Unless you live under a rock, you’ve probably heard all of the Gen Z stereotypes — the latest example of a national pastime that also labeled baby boomers the “me generation” and scolded millennials for eating too much avocado toast. Now Zoomers have been cemented in the public record as a strange and socially stunted cohort that prefers the glow of ring lights to good, honest work. Despite that unsavory reputation, or perhaps because of it, some of the most popular shows of the past few years have quietly revolved around youth in the workplace.

HBO’s Industry follows Z-ers through their first finance jobs; in HBO’s Hacks, the ongoing tête-à-tête between Ava (Hannah Einbinder) and Deborah (Jean Smart) captures the divide between Zoomers and boomers; and although FX’s The Bear is not strictly Z-coded, its portrayal of young ambition has resonated with young audiences for a reason. This year upped the ante with shows like HBO’s I Love LA and Adults on FX, which directly explore the aspirations, strivings and stumblings of hapless 20-something strivers.

Rather than endorse Gen Z’s supposed failings, most of these series raise an eyebrow at the stereotypes themselves. Sure, there’s the occasional indulgence in low-hanging fruit, including jokes about pronouns and mental health days, but most of the time, these shows interrogate convenient narratives to reveal deeper truths about the real-life pressures Gen Zers face at work.

Business Insider newsletters associate editor Amanda Yen knows all about Gen Z stereotypes; she debunked the “Gen Z stare” in a viral piece earlier this year. In her mind, these cultural myths have little to do with reality and everything to do with how each generation tends to judge those who come after them. “It's just another example of people wanting to hand-wring about ‘the youth,’” she says. It’s just another way of saying, “The kids aren’t all right.”

If this year’s Zoomer depictions tell us anything, it’s that however off-kilter “the kids” might be, they’re a product of an environment that often fails to support them.

The meaning behind the jokes

It says something that Tubi’s first original series was a youth-oriented workplace comedy. The Z-Suite takes place in an upscale marketing firm where a Gen X boss (Lauren Graham) gets fired for a problematic ad campaign. As a result, a skillful but inexperienced 24-year-old gets promoted to CEO. Chaos ensues, but so does understanding; the pressures of the job quickly chip away at the younglings’ bravado, while their older counterparts are forced to admit that, yes, their juniors do occasionally have a few good ideas.

A millennial who ascribed the “work yourself to the bone” mentality for much of her professional life, Z-Suite creator Katie O’Brien admits she judged Zoomers before working on the show. “I really came around to respect their approach and was like, ‘Oh, this is wonderful. Like life isn't about work,’” she says of working with her younger colleagues on the show. These days she wishes she were in Gen Z herself.

The Z-Suite mines most of its humor from hyperbole. In the first episode, the soon-to-be baby CEO Kriska Thompson (Madison Shamoun) films herself in a yoga class before the camera zooms out to reveal her classmates impatiently waiting for her to wrap up. Her work friend Clem (Anna Bezahler) shows up to the office (for once) in an “adult sleep sack,” and Elliott (Spencer Stevenson) blames “time blindness” for his chronic lateness.

The “what the hell is wrong with these kids” vibe also extends into other shows. In FX’s Adults, aspiring writer Billie (Lucy Freyer) tries to fast-track her way to a promotion by seizing on a news story about a fellow Gen Z-er getting sexually harassed in the workplace and gets fired instead. In Apple TV’s The Studio, the young assistant Petra (Keyla Monterroso Mejia) keeps her password, “1234,” on a Post-it note on her desk. Grey’s Anatomy introduced its first Gen Z surgeon this year, and although capable, he insists upon calling surgeries “surges.” Yuck.

Foibles aside, these narratives capture a growing reality for Gen Z-ers in the workplace: Too often they struggle to find mentors and growth opportunities. Jeff LeBlanc, a lecturer at Bentley University who has taught Gen Z for 10 years, noticed the lack of institutional support for young workers while researching his book, Engaged Empathy Leadership: Redefining Leadership with Empathy in Action. Increasingly, he says, older employees seem to avoid mentoring their younger counterparts.

