Mark Cuban: Boomers Disappoint, Gen Z Will Be the ‘Greatest Generation’

Noted billionaire Mark Cuban recently said that history will remember Baby Boomers as the most disappointing generation but predicted that Gen Z will be hailed as the “greatest generation,” an honorific customarily given to the generation that emerged from the Great Depression to win World War 2.

Boomers went “from fighting the man to being everything that was hated in the 60’s and 70′,” Cuban said on the “Re:Thinking with Adam Grant” podcast.

“Boomers are gonna go down in history as the most disappointing generation ever, from sex, drugs, and rock and roll to what we have today,” Cuban, 64, added on Twitter, answering a comment from one of his followers.

You are exactly right.But what happened after that Now boomers spend their days watching cable news, and distorting politics chasing power. Not all of course. But for so many, to go from “fighting the man” to being everything that was hated in the 60’s and 70’s is disappointing https://t.co/am32vIouMA

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) September 18, 2022

Mark Cuban seems OK with ‘quiet quitting’

While many boomers (though not me, age 67) excoriate the “quite quitting” phenomena associated with Gen Z, Cuban in not among them. Cuban praised the Gen Z view of work, life and the importance of “placing a premium on mental equilibrium.” That, in turn, has put pressure on organizations to reevaluate their practices and expectations of employee work ethic, he said.

“I think organizations will have to understand that more and more and more as we go forward. Not only for how you treat your employees, but what your customers expect as well,” Cuban said.

As a Medicare card carrying member of the Baby Boom generation, I heartily agree with Cuban, but also want to add some context. My generation’s reputation for youthful rebellion is wildly exaggerated in memory over what was really going on back in the day, which was primarily defined by the Vietnam War. While millions of my fellow Boomers protested the war, the US government really didn’t have all that much problem drafting an army to fight in a country few of us could have found on a map, if not for fear of ending up there carrying a rifle. While there is no way to prove this one way or the other, the anti-war movement was really an anti-draft movement. If there hadn’t been a draft, there is reason to doubt the general citizenry would have been any more upset about the war than they have been by the many wars since fought by our all-volunteer army.

Rediscovering you are more than your job

While Boomers, who are associated with vested pensions, fat retirement accounts and houses that are no longer mortgaged, Gen Z is far more associated with that elusive “work-life balance.” Cuban made reference to the fiscal, financial and personal balance associated with Gen Z employees. To his credit, Cuban seems to regard it as sanity for Gen Z  to define themselves more on what they do outside their job than their job title. He is not alone in that view.

“Whereas other generations thought that their identity started at 9 a.m. and ended at 5 p.m., Gen Z often feels that their identity starts outside of work,” said Jason Dorsey, a Gen Z expert and founder of The Center for Generational Kinetics, to Fortune in August.

Every generation is comprised of millions of individuals, each shaped the mega events of their time – wars, economic downturn, and so on – and his or her particular circumstance. Whether  Boomer or Gen Z, someone born in Appalachia to a coal miner will likely have a very different view on life from another person of the same age born to Wall Street CEO. Gen Z, on the whole, has richer parents than we Boomers did, but they are also contending with mega-events – climate change and often toxic social media, to name two – that no previous generation had to. If Gen Z is remembered as the Greatest Generation, it will because there are future generations to remember them, which sadly can’t be taken for granted.