The end of American careerism

Late last year, two of Zack's managers at the construction and engineering firm where he works pulled him aside. Congratulations, they said. You're getting promoted to be the head of the department. They told him the role would come with a 10% raise — or maybe even more. They thought they were rewarding him for all his great work. But the whole time, Zack had one thought on his mind: How do I get out of this?

He liked his current role at the company, and he had no interest in running a whole team. Besides, becoming a manager would require him to go into the office every day, the way he used to before the pandemic. "I get to see my kids so much now," he told me. "You couldn't pay me enough to give that up."

He told his bosses it was a big change and promised to think it over. A few days later, much to their surprise, he turned it down. "I talked about this with my wife, and I don't think this position is the correct fit for me," he told them. "I'm really happy with what I'm doing. I'm really good at what I'm doing right now."

Climbing the corporate ladder was once the cornerstone of the American dream. But in the aftermath of the pandemic, I've been hearing about people like Zack who no longer aspire to the fancy titles, corner offices, and bigger paychecks that come with a promotion. Many are trying to fly under the radar, desperately hoping they won't get a tap on the shoulder. Others are outright declining promotions — or even asking for a demotion to a role with fewer responsibilities.

In a survey conducted by Randstad, a global human-resources consultancy, a whopping 42% of respondents in the United States said they don't want a promotion because they're happy where they are. That was higher than in countries that are known for being more laid back about work, like Italy, Spain, and New Zealand. Maybe that's why earlier this year, a young New Yorker struck a chord on TikTok when he vowed to "descend the corporate ladder." "Some people want to be a manager, and that's OK," he said. "Everyone deserves the opportunity to get chewed out by the CEO directly. But the only team I want to be responsible for is my plants."

The shift away from career advancement is bewildering for bosses, who fought so hard to ascend the ranks themselves. Take Dell, whose executives thought they came up with an ingenious plan to get everyone back into the office. If employees didn't come in at least three days a week, the company announced in February, they would be ineligible for a promotion. The response from Dell's workforce was a collective shrug. Months after the directive, nearly half of employees were still remote, apparently happy to remain in their current roles as long as they could keep working from home. It was a clear sign that in 2024, promotions just aren't the incentive they used to be.

At stake, though, is something much larger than the RTO wars. After all, careerism has long played an essential role in building dynamic and successful companies. The prospect of becoming senior vice president is what drove so many white-collar professionals to give it their all, even in the face of long hours, soul-crushing meetings, and petty office politics. If the allure of promotions can no longer get everyone to work hard, what will?

The dream of climbing the corporate ladder feels as old as America itself. But 200 years ago, there was no corporate ladder to climb. The original work ethic in America — the Protestant one, espoused by the likes of Benjamin Franklin — dates from a time when most Americans were self-employed as farmers and artisans. It was rooted in a rugged individualism that was skeptical of authority and hierarchies, fitting for a country founded on the idea of freedom from tyranny.

That became a problem when the Industrial Revolution arrived. Companies exploded in size, and more and more Americans found themselves working for someone else. In 1820, 80% of the workforce was self-employed. By 1870, that share had shrunk to 33%. By 1940, it was 20%.

"The moral vision of American society had been based upon the image of the independent, self-employed person," writes Shoshana Zuboff, a professor emeritus at the Harvard Business School who has studied the history of work. "Many social critics feared that people would be less likely to work hard under the wage system and, even worse, that something in their very natures might change." America was facing an identity crisis.

The solution was to forge a whole new work ethic — one that celebrated the sprawling corporate hierarchies that were swallowing up most Americans. The ideal was no longer independence but interdependence, a willingness to be subsumed by the needs of the larger whole. "What the managers of these new enterprises now needed to induce was obedience and efficiency," writes Zuboff, "not the questioning stubborn ways of the autonomous crafts person idealized by the old work ethic."

This new "career ethic" came with a carrot. By serving as loyal soldiers for their companies, employees could expect to gain more prestige, better job security, and bigger salaries. Help the boss, professionals were told, and maybe you can become the boss. The new ethic took hold among the managerial class in the 1950s. By the 1970s, it had spread to the entire workforce.

Half a century later, the careerist ethos is still the bible of the corporate workplace. Those who try to opt out risk getting blacklisted as weirdos or losers or quiet quitters. But cracks are starting to appear in the system: Many people, it has become clear, are no longer willing to make the trade-offs required by America's hustle culture. And the number of promotion deniers would likely be even higher if employees weren't worried about outing themselves as non-careerists.

One guy I spoke with, a systems analyst I'll call James, is desperate to avoid the promotion his boss keeps hinting at. But he's worried about the consequences of turning it down. "If I told him I don't want to go any further, I feel like he'll start passing me over for new ideas he has," James told me. "For some reason, in our society in America, that's kind of shunned. People are expected to want to keep climbing and climbing."

Zack, who's in his early 40s, was one of those people eager to keep climbing. As an apprentice, he dreamed of becoming a foreman. And once he became a foreman, he aspired for even higher positions. "I wanted to run the largest jobs," he says. "I wanted to gain the most experience. I wanted to run the biggest crews." Eventually, he got promoted into a corporate office role, and that opened up even more opportunities for advancement. "I was fairly ambitious," he says. "And it worked out really well." He rose all the way to head up an entire department.

But when the pandemic hit, he started questioning that upward trajectory. The first jolt was when his job went remote during the shutdown. Working from home, he realized just how much he'd been missing out on. "At lunchtime, I could go running for 45 minutes," he recalls. "All these things I used to love to do, I started doing again. I was like, oh my God, I never want to give up this life."

Then, even before the rest of the economy began to open up, his bosses pressured Zack to force his team to come back to the office. He was stunned. Some of his employees had family members who were immunocompromised; an RTO order could endanger their lives. "That was a betrayal from a company I had been incredibly dedicated to," Zack told me. "After that, I was like, well, fuck. I was dedicated to this thing, and it was all a big fucking lie."

Rather than toe the company line, Zack quit. He found a job that didn't require him to be a manager, and took a $20,000 pay cut. Today he far prefers being an individual contributor who's free to focus on his own work — another reason he declined the promotion he was offered last year.

Professionals younger than Zack, who's an elder millennial, appear to harbor an even stronger anti-advancement streak. In Randstad's survey, Gen Z respondents — those on the lowest rungs of the corporate ladder, earning the lowest salaries — were more likely than millennials or Gen Xers to agree with the statement "I don't want career progression." In another survey, when Gallup asked people what's deterring them from seeking a position in senior leadership, Gen Zers were especially concerned with the long hours and round-the-clock demands that come with a job at the top. For a new generation, the age of American careerism is losing its appeal.

Older bosses might be inclined to chalk all this up to a lack of ambition — a sign that young people aren't willing to put in the effort. But I think it makes sense that the allure of career progression is fading, given how much the workplace has changed in recent decades.

Take job security. Back in the 1960s, managers had nothing to fear from layoffs, because layoffs were basically unheard of. But today, being a manager puts a huge target on your back, because you earn a bigger salary. If you accept a promotion you might wind up being more expendable, rather than less. That elevated risk is the main reason that James, the systems analyst, plans to decline his impending promotion. "They always do layoffs every two or three years," he says of his employer. "I don't want to come up higher on the list as someone who's getting paid more."

Besides, the dream of climbing the corporate ladder was probably never as great as it seemed to be. Often, people get promoted only to find themselves doing less of the meaningful work that attracted them to their profession in the first place. This is such a common problem, in fact, that management scholars have a special term for it: managerial blues. It's the sad irony of corporate America: The higher up you go, the less fulfilling your job becomes.

"Everybody wants to be the VP or the partner with the corner office," says Michel Anteby, a professor of management and organizations at Boston University. "The imaginary is that life will be much better then. But in fact you might be losing out on something that's very meaningful to you."

So how can companies motivate employees to work hard, if promotions have lost their appeal? I posed that question to Zack. Given how betrayed he felt by his previous employer, I wondered if he no longer believes in dedicating himself to his job, no matter the potential rewards. But it turns out there are still plenty of things that motivate him. Getting to do interesting work. Having the autonomy to create his own schedule. Feeling like a trusted and valued member of the team. Being surrounded by peers who are great at what they do. Reporting to a manager who actually, in his words, "gives a shit." Those are the things that light a fire under him. "I do work extra," Zack says. "I really do try hard."

When I asked James what drives him, he said something similar. "I like my job and I want to keep getting better at it," he told me. "And since I work at a hospital, I'm helping nurses and providers help their patients."

There's important guidance here for employers. As the fever of careerism breaks, they can no longer rely on the shiny promise of a promotion to get people to devote themselves to roles that are boring, or toxic, or unfulfilling, or badly managed. But if they make sure that the jobs they offer are enjoyable and meaningful in their own right, employees are prepared to give it their all. The carrot of corporate climbing may be vanishing. But that doesn't have to spell the end of American industriousness.

Aki Ito is a chief correspondent at Business Insider.