“Some of that does fall on Gen Z, because they communicate differently, but so [has] every other generation,” LeBlanc says. “The Gen Z students and employees that I've had sort of feel like nobody really wants to see their perspective.”

LeBlanc doesn’t believe Gen Z-ers are lazy or that they suck at communication. Instead, he believes most Zoomer stereotypes stem from an unprecedented period in labor history. Because people are working longer, more generations must now labor alongside one another than ever before. “Of course, a 21-year-old isn't going to have the same communication style, especially how they've been raised, as someone who's 75, or even someone who's maybe 55,” LeBlanc says. “The differences are going to be there, and I think those stereotypes kind of snowball.”

Yen also thinks the tales of Gen Z’s flailing are more legend than reality. But as with most stereotypes, she sees shards of truth. For example, she has certainly known Gen Z-ers who struggle to navigate conversations about promotions and performance. Still, aren’t those skills something every generation has to figure out on the job? And if technology really ruined the youth’s communication skills, she adds, “We should just think about who set that system up” — because it wasn’t Gen Z.

Escape to L.A.

One cannot discuss Gen Z and work without mentioning the idea that, really, none of them actually want to work. Instead the story goes, they’d rather become influencers. But that too might reveal more about the modern career landscape than about young workers. As companies replace entry-level jobs with AI, and computer science graduates apply for Chipotle jobs thanks to layoffs, can we really blame the youth for seeking wealth via front-facing cameras?

Although not explicitly a workplace series, HBO’s I Love LA explores the youth labor crisis from a uniquely “Gen Z” vantage point. Creator and writer Rachel Sennott plays Maia, an aspiring talent manager who signs her best frenemy, an influencer named Tallulah (Odessa A’zion), as a client. In one raucous episode set at a house party in Elijah Wood’s house, real-life influencer Quenlin Blackwell challenges Tallulah’s belief that Maia (and, by extension, the traditional talent-management system) got her the Balenciaga bag on her arm. “Did she get you the bag,” Blackwell asks, “or did your sweat get you the bag?”

The pointed materialism in this series speaks to another generational divide. As Drew Gillis writes in Paste, shows like I Love LA and Netflix’s Emily in Paris dispense with the artistic pretense that characterized millennial ensemble shows like Girls. Instead, both examine the relationship between personal branding and work. In these shows, influencing is not just a frivolous whim for “lazy” 20-somethings. It’s a promising, if volatile, money-maker — one that, like traditional jobs, carries its own virtues, risks and, at times, utter BS.

Yen grants that some Zoomers want a life funded by “like, follow, subscribe.” How long can the youth be expected to watch 23-year-old influencers buying houses in the Hamptons without fantasizing about quitting their nine-to-fives? At the same time, Yen is not convinced this thinking is unique to Gen Z. Her workplace, Business Insider, covers all sorts of people who’ve retired early, “because that’s what people want.” As the internet saying goes, most of us do not dream of labor. Gen Z’s solution just involves technology and online platforms that might feel less intuitive to their seniors.

That, more than anything, might be what drives so much of the myth-making around Gen Z: They’re rewriting the rules of work and employment, and whenever disruption occurs, frustration often follows.

The way LeBlanc sees it, much of what sets Gen Z-ers apart is how direct they are about what they want and need from a workplace and their desire for clarity from their managers.

“I think that a lot of older employees feel like, ‘Well, this wasn't my experience, so I don't know how to work with this,’” LeBlanc says. At the same time, he sees a learning opportunity for Gen Z-ers’ older colleagues. “What's so wrong about expecting some clarity about what our job trajectory might look like?”

O’Brien feels similarly. When she looks at how vocal Gen Z is, and how much Gen Z-ers prioritize work-life balance, it makes her reconsider moments when she perhaps made things “so much harder” for herself at work than they needed to be. “I think there’s a little anger” in that realization, she says. “And envy.”