The ideal job of the 1950s looked a great deal like a marriage. As Fortune editor William Whyte wrote in his classic workplace study The Organization Man, by midcentury, the ranks of the rapidly growing white-collar workforce became filled with young men who had left their hometowns to devote themselves to their companies. It was an anonymous, bureaucratic turn for the supposedly ruggedly individualistic American economy. In turn, the employers, flush with profits in the postwar economic boom and wanting to retain their talent, offered a steady stream of promotions and carrots, like health insurance and pensions, that kept people tied to their employer. Then the job-hoppers arrived and consigned the organization man to history.
The dominant media narrative of the last several decades pinned the blame for this on Gen Z and millennial up-and-comers, often painted as the mercenaries who killed off corporate loyalty—ready to walk the minute they don't get all they ask for, and the driving force behind the Great Resignation, “quiet quitting,” “rage applying,” and any number of similar workforce trends.
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