There is a version of the modern worker that companies have spent decades trying to build: loyal, engaged, invested in the mission, proud to wear the company hoodie. That version of the employee is not extinct, exactly. But among Gen Z workers — the 18-to-28-year-olds now making up an ever-larger share of the workforce — it has become genuinely rare. What has replaced it is something more ambiguous, more self-protective, and, if you look at the data, more deliberate.