Over the past few months, you might have noticed a particular type of content appearing everywhere on social media: the great Millennial career crisis.
The name changes, but the themes are the same. Millennials are burned out and want out of corporate. Everyone is having a midlife career crisis. At the extreme end, some Millennials think they’ve been sold a lie.
Clearly, something is striking a nerve.
I speak a little about this on my social channels, but in the interests of full disclosure… I’m not actually a Millennial. I missed the cut-off by a handful of months. Depending on who you ask, I’m part of the micro-generation known as Xennials, which means I have a foot in both the Gen X and Millennial camps. Honestly, I identify with both.
Even so, I’ve found myself paying close attention to these conversations because I think they’re pointing to something real that many people are feeling right now.
Where I disagree is the idea that this is primarily a generational story. I will say that generational labels are useful shorthand. They help us describe broad patterns quickly, however the trouble is that they can also distract us from what’s really happening underneath.
The more I’ve thought about it, the less I’m convinced that this is a Millennial problem. I think it’s a mid-career professional problem.
I’m talking about people who have spent 10, 15 or 20 years building a career. People who followed the advice they were given about navigating corporate life when they were starting out, and since then have invested in their skills and kept moving forward in good faith.
Many of them are now looking around and wondering why the future they expected feels so different from the one that’s actually arrived. I don’t think that’s because an entire generation suddenly became fragile and too focused on avocado toast, as some people would like to suggest. I think something much bigger has changed.
This week’s piece explores this in greater depth, however I do want to say this is a big topic and there’s more to be said beyond this - particularly in terms of what we can do to survive this moment. It started life as a short Instagram video, so here’s the 90-second version if that’s your preference… otherwise, read on!
The corporate rules have changed
A few years ago, I think most mid-career professionals had a fairly clear picture of what the next stage of their career would look like. For most, it was some version of more responsibility and a more senior title, with a higher salary attached to it. For some of us, there was a pathway to the leadership table.
The details varied, but the general direction probably felt reasonably predictable.
Today, I’m not sure that’s true. Increasingly, I find myself talking to people who have done everything they were supposed to do. They’ve built experience and delivered results. Many have spent years progressing through their organisations, and yet there’s an increasing number who seem less certain about their future than they did a decade ago.
I don’t think this can be attributed to individual failure. I think it’s fairly obvious that the environment around us has changed. I think that’s the real missing piece when we talk about burnout, career crises or generational dissatisfaction.
It’s not just that work has become harder or more demanding - although for many workplaces, that’s probably true. It’s also that many of the assumptions we built our careers around no longer feel as reliable as they once did.
That kind of uncertainty takes a heavy psychological toll. It’s like having the rug pulled on your career halfway through (