NAVIGATING ENGINEERING’S
GENERATIONAL GAPS
As Gen Z’s presence in the workforce continues to grow, their shifting priorities and unique approaches compared to generations past can be a boon rather than a burden.
Written by Robin L. Flanigan Cover and feature illustrations by Edu Fuentes
STARTING THIS YEAR, GENERATION Z will make up about one-third of the global workforce, according to the World Economic Forum. And since many members of this cohort are still in middle school, the number of workers born between 1997 and 2012 will continue to increase for another decade or more.
“Millions of them will graduate from college and enter the workforce over the next 10 years,” said Mark Beal, author of eight books on Gen Z, including ZEO: Introducing Gen Z, The New Generation Of Leaders. “They’re not going away.”
But what does that mean for baby boomers, Gen Xers, and millennials when it comes to working Gen Zers? These individuals demand job flexibility, having entered the workforce during the pandemic and experienced its associated changes. They're also accustomed to instant gratification because tech-savvy Gen Z is the first generation that “swiped before they wiped,” Beal added, while giving credit for the quip to former MTV executive Jacqueline Parks.
It means older generations of managers need to understand how to work with their youngest colleagues or risk so-called quiet quitting—a stubborn resistance to showing up early, staying late, or attending non-mandatory meetings. Of late, business publications have started to encourage companies to rethink onboarding as the era of employee disengagement continues.
Tony Brancato, a Gen X manufacturing engineer at Ultralife Corporation in Newark, N.Y., suggested that older generations just want to know that Gen Zers are pulling their weight—maybe a bit more so during their earliest years on the job.
“We all had to pay our dues, and with somebody new coming into the field, you feel like they should have to do the same thing,” he said.
However, Newsweek published the results of a poll in June 2024 that questions whether that’s happening. In an article titled, “Gen Z Is the Worst Generation to Work With,” the results showed that 40 percent of U.S. adult respondents, including Gen Z themselves, identified Gen Z as the most difficult generation to work with.
“Working with younger folks helps remind me to look at things differently, to not always follow my same habits.”
—Tony Brancato, manufacturing engineer at Ultralife Corporation
Mark Beal's book, ZEO: Introducing Gen Z, The New Generation of Leaders.
PANDEMIC IMPACTS
Those poll results don’t surprise 23-year-old Gen Zer Madeline Infante, an entry-level engineer at Syska Hennessy Group in Hamilton Township, N.J., who pointed to Covid and frequent technology use as culprits.
In college during the height of the pandemic, Infante explained, “We literally had to spend all day inside. We couldn’t go to class, and we started to get used to being very isolated. So, we’re more socially reserved and that might [make us] harder for people to work with.”
But not impossible, Infante continued. “As long as you communicate when you need to and care about your work, it shouldn’t impact your work ethic,” she said.
Mike Hadden, vice president of estimating for Skanska USA’s New England Region in Boston, defended his younger counterparts with more restrained characteristics and suggested that older coworkers should spend more time considering what Gen Zers went through while on the brink of adulthood.
“Other generations need to do a better job of reflective listening, of understanding them and the island they’ve come from,” said Hadden, who at 44 is on the cusp between Gen X and millennials.
“Twenty percent of their lives were spent going through a global pandemic. That’s a pretty staggering number when you think about it,” he added. “A lot of them are breaking out of their shell, wanting so desperately to be heard because they weren’t for so long.”
Gen Zers—sometimes referred to as zoomers—are becoming adults at a time when the cost of living is on the rise, likely affecting their ability to buy their first house or easily manage student debt, all of which are added stressors.
These experiences have translated into Gen Zers “expecting a lot of transparency and authenticity, looking for psychological safety and trust, and having diversity and inclusion at the forefront of their values,” Hadden said.
“Every generation will come with pros and cons, and one of the pros of Gen Z is their entrepreneurial spirit. They’re always thinking about innovation and how to do things better.”
—Guillermo Aguilar, head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University
DIGITAL NATIVES AND NEW TECHNOLOGY
When Hadden first began working, everything was done in two-dimensional drawings and the way in which work would be performed was often difficult to envision. But today, his office has a virtual design and construction group—which is “relatively exclusively Gen Z”—that works on projects around the globe. This team is able to provide a project playbook to clients in anywhere from three to six dimensions.
“It’s made my job a lot easier,” he said. “It’s not anything I thought we’d get to in the industry, but it’s an expectation now and they’ve been at the forefront of that. They’ve helped drive that bus and it's been a pretty cool story to watch.”
It’s a phenomenon that industry leaders are noticing. As a millennial, Evan Krug, lead mechanical engineer at Encorus Group in Springville, N.Y., admires how Gen Zers investigate and learn new programs, then figure out how to integrate them. He recently watched a presentation led by Gen Zers on a plug-in for Revit that would help model piping systems in more detail.
“They’re the ones most likely to be looking into [artificial intelligence] because they understand it better,” Krug said. “They read the articles and come back with executive summaries of the pros and cons, then tell us whether it’s a tool we want to look into or something we’d spend a lot of money on and get nowhere.”
Still, Gen Zers should remember that no matter how many new tech tools they have at their disposal, and no matter how much faster they can access information, an engineer’s work “requires a deep-thinking process that is ultimately limited by our brain’s physiological processing time, and no computer can accelerate that—at least not yet,” said Guillermo Aguilar, head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University in College Station.
“In the abstract, there’s nothing wrong with [young engineers] doing things faster, but they have to make sure they don’t confuse efficiency with speediness,” he said. “It can’t come at the expense of attention to detail. If they don’t get trained to be patient or dedicate the time to understand things deeply, it’s hard to acquire that later in life.”
Adam M. Roeder, a millennial and senior engineer at M/E Engineering in Rochester, N.Y., pins some of the contrast between generations of engineers to the art of pivoting—more of a conceptual art with Gen Zers in recent years.
“We saw this very, very quick switch between styles of learning, and a lot of that has to do with technology because it has changed how people focus,” he said. Being able to absorb new knowledge and apply it in different ways “has seemed more challenging. It isn’t as fluid,” Roeder added.
A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE
Overreliance on the 3D environment can create huge problems, he continued. For instance, a structural beam shown in a 2D environment may not be shown in a 3D environment, yet there’s an assumption that the 3D model is correct. In such situations, “the reliance on technology becomes a detriment,” he said.
Engineering as an industry is evolving at a slower pace than the technology enabling it, emphasized Daniel Robles, a mechanical engineer and the owner and director of CoEngineers, PLLC in Washington.
“Young engineers don’t seem to organize themselves in top-down hierarchies, whereas many professional societies are structured in this way—hence, a disconnect. Instead, they form what can be described as neural networks, which is incidentally the same structure as many AI models,” Robles said. “This is very exciting, but also a little bit terrifying.”
Just because Gen Zers tend to prefer email and text messages over in-person, face-to-face communication doesn’t mean they have less drive, Infante noted. “Every generation says that the younger ones are lazier. I think my generation will probably say the same thing about the new one coming in,” he pointed out.
There is the sense that Gen Zers are trying to “change the world before understanding why certain things are the way they are,” Brancato suggested. “But working with younger folks helps remind me to look at things differently, to not always follow my same habits.”
What Gen Zers bring to the table—demanding collaboration and social responsibility as part of corporate culture—is helping reshape the business landscape in exciting ways, Hadden said.
“That kind of diversity helps to build a super-strong team,” he continued. “If you’re going to ignore it, that’s not something that’s going to be well-received.”
Employers have no choice but to be keenly aware of and adjust to the unique qualities and approaches that Gen Zers bring to the workplace. Doing so will not only create a more dynamic atmosphere but enhance productivity.
“Gen Zers are only going to become a bigger and bigger part of every single company over the next decade—and then eventually Gen Alpha will be next,” Beal said. “But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.”
Robin L. Flanagan is a writer in Rochester, N.Y., focusing on business and workforce issues.
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