Hello Reader,

This is the fourth email in a six-part series exploring payroll imbalance, the wage gap, and what it reveals about how we value work. It’s not my usual lane, but the more I dig into this, the more I see how connected it is to time, attention, and productiveness. If you’ve got a story or perspective of your own, I’d love to hear it—just hit reply.

When I was growing up, there was an unspoken deal: if you worked hard, stuck with a company, and paid your dues, you’d be rewarded.

That usually meant:

• A steady paycheck that grew over time.
• The ability to buy a home and raise a family.
• A pension or retirement plan that felt secure.
• The chance to build loyalty both ways—employee to company, and company to employee.

For many in my generation (Gen X), that deal cracked. We saw both parents working full-time, latchkey kids holding down the fort, and families living paycheck to paycheck even with long hours. Many people stayed in jobs they didn’t love because leaving felt riskier than staying.

What Millennials and Gen Z inherited

Fast forward to today, and younger generations are often painted with the “entitled” brush. But here’s the reality:

• They’ve inherited higher costs of living with stagnant wages.
• They’ve watched loyalty to companies not be reciprocated.
• They’ve learned early that boundaries aren’t entitlement—they’re survival.

Some people call it a refusal to “pay dues.” I see it as a recognition that the dues have gone up while the rewards have gone down.

Why this matters for payroll imbalance

When executives defend multi-million-dollar compensation packages by saying “we’ll lose talent otherwise,” it rings hollow to those who’ve lived this broken promise. Workers at the ground level know the math: loyalty isn’t rewarded, stability isn’t guaranteed, and wages don’t stretch like they used to.

So they make new choices:

• Prioritizing flexibility over prestige.
• Choosing purpose over blind loyalty.
• Saying “no” to unhealthy hours or environments, even if it means less pay.

These aren’t signs of entitlement. They’re signs of adaptation.

Bringing it back to productiveness

This is where "productiveness" – which I mention at the tail end of my book The Productivity Diet and in this essay for Simplify Magazine – offers a different lens. Productivity focuses on output. Productiveness balances output with outcomes that matter.

If generations before were asked to produce at all costs, younger generations are asking: at what cost?

That’s not laziness. That’s clarity.

And if businesses want to attract and retain people across generations, they need to re-examine how payroll reflects value—not just for the few at the top, but for the many whose work sustains the whole.

Looking ahead

In the next email, we’ll take this one step further: what happens when we actually put productiveness into practice in payroll decisions? I’ll share examples of companies that have tried—and what we can learn from them.

For now, I’ll leave you with this: The promise that broke doesn’t have to stay broken. But it will take willpower, not just spreadsheets, to repair it.

Where have you felt this broken promise in your own work—or seen it play out around you? Hit reply and tell me.

– Mike

P.S. If you want to read my essay, The Path to Productiveness, in full then subscribe to Simplify Magazine. As a reader of my work, you'll get 50% off the regular price. Click here to make that happen.​

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