I will admit, I have probably devoted too much of my free time in the past three weeks to following the slow-moving train wreck of Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover. For those of you with better taste in your news consumption, fear not – this commentary is not about Twitter or its new owner. Rather, I want to look at why Musk’s ultimatum to his employees – commit to an “extremely hardcore” company culture or leave – has struck such a nerve. Setting aside the personalities and peculiarities involved, Musk’s ultimatum touches on productivity.

Productivity is a deceptively nuanced topic. Economically, it is a simple concept typically expressed as an efficiency ratio – units of output divided by units of input – which in the US is conveniently reported by the Department of Labor Statistics (DOLS) every quarter. For example, productivity increased 0.3% in the third quarter of 2022 relative to the second quarter – still a positive increase, but below the historical average of about 2%.

This chart is part of the reason why GDP tends to grow even without the discovery of new natural resources; as the economic engine becomes more efficient, each unit of input produces additional mileage, propelling the economy forward.

This is simple enough at the national level but applying these principles to the management level is where the nuance arrives. The technologies and techniques which aid productivity on the macro scale must be implemented on the micro scale by actual human beings: the analyst’s worst nightmare. Homo sapiens (as opposed to homo economicus) often find their productivity impaired by a variety of factors – hunger, tiredness, distractions, and even other humans can inhibit our ability to function at full capacity. If the closing bell tolls before we have been able to meet the threshold of productive activity for the day, it requires us to contribute additional hours to make up the difference, often at the cost of more enjoyable or otherwise productive activities. Such will likely be the case at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters in the coming weeks as the remaining “extremely hardcore” employees grind out the next iteration of the platform.

Long shifts and late nights are nothing new to the human experience, but they are often new to young people (a group to which I belong). While I do not wish to reignite the fires of intergenerational conflict, I speak both from my own experience and from observation – there is a distinct pushback against work itself from my generation, exemplified by the “antiwork” and “quiet quitting” movements. At their worst, these ideologies embody a spirit of laziness, entitlement, and profound ingratitude for the decades of work spent building the generational and communal wealth necessary to allow non-productive members of society to survive.

So, when I first saw the pushback against “extremely hardcore” work culture, I dismissed it as the “quiet quitters” breaking their supposed silence. But first impressions are rarely correct impressions. There may be a reason young people are so vocal in their critique of modern work culture, a reason I believe is captured in the chart below:

Generally speaking, the amount of economic output per hour of work has increased more quickly than the compensation given to the worker. Of course, many in my generation have not been working long enough to experience this change, and even if they had, it is unlikely they would notice much of a change – these data are aggregated across millions of jobs and trillions of dollars of production. Nevertheless, it reflects the zeitgeist of the youngest working generation which feels that it can produce enough benefit for society while working less than a traditional 9:00-to-5:00 job.

The question is, are they right? Well, some of them probably are. Thanks to technology there are positions and roles which would have previously required training and experience that can now be performed in half the time by unskilled workers. The social safety net available to Americans today is nothing short of remarkable, at times enabling very comfortable lifestyles with little spending.

But directionally, my generation is dead wrong. Productivity will not magically continue to increase. Technologies will not invent themselves. With the business cycle moving towards contraction, businesses will look to cut dead weight from their payrolls. And all of that is before even beginning to tackle potential nuclear war, a looming global food shortage, and the potential disasters associated with climate change.

We must all rise to meet the challenges ahead of us, but we certainly cannot do so alone. So, I would encourage my peers – honor those who laid the foundations you have the opportunity to build upon today by working hard to leave this land better than you found it. And I would encourage those of you in authority today – have patience with this generation. Maturity takes time, failure, and guidance to fully blossom.