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A Letter To Gen Z: How Not To Get Fired (From Someone Who's Seen Everything)

Writer: wiredandwildcore
wiredandwildcore
May 19
10 min read

Updated: May 31


I say this with love. Genuine, tough-love, older-sister energy.


You are getting fired at a rate that should scare you, and a lot of it is preventable.


I have worked in five different corporate environments over the course of my career — a corporation of over 75,000 people, a large company of around 20,000, a mid-size of roughly 1,000, a small operation of 350, and a startup of 30. I have been the new hire, the mid-level employee, the senior consultant, and the manager sitting across from an employee delivering news nobody wants to hear. I have seen what gets people ahead and I have seen what gets people walked out. And right now, I am watching an entire generation make the same avoidable mistakes at scale, and it is genuinely painful to witness.


So consider this the conversation your mentor should be having with you. Not HR. Not a LinkedIn thought leader with a personal brand built on being relatable. Me — an elder millennial who ate ramen for dinner more times than I can count, made less than minimum wage for years at a "real" job, and clawed my way to a corporate role that actually pays what I'm worth. I don't have patience for bad advice dressed up as empathy, and I don't have patience for watching talented people torpedo their own careers over things that are entirely within their control.


You might be wondering how this relates to finance at all. Well, to be frank, it’s pretty difficult to manage your finances when you have no source of income because you got fired from a job.


Let's get into it.


Young woman gets scolded in the office by her manager.


First, The Numbers. Because They're Bad.


Six in ten employers have already fired college graduates they hired in 2024 — often within three to six months of the start date. 20% of managers said they fired a Gen Z employee within the first week. 27% within the first month. Intelligent.com


75% of companies reported that some or all of their recent college graduate hires were unsatisfactory. 58% of hiring managers disapprove of Gen Z's dress sense. 56% criticize their language. 66% note frequent tardiness. One in six managers is now hesitant to hire Gen Z at all. Newsweek


And the downstream effect: one in seven bosses has admitted they may avoid hiring recent college graduates altogether next year. You are not just affecting your own job prospects. You are affecting the job prospects of everyone who graduates after you. Fortune


The most commonly cited reasons employers give for these firings: lack of motivation and initiative (50%), lack of professionalism (46%), and poor communication skills (39%). None of these are skill gaps that require additional education to fix. They are behavior gaps. And behavior is a choice.


Now — before I go further — I want to be fair. Some of this is a generational mismatch, not a generational failure. Gen Z entered the workforce during a pandemic, many of you have never had a normal onboarding experience, and some of the expectations being placed on you were never clearly communicated. That's real. Your managers and companies share responsibility for setting you up to succeed.


But I can't control what your manager does. I can only tell you what you can control. And that list is longer than you think.


How Not To Get Fired

Nothing You Do Online Is Private. Nothing.

How to not get fired

I need to tell you a story.


I was working at a corporation of over 75,000 people. My manager pulled me into a meeting and told me I needed to start engaging more with a specific employee on my team because that employee was looking for another job. I asked how he knew that.


He said: we have an entire IT department whose job is to monitor employee online activity. We can see when someone has been active on LinkedIn. We can see Indeed searches. We track it.

And then, before I could even respond, he looked me dead in the face and said: "We know you've been looking too."


I want you to sit with that for a moment.


Employee monitoring has doubled since the pandemic. 60% of employers now use technology to track at least part of their employees' online activity — including keyboard clicks, mouse movement, idle time, website visits, and social media activity. In a 2021 Gartner survey, 40% of workers said their employers never informed them about what data was being collected. LinkedIn / HR Tech Edge


Corporate monitoring of LinkedIn is standard practice at many large companies. Your employer may view a dramatic increase in your LinkedIn activity as a sign that you are job hunting — which can lead to termination.


That is the reality of the corporate environment. It is not paranoia. It is policy. And if you have signed a social media policy, an NDA, or any document governing your online conduct as a condition of your employment — and most of you have, buried in your onboarding paperwork — you are bound by a legal document. Posting content about what you're doing at work, sharing company information, or even commenting on work-adjacent content during work hours is not just inadvisable. Depending on what you've signed, it may be illegal.


So stop posting content on company time. Stop commenting on other people's posts. Stop responding to your followers during work hours. And yes — if you are a salaried employee, your lunch break counts as company time. I know that feels unfair. I didn't make the rules. But I've watched people lose their jobs over it, and I'd rather you be employed.


The IT department is real. They are watching. And they are very, very good at their jobs.



Your Boss Is A Gen X-er Or A Millennial. Act Accordingly.


The people managing you right now are largely Gen X and millennials. We are, objectively, the most economically abused generations of all time — and I say that not for sympathy but for context, because it directly affects how we perceive certain behaviors in the workplace.


We graduated into recessions. We made less than minimum wage at salaried jobs and worked 55-hour weeks for the privilege. We ate ramen and waited for paychecks and were told we were lucky to have the opportunity. We didn't negotiate. We didn't push back. We showed up early, stayed late, and said thank you. Was all of that healthy? Absolutely not. Did some of it build skills and resilience that served us later? Yes.


I'm not telling you to be a pushover. I'm telling you to understand your audience. The person evaluating your performance has a very specific frame of reference, and it is not the same as yours. Walking into that environment without understanding it is like showing up to a game without knowing the rules and then being surprised when you lose.



The Parent Problem


I have to address this directly because the data is genuinely staggering.


77% of Gen Z say they have brought a parent to a job interview. 63% had a parent submit job applications on their behalf. 54% asked a parent to email hiring managers. 53% had a parent speak directly with hiring managers on the phone. Fortune


45% of employed, full-time Gen Z adults say a parent has regularly spoken to their current manager. Not a recruiter. Not a hiring manager during an application process. Their current, active, employing manager. About their job. That they already have. ResumeTemplates.com


More than 8 in 10 report parental involvement in reviewing performance reviews, requesting time off, or discussing promotions and raises with management. Zety


I understand why this happens. Helicopter parenting created this dynamic — you were raised by adults who were deeply involved in every aspect of your lives, and it feels natural to continue that pattern. Your parents love you. They want to help. I get it.


But here is the truth, delivered with as much love as I can manage: your parents will not always be here. That is the hardest and most important sentence in this entire post. The advocacy skills, the negotiation skills, the conflict resolution skills, the ability to walk into a difficult conversation and handle it yourself — these are things you have to develop, and you can only develop them by doing them. Every time a parent steps in, you lose a repetition. And you will need those reps later, in situations that matter far more than your first job's vacation policy.


Your manager loses respect for you the moment your parent calls. I am not saying that to be cruel. I am saying it because it is true and nobody else is telling you.



Communication Is A Skill. Start Treating It Like One.


39% of employers cite poor communication skills as a primary reason for firing recent Gen Z hires. This is fixable. Here's specifically what I mean:


Go silent and it will cost you. When something goes wrong — a deadline you're going to miss, a project that's off track, a misunderstanding with a colleague — the worst thing you can do is say nothing and hope it resolves itself. It will not resolve itself. It will become a much larger problem, and you will own all of it. Flag issues early, communicate proactively, and never let your manager be surprised by bad news they could have seen coming if you'd said something sooner.


Face-to-face feedback is not an attack. When your manager gives you critical feedback, your job in that moment is to listen, absorb, and say thank you — not to defend yourself, not to explain why you did what you did, and not to cry. I know that sounds harsh. The ability to receive feedback without making it about your feelings is one of the most valuable professional skills that exists, and the people who have it get promoted faster than the people who don't. Take the note. Implement the note. Follow up later to show you implemented the note. That's the entire loop.


Know when not to push back. This is nuanced but important. There are absolutely times to advocate for yourself — salary negotiations, unreasonable workloads, genuine ethical concerns. But "I disagree with the way this project was assigned" is not one of those times. Pick your battles with surgical precision, because every time you push back unnecessarily, you spend political capital you're going to need later.


Stop saying "I don't feel safe." Unsafe is a coal mine in the 1960s. Unsafe is a genuinely hostile work environment with documented harassment. Unsafe is not your performance review, a meeting you're dreading, or feedback you disagree with. Using that language in contexts where it doesn't apply undermines the credibility of people who actually need it — and it immediately signals to your Gen X or millennial manager that the conversation is over before it started.


Learn to communicate in writing. Emails. Formal ones. With a subject line, a clear ask, and a professional sign-off. Not a text. Not a Slack message for everything. Understand when the situation calls for which medium, and when in doubt, default to email for anything that needs a paper trail.



Work Doesn't Always Fit In A Box


I want to be careful here because boundaries are real and burnout is real and I have lived both. I am not telling you to let your employer exploit you.


What I am telling you is that the corporate world does not operate on a rigid eight-hour schedule, and the faster you understand that the better off you'll be.


Some days you will have more work than can fit in eight hours. Some days you will be done by 2pm. It ebbs and flows, and the expectation — particularly in salaried roles — is that you manage your output, not your clock. The people who are watching the clock and running for the door at 4:55pm every single day are noticed. They are not the ones getting promoted first. They are not the ones who get the interesting projects. They are not the ones managers fight to keep when layoffs happen.


This is not permission for your employer to work you into the ground. It is a reality check about what professional reputation looks like in practice.



Dress Like You Want To Be There


58% of hiring managers specifically cite dress sense as a problem with Gen Z hires. So let's be direct. Allwork.space


Chunky dirty sneakers — regardless of what they cost or what they look like on TikTok — are not appropriate for most corporate environments. Yoga pants are not work appropriate. Super baggy jeans are not appropriate, including on dress-down Fridays. Gauchos are making a comeback and I am asking you personally, as someone who has been in corporate environments across multiple cities and company sizes, to please leave them for the weekend.


The line between comfortable and sloppy is thinner than you think, and people are making assessments about your professionalism before you open your mouth. I know that's unfair. I know fashion is personal. But you are not dressing for yourself in a professional environment — you are dressing for the impression you make on the people who decide whether to promote you.


Trendy is fine in moderation. Clean, fitted, and intentional is always the right answer. When in doubt, look at what the person two levels above you is wearing and dress like that. This is one of the best pieces of career advice I was ever given.



The One Thing You Actually Have Going For You


I want to end on something real, because this post is tough and you deserve to hear the other side too.


You are the most technologically fluent workforce that has ever existed. You adapt to new tools faster than any generation before you. In an environment where AI is reshaping every industry and companies are scrambling to figure out how to integrate new technology — that is not a small thing. That is a genuinely significant advantage.


Use it intentionally. Become the person on your team who understands the tools, who can speak to what AI can and can't do, who bridges the gap between the technology and the people who are intimidated by it. That is a career trajectory.


Just also learn how to print a document. And send a proper email. And walk into your manager's office and have a conversation without your phone in your hand.


The fundamentals and the future skills are not mutually exclusive. The people who have both are genuinely unstoppable.


You can be one of them. I'm rooting for you.


Note: Job security in the current economic environment is genuinely precarious for everyone, across all generations. This post addresses controllable behaviors — not systemic issues like layoffs, AI displacement, or economic instability, which are real and deserve their own conversation.


- Forever Wired & Wild⚡🌿



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