A note for anyone who thinks the new generation “doesn’t want to work hard”
“So… our new hire seems really fixated on what time they will get to leave. How big of a red flag is that?”
I’m often asked for thoughts on what is perceived as the new generation’s fixation on work life balance. Most often, I’m asked how concerned medical leaders should be when a new doctor or team member arrives at the practice with the priority of not putting in a lot of extra hours beyond what they are scheduled for. In some instances, this wariness about putting in extra time at the clinic is perceived as a lack of commitment, resilience, or work ethic. I find this perception to be much more common if the employee in question happens to be a young person.
Let me say here that I have no interest in wading into an inter-generational debate. I honestly think the idea of making assumptions about an individual person based only on the year of his or her birth is silly. I do, however, want to point out an important aspect of practice (and the modern world in general) that I think underlies a lot of conflict around work life balance, work ethic, and the newer members of our profession (regardless of their age). It’s this: the veterinary medicine people are entering into today is fundamentally different from the one people entered 10 years ago.
My Time in the Basement
When I graduated from college, I was a bit lost in terms of where my life was going, so I followed a girl I was dating to Washington DC. There, I acquired a 1-year research fellowship that was excellent for my resume and terrible for my savings account. I needed an affordable place to stay in an unaffordable part of town, so I ended up renting out someone’s basement.
The owner of the house was a man in his early thirties who traveled a lot and liked the idea of another person staying in his house and keeping his dog company. I thought this was a great idea, so I moved in.
The owner had grown up in this house and then inherited it from his parents when they passed away a few years earlier. As far as I could tell, the parents had not updated the home since the 1980s and their son had just kept it as it had always been. The house was a time capsule from the Reagan administration with plush carpets, bold wallpaper, and ornately framed family portraits. The bookshelves were stuffed with once-popular titles from people like Garrison Keillor and Jackie Collins. Nothing on the shelves was more modern than some very early Stephen King.
I have often wondered how the guy I rented from saw his own house. Based on various conversations we had, I don’t think he even thought about it. I think the house just looked “normal” to him. It looked as it “should” look, and I don’t think he ever considered how the world had moved on outside and how the normalcy he saw here was increasingly a figment of his own imagination.
Vet Medicine as a Mom-and-Pop Industry
Today, I catch myself having what I call “Basement Rental Moments” every now and then. This is when I hear something about medicine, picture what practice was like 10 or 20 years ago, and then react as if that’s still how things are.
When I started in practice, the vast majority of veterinary practices were owned by veterinarians that employees could talk to face-to-face daily. People had a lot more trust in institutions and corporations to do the right thing. Social media was just getting started, and knowledge about how people could be taken advantage of by bad-acting employers was pretty limited. Veterinary medicine was basically a mom-and-pop institution, and I have a tendency to still think of it this way.
For better or worse, that’s not how things actually are today. When a new graduate says they want everything spelled out in the contract, it’s important to recognize that they are looking at work through the eyes of a young person in 2025. They have seen and heard in great detail what some corporations will try to do to their employees, and now they’re hearing about what it’s like to work for private equity groups and how practice ownership can change suddenly and unexpectedly. The younger crowd grew up in a post-Enron world and have heard continuously about how even the most well known companies (think Amazon, Walmart, etc) sometimes treat the people who work for them quite poorly.
Concerns like these are valid for our field as well. Veterinary medicine is no longer the mom-and-pop, “we’re a family” institution it used to be. To still imagine it that way is to walk around the house above my rented basement and think “this is what life in America looks like today.” Whether or not you feel nostalgia for the old days (and the trust that employers used to enjoy from potential employees), those days are over.
Looking at Modern Medicine
Context matters. When employees or potential employees ask direct questions today about how much work is going to bleed beyond the stated hours in their contract, they are asking as a person in 2025 looking at a rapidly evolving industry. We live in a world where trust has to be earned, and the stories of employers as bad guys reach a lot more ears than the stories of employers as heroes. I hate that, and I believe there are exponentially more wonderful employers than terrible ones. Still, it makes sense for people to hope for the best and try to protect themselves from the worst. Hence, we’re hearing a lot more directness about what expectations are going to be if/when a job is taken.
So, when you get tough questions about what will be expected or how decisions will be made, make sure you’re not having a “Basement Rental Moment.” Don’t interpret these questions as if they were being asked 10 or 20 years ago. That’s not the world we live in today, and we shouldn’t begrudge people who see that more clearly than we do.
