Entering Tech #28: How young people think about balance and ethic
How young people think about balance and ethic. 27 || April || 2023 View in Browser Brought to you by #Issue 28 How we think about balance and ethic Share this newsletter Greetings, ET readers Since we launched #EnteringTech in September 2022, we’ve grown this newsletter to 40,000 subscribers across 10+ countries who are interested in becoming techies. The newsletter has received a lot of love since launch, like this reader who calls it the “gift that keeps giving.” Well, we’re giving more! We are super excited to announce a new video series to help young people not just navigate the tech world but pursue a career that can be fruitful and satisfying. If you’ve loved reading #EnteringTech, you’ll definitely enjoy watching it more. Every Wednesday, we’ll share 60-second clips of professionals who will help you understand tech careers. Ready? Watch the first episode here. by Pamela Tetteh and Timi Odueso. Tech trivia Here is this week’s trivia. Answer is at the bottom of this newsletter. How many hours, on average, does a person spend at work during their lifetime? (It’s not as much as you think it is!) Work ethic v Work-life balance Earlier this week, DAI Country Director Joe Abah made a questionable tweet that reignited a recurring conversation. In a tweet that now has 1.2 million views, Abah wrote, “Gen Z people were asking a Chief Executive of a large multinational his views on work/life balance. He said: “I didn’t become Chief Executive by work/life balance. I became Chief Executive by work ethic.” The room fell silent. What do Gen Z people think?” Work ethic is a set of principles that guide how people do their work, and how organisations run in general. Examples can include a culture of being at meetings 5 minutes early or even always missing deadlines. Just as there’s no one winner in the Senegal v Nigeria v Ghana jollof war, there’s no single definition for work-life balance. However, it’s generally understood as the ways individuals balance their work lives and their personal lives. We spend ⅓ of our lives at work, that’s a lot of hours and years. Like clockwork, responses quickly started to pour in under Abah’s tweet, and the conversation quickly turned into a GenZ/Millenials v GenX/BabyBoomers war. “I don’t think ‘thinking’ is on their features,” an older follower tweeted. “They don’t believe in ethics,” another said. “They just want to do nothing and get paid, and the world owes them anything [sic].” Some notable veterans brought insightful points: co-founder of Volition Capital, Subomi Plumptre (@subomiplumptre) tweeted, “…the generation prioritises quality of life and purpose over money and position.” GenZs and Millenials, many with budding professional lives, also took the mic and gave a couple thoughts. I, for one, shared a piece or two. “He didn’t answer the question, tbh,” my tweet began. “Work-life balance is subsumed under work ethics, it’s not exclusive of it. People with great work ethics know that it’s critical to get work done within the timeframe the work is scheduled, and that hard work should be rewarded.” Since I made that tweet, I’ve thought extensively about how young people entering tech should go about approaching work ethic and work-life balance, and here’s the first thing I’ve seen my community agree on: they’re not mutually exclusive of one another. In this edition of #EnteringTech, I’ll share a couple of thoughts on how Gen Zs and Millenials think about work ethic. Unlike previous editions, this isn’t a guide though; it’s more of my comprehension on how young people are approaching work. Before we move on, I’d like to talk a bit more about the work ethic some young people in tech—or even tech-adjacent—have. They fight for causes, not die—or live—for them Lately, I’ve found myself enamoured with the first verse of Ayra Starr’s Rush where she sings, “Sabi girl no dey too like talk…Padi man, nobody likes work, but you must hustle if you wan chop.” I, like many other hard-working people, often talk about work-life balance but I’ll be damned if I’m going to write to young professionals starting out their career without, like Ayra, saying the truth about how we work: it’s hard, and we speak less about the difficulty, and more about the successes or how we “chill” after. Take me for example. I’ve tweeted about balance a bit, but here’s the part I don’t say often: I’m a high-performing senior associate at one of Africa’s largest media publications, and a final year law student with a 4.2CGPA—not a first class, I know. I’ve also got a few part-time gigs, and all of this means I’m almost always working on something. In all this though, I’m at the very top of my game at work, just ask my past and present managers! It’s the same with most young professionals I know. My friend, writer Ama Udofa who leads content marketing at Vendease once worked two jobs asynchronously. Another friend Oiza Yusuf is juggling an active writing career with an undergraduate degree. My manager Ope Adedeji shuffled between a master’s degree and a budding writing career, all while being Managing Editor at Paystack in 2021/22. In many ways, we’re not so different from the thousands of CEOs who lead several companies. For Ama, Oiza, me and many others; we find solace in our work, we’ll fight for it, work hard at it, excel at it, but we won’t live or die for it. We have dreams that we know our work will help us achieve, so we will keep at it, even when it costs much. And in between paying the high costs for great work ethic and successful careers, we’ll take bountiful breaks; and this is where work-life balance comes in. As Ama says in his newsletter which I found insightful, “Big dreams provide us with inspiration, with direction, with structure, with identity. They prescribe possible destinations and set us on our way. But I’m choosing to balance out my big dreams with
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