UAE: Why Gen-Z is choosing stability over startups
The metrics of economic growth around the world might show an arc that moves ever upward, but the reality on the ground shows a growing rejection of independence and individuality in not just business, but politics and society as well.
Though in many ways a knock-on effect of young people drifting away from traditional social groups like their religion, nation or state, the financial realities of many are simply too difficult to ignore.
I'm not trying to take down startups, big tech, or entrepreneurship, but I will say the problem is that worshipping money and things rather than morals and ideals has not been good for the youth. Whether me, a 28-year-old on the bubble between millennial and Gen-Z, or a Gen-Alpha half my age who thinks a winged dollar sign emoji in his IG bio will somehow rank his account higher in the algorithm than all the others.
Individualism used to sit on the backburner. Looking at history, it's more likely we're all descended from farmers and nomadic goatherds than conquerors and kings. In the Middle East, especially Arab families like mine, that governing structure is not one person or the head of the household.
Anyone who says a household has a 'head' is still stuck in a Western, colonial mindset.
Instead, individuality has become something we all have, some of us just have more of it or are better at it. Isn't human civilisation about coming together to reject something so uncivilised as trying to make it on your own?
What's worse is that this decline in individualism and entrepreneurship was predictable, and no one successful ever made it on their own. They got a leg up or a clue — some special treatment to subvert a systemic issue within that system, to the point where in certain circles, nepotism is no longer or has never been a dirty word.
Shallower than individuality though is what makes entrepreneurship itself harder. The product itself is almost irrelevant to this conversation, but the spread is what matters; people don't want to burn up hours or a day of their week editing and uploading content to YouTube, Substack, Instagram, Threads, Twitter, Bluesky, TikTok, WhatsApp, Reddit, RedNote and so many more. People want their media and entertainment and their work; some people want to be a part of a pack, not trying to lone wolf it in a colder and more dangerous world.
Though cultural siloing and corporate greed, and exhaustion toiling under a capitalistic system are important, if you have high hopes for a job that will leave you with your sanity intact and a feeling of fulfilment, institutions have become the answer.
Universities and hospitals are all that fit the bill for me, but local media and locally owned business could be part of the discussion as well. The point is, people want to work at and be actual family to their coworkers and be given the opportunity to run as fast and hard as they can at a problem, on a track with people running the race with you.
I enjoy my three jobs right now, but inconsistent schedules across each of them messes with my sleep; I need three different work ethics to operate with three different groups of people and supervisors, and my level of necessary attention is different for each, often leaving me with too much free time.
Trying to be an entrepreneur or independent anything right now would be so exhausting. As a young person in the West inside that metric of 'the first generation worse off economically than their parents,' I think of the security a nine-to-five in an institution would bring, financial and psychological.
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