Millennials: the Imposter Syndrome Generation Driving the Great Resignation
We’re not gonna take it anymore.
When I hear from my boss that I’m an expert in my field, I don’t take it seriously. I tend to think of myself as a stressed-out 20-something fumbling my way through my first job in my field. The knowledge that I’m in my mid-30s with over a decade of experience makes me anxious.
And yet, I have found that many people my age, particularly between 30 and 40, feel similarly. We graduated college into a horrific recession and immediately had our earnings stunted by being forced into a series of entry-level jobs. Now, we are well into adulthood, and those of us lucky enough to get into and stay in our intended fields find ourselves with years of experience while often still being treated like neophytes.
I’ve got all sorts of stories from friends about this. One has been in entry-level positions for her whole career, and despite being in her mid-30s, doesn’t make enough money to have her own place. Another has been with his firm for a long time, yet is looked down upon by his elder colleagues while watching in envy as they give the recent cohort of younger colleagues opportunities he never had.
Another of my friends wound up in HR despite not really wanting to do that kind of work, and she is now a sort-of de facto expert in various accounting and HR-related systems despite having an English degree. She spent a lot of time being pushed around by her last job, which had decent enough benefits and pay to keep her for several years until she got fed up with her unstable bosses and left. Still, I’m pretty sure she thinks of herself as just another 20-something trying to get by, even though her 20s ended years ago.
I’ve known multiple people who got degrees in a field where they couldn’t find work and wound up doing customer service for a while before doing something different. One got a degree in sound design and engineering and wound up doing a coding boot camp after years of customer service work. Several people in my orbit got technical degrees (and a mountain of debt) from for-profit schools that were later shut down for scam practices. Now their degree is a mostly-worthless piece of paper and, despite having skills and experience, they have trouble getting jobs.
So many of us wound up accumulating a bunch of experience in the fields we landed in, whether we meant to do those jobs or not, but are still not always recognized by our superiors. There is an army of 30-somethings out there who do their jobs well and have a ton of experience but are still crapped on by their supervisors, company executives, and the media (although the media is starting to come around to the plight of millennials because we are increasingly writing the articles).
We are all burnt out, often overworked, and generally underpaid. We have the experience and know-how in our fields and we understand technology, but boomers dismiss us as too young to understand while Gen Z dunks on us for being old fogies. As a result of this weird dichotomy, we have developed some pretty strong imposter syndrome — while many of us have the experience to back up our skills, it certainly doesn’t feel that way.
To me, the most interesting upshot of this is that older millennials and younger Gen Xers seem to have collectively decided, in the immortal words of Twisted Sister, “we’re not gonna take it anymore.” As a result, the 30–45 age cohort is driving what has become known as the Great Resignation.
In particular, the “geriatric Millennials,” or the 36–41-year-olds, have both years of experience and a set of unique skills in the workforce, and we’re beginning to recognize it. We have the tech-savvy to deal with Gen Z, who stereotypically hate phone calls and love Slack, while also managing our boomer bosses, who think that coming to the office five days a week ensures productivity.
So, we’re quitting in droves. If the choice comes down to being poor with no job at home or being poor and stressed out at work, quite a few of us are picking the former over the latter. We’ve spent our whole lives scrabbling and scraping to get by on wages that were suppressed by recessions and corporate greed, so we know how to get by on very little. Dealing with crappy customers, horrible bosses, and benefits that include things like “pizza parties with an open bar” but don’t include things like “living wages and good healthcare” is no longer acceptable.
The upshot is that after years of dealing with imposter syndrome and being talked down to by our older bosses, we as a generation have come to realize that our unique skills and experience are worth more than we are getting. So, we are forcing the hands of our corporate overlords to increase their wages and benefits, implement an actual work-life balance, and hopefully change the way we think about work.
I’m going to end this by once again quoting Twister Sister:
We’ll fight the powers that be just / Don’t pick our destiny ’cause / You don’t know us, you don’t belong
Oh, you’re so condescending / Your gall is never-ending / We don’t want nothin’, not a thing from you
Your life is trite and jaded / Boring and confiscated / If that’s your best, your best won’t do
Sing it
We’re right, yeah
We’re free, yeah
We’ll fight, yeah
You’ll see
We’re not gonna take it / No, we ain’t gonna take it / We’re not gonna take it anymore
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