to look at previous generations, the baby boomers and Gen X.

Exactly. They are still strongly motivated by status and benefits, by title, salary, security. For them, a high position means authority, power and influence. Millennials then brought three new drivers to the world of work: contribution, community, passion. You want to combine career and meaning. Gen Z is now going even further. She aggressively questions the status quo in all areas: politics, economics, society and now also education. Why does career always have to lead to the top? Why do a degree if it doesn't guarantee a job? Why still be employed? She asks these questions very aggressively.

Does that mean Gen Z counts the system as a whole?

Exactly. This is the crucial difference between them and the Millennials. The latter have been questioning the system for a long time, but at the same time have tried to survive within it - with even more performance, self-optimization and perfectionism. Millennials tended to resolve their dissatisfaction individually: with the next job change, the next further training, or a sabbatical. Gen Z, on the other hand, makes their dissatisfaction public, sets limits and questions the entire system.

Will Gen Z also have a crisis of meaning once they reach their thirties?

No, Gen Z will not have a Millennial Career Crisis at 38. At 23, they are already in the middle of at least five crises at the same time.

What do you mean exactly?

Firstly, there is the “cost-of-living crisis”, which affects Gen Z just as much as Millennials: their income is not enough for housing, family and reserves. Another danger is the emerging “end-of-ambition crisis”: those who can barely afford to live stop trying to achieve something. Gen Z is also affected by the “entry-level white-collar job crisis”: AI takes over classic entry-level tasks, Gen Z is less in demand on the job market. This in turn is now leading to an educational crisis: it is not the education system per se that is being questioned, but rather the narrative that has accompanied it for 30 years. “Get your high school diploma, go to college, then you’ll have a secure job” no longer applies. And finally there is the “mental-health crisis” that can be observed globally among Gen Z.

So Gen Z is struggling with their mental health? Why?

One of many reasons is that Gen Z is the first synchronized generation in human history thanks to the Internet and social media. Until now, generations have been shaped more nationally: by war, economic miracle, fall of the Berlin Wall, reunification. A 16-year-old in Hamburg and one on the other side of the world simply had nothing to do with each other. Today, 16-year-olds across every continent see the same content, in the same format, on the same platform, at the same moment, curated by the same algorithm. That does something to young people. Gen Z is digitally hyper-connected, but in reality it is increasingly lonely.

A pretty apocalyptic description of the situation for young people, don't you think?

In Germany, politicians are doing extremely little to change the poor starting position of young people. We need a strategically intelligent youth policy. The first three years of work are tax-free, the first three start-up years are tax-free, 30 points at Pisa! Other countries do this better. Portugal, for example, exempts the first year of employment from tax. Poland waives income tax entirely for those under 26 years of age up to a certain income limit. My appeal: We should talk less about young people in Germany and make more politics for them.

What else do you think threatens?

Emigration! In 2025, around 97,000 net Germans left the country; in 2024 there were 81,000. The most important destinations are Switzerland, Austria and Spain. And the successful ones are leaving: three out of four emigrants have a university degree; on average they are almost 37 years old, i.e. millennials. Their motives are primarily professional opportunities and a different lifestyle. Other countries are fighting for young talent. Germany manages their departure.

Many people - often entrepreneurs or executives - like to publicly complain about the work ethic of young people. Given this background, how do you feel about this?

The narrative of lazy youth is as old as generational research itself. And it has always been too short-sighted. Young people want to work, but not at any price. Anyone who experiences that performance no longer translates into security, advancement or home ownership negotiates harder about working hours, meaning and health. This is not laziness, this is economic rationality.