Why are twenty-somethings more motivated by work-life balance, meaning and financial independence than status and what does this mean for young people’s careers?
“If you do end up in a corporate job you don’t care about, obviously you’re not going to care about climbing the career ladder,” says Alex*, 25, who works in corporate software engineering in Amsterdam.
Morally speaking, Alex does not feel aligned with the company’s investments and purposefully tries to keep his personal time completely independent of his career. He isn’t alone. The quiet quitting trend – people actively disengaging from their jobs by fulfilling only their jobs basic requirements – pointed to a huge amount of gen Zs that want to completely uninvest from their professional lives.
Outside of work hours Alex has started a film podcast with a friend and is learning jiu jitsu. He recently tried to get out of corporate life and go down the PhD route and though that didn’t work out, one possible eventual escape plan is still academia.The reason young people might be switching off and becoming disillusioned from the corporate world is laid out in Deloitte’s gen Z and millennials report on attitudes to money, meaning and well-being.
The report, published in May, found that while the vast majority of gen Zs value learning when choosing their employers, they are not interested in promotions or management. Only six per cent of gen Zs said their primary career goal is to reach a leadership role. Instead, they prioritise finding meaningful work, wellbeing and money; “a ‘trifecta’ that can be hard to find,” the report states. “They have high expectations for their employers… and many feel their managers are not meeting their needs”.
The report noted the generation’s lack of interest in the distasteful demands of leadership. Gen Z do not see the time and energy required outside of work hours for such promotions as worth the career reward, the report says. Alex feels the findings of the report apply to him. “Young people also see what it takes to get there and don’t want to do it,” he says. “I think they don’t want to be managers. You have to be shitty to people and get them to do what you want.”
Corporate environments have also changed since the time millennials and gen Z were moving up that hierarchy. A lot of companies now pretend there is no clear-cut internal power ranking, Alex explains, a trend acknowledged by the BBC when they reported that companies were implementing organisational changes to flatten the pecking order. “It’s like the upper management is this elite club, so if there’s less of a clear hierarchy there’s less to strive for,” Alex says. So, after ending up in a meaningless job you don’t care about, your leadership ambitions out the window, what is there to aim for?
Rutger Bregman, Dutch historian and author, has made headlines with his new book, Moral Ambition, directed at the skilled and educated young people who he says consistently get lost in what he calls the “Bermuda triangle of talent” – consultancy, corporate law and finance.
In the book, Bregman argues young people should channel their ambitions into solving the huge moral problems facing our own and future generations, and put their ideals to work. Bregman finds historical examples of such a channeling of energy, like the British abolitionists in the late 18th century who were largely business owners. But is it realistic to expect young people to decide to prioritise moral ambition over material concerns?
“Ambition is now a part of the morally satisfying, financially unrewarding path-less-travelled. Moral ambition is a material challenge.”
Despina, 25, tried to put Bregman’s principles into practice. After graduating from a Russell Group university, she became a project manager for a healthcare NGO in Athens, Greece. While she says she was doing a huge amount of socially meaningful and morally satisfying work, she was being asked to put in more time and effort than she felt would normally be expected from someone in a nine to five, and for very little pay. Since she was living at home at the time, the issue of low pay didn’t concern her. “I felt so helpless knowing the scale of some of the issues I care about, but at least while I was working there, I felt like I was doing something,” Despina says. “I didn’t care about the pay but that’s because I was lucky and could live at home. I’m not sure I would have felt the same if I had to pay rent.”
Beyond her finances, the lack of work-life balance expected of her by the organisation was unsustainable. “I did not feel satisfied with the work-life balance, and the moral satisfaction didn’t help, because most of my overtime and stress came from bureaucratic processes and internal organisational issues, not from the actual work itself,” she says. This balance was also off during Despina’s fieldwork with the NGO. “We were working extremely long days, but then it actually felt worth it, because I was having a tangible impact on something. So there, I didn’t mind, but most of the time it wasn’t like that.”
Alistair Stirling, founder of Stirling Careers Consultancy agrees with Deloitte’s findings. “Those two things,” meaning money and work-life balance, “do seem to be the two main things for gen Z,” he says. “They’re definitely very careful about what they want to do. I think they would definitely look at the background of the organisation, and if they don’t like it, not apply. It’s a factor.”
“In terms of moral satisfaction, as a freelancer, I set my own guidelines. I don’t apply for jobs at companies that make or use weapons, I don’t apply for jobs at companies that have committed wage theft. I do a general background check on the company. I find a lot more ‘purpose’ in the stuff I do outside of work around community organizing.”
Aaron Yin, 30, a TikTok and Instagram influencer, went viral last year for a similar take on corporate careers. “I don’t want to make more money to have to spend that money on more therapy,” he says in the post, which has now amassed over 185,000 views. He quit his corporate sales job in Autumn of 2024 and became a freelancer but outside of his paid work is very politically active on social media as a sort of community organising influencer. The latter is what he finds more purpose in, he says. He now lives paycheck to paycheck and has exhausted all his savings.
“Mentally though, I feel great,” Aaron says. Aaron does a general background check on every company he applies to work with. “In terms of moral satisfaction, as a freelancer, I set my own guidelines,” he says. “I don’t apply for jobs at companies that make or use weapons, I don’t apply for jobs at companies that have committed wage theft. I find a lot more ‘purpose’ in the stuff I do outside of work around community organizing.”
Alice Stapleton, London based career coach, tod Maslow that, while her gen Z clients are driven to earn well, they are also looking for meaningful work that makes a difference. “Most are willing to compromise on money (to a degree) in order to find work that they enjoy, is reflective of their values and what they want to stand for in this world,” she says.
Alex’s situation is an example of Bregman’s picture of gen Z. Young people become trapped in corporate fields because they’re simply the ones that pay enough. “I agree that people end up getting swallowed up by corporate jobs,” Alex says, “but the reason is that it’s the only option that provides any economic safety.” While being morally driven to a spiritually rewarding field, the material conditions required by those jobs block the talented young people Bregman is addressing.
For gen Z, ambition is no longer a corporate or entrepreneurial instinct. Ambition is now a part of the morally satisfying, financially unrewarding path-less-travelled. Moral ambition is a material challenge. “What I see is an enormous waste of talent,” Rutger told the Guardian’s Today in Focus podcast. The choice for gen Z seems to be between wasting their talent on a nine to five they hate or wasting time and money on a healthy conscience.
*Name changed for anonymity
