Millions of young workers who started their careers since the onset of the pandemic have still neither been to their employers’ brick and mortar addresses nor met any of their coworkers in person. Millions more haven’t been to the office enough times to know what “going to work” feels like as a regular element of normality.

            With that backdrop, I pose the following question with all the gravity I can harness: What does reality look like to them regarding work, jobs, and careers? Do they see it the way the rest of us do (or did)? How do they view working relationships? Sharing physical space? Team dynamics? How are their nonverbal communication skills: eye contact, facial expressions, body language? Do they know these things are important? Do they care?

            It may be too early to tell, but these are serious questions, given that we’ve gone to great pains since World War II to identify generations, generally by a defining characteristic or two.

            We Baby Boomers (born 1946-1964) were where the whole generation-naming thing started and then led to naming subsequent Gens X, Y, Z (Millennials), and retrospectively, Seniors. But it started with us Boomers, and as we are declining in numbers in the workplace, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the younger half of the workforce doesn’t even know that we’re so named because we were the largest birth rate boom in history. That’s right, kids! Really!

            So, as one of the oldest Boomers – and someone whose job for the last 25 years has been to know what’s going on in the job market and labor force – I hereby take the liberty of designating these workplace newbies – the generation described at the top of this column – as “Baby Zoomers.” So far, their defining characteristic is that their reality comes to them through Zoom. It’s what they know.

            This is more serious than you might think, and it sharply brings to mind The Allegory of the Cave, Book VII of Plato’s Republic, one of the most profound influences on how I learned to see the world. Written as a dialog between Plato’s brother Glaucon and his mentor Socrates, it tells the story of captors holding prisoners in a cave, chained so they can see only the interior wall, and where their only light is a fire behind them casting shadows on the wall. Soon, they acclimate to a completely controlled but unreal environment, believing shadows are real images, and that the only light in the world comes from that flickering fire behind them.

            Then, supposes Socrates, if one captive were to be unchained and turned around to see real images, he might not recognize them and will be blinded by exposure to the flame’s light. Socrates continues his supposition that the man who was compelled to look at the fire would try to turn his gaze back toward the shadows he perceived as real. Then what if he were brought out into the sunlight? Wouldn’t he be distressed and unable to see “even one of the things now said to be true” because he was blinded by the light?

            After some time in the open, however, the freed prisoner would readjust, recalibrate. He would see more things around him, until he could “look upon the sun, the source of the seasons and the years, and…the steward of all things in the visible place.” In other words: truth and reality.

            Profound.

            Do you see the same parallel I do? That cave wall and those Zoom screens are the same thing: a two-dimension representation of a three-dimension world, artificially lit and dynamically controlled, rendering genuine interaction impossible. Being unchained or going out into the sunlight, on the other hand, is the same as returning to work.

            Now, so you don’t get me wrong, let’s pay Zoom its due. That technology (and others similar) flat out saved us (it sure did me) and I can’t imagine working without it anymore. For this treatise, though, I’m using “Baby Zoomers” because it’s so much catchier than “Baby Microsoft Teamers” – and this all has a recent historic connection (Boomers) and an ancient reference (Plato’s Allegory).

            But the issue – re-acclimation, reintegration, cohesion, etc. – remains, and the responsibility for returning to old norms or forming new norms belongs to us all: executives, managers, and supervisors; line staff and HR; corporate leaders and educators.

            And, of course, to Baby Zoomers, whom we welcome to the office.

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Career Coach Eli Amdur provides one-on-one coaching in job search, résumés, and interviewing.

Reach him at [email protected] or 201-357-5844.