Show Up on Time: How Would Steve Jobs Have Dealt with Gen Z Employees?

The famous boss valued punctuality. Zoomers? Not so much

photo credit: Matthew Yohe

Steve Jobs was obsessed with various things including efficiency. To him, each minute was precious:

One famous story, recounted by Ed Catmull, former president of Pixar and Disney, tells of a time when a financial executive from Lucasfilm arrived late to negotiations, presumably to assert his authority. Jobs simply started the meeting without him, making it clear that lateness was not tolerated, no matter your title.

I wonder how Jobs would have dealt with today’s young batch of employees. You see, Gen Zers aren’t exactly sold on punctuality.

More specifically, many of them are redefining punctuality. Nearly half of Zoomers think being 10 minutes late to a meeting is just as good as being on time.

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That’s according to a Meeting Canary survey of British adults in which tolerance of old school tardiness dropped with age. Roughly 40% of millennials would be forgiving of latesters, and the figure drops to 26% for Gen Zers and 20% for baby boomers.

When I came across this survey, it made me recall a recent Coddling screening at Biola University in Los Angeles. During the Q&A period, someone asked me to offer advice to the students in the audience. I decided to keep it practical, so I began by telling them something they already knew — their generation has a terrible reputation.

Older generations (probably even Millennials!) often regard Zoomers as coddled whiners. I let off the gas a little by reminding them it’s not all their fault. To paraphrase Mike Rowe: If they’re snowflakes, then we’re the clouds.

After all, Zoomers weren’t born snowflakes. Older generations raised them to become snowflakes.

Then I pressed on the gas again.

We all deal with baggage that was given to us by someone else, but at some point (the sooner the better) we’d better take responsibility for ourselves.

I explained that the film production company my wife and I own used to accept interns, but we don’t anymore. Why? Because we’d be burned too many times. Even by paid interns. Even by employees, including a recent Ivy League grad.

It wasn’t so much a matter of aptitude — each young person who burned us was plenty bright. It was more a matter of attitude. They had trouble focusing. They had trouble operating on their own. They weren’t terribly interested in working hard, but they were very interested in finding out when they’d get promoted.

The Silver Lining of Low Expectations

Then I told the students in attendance they should be happy their generation has such a lousy reputation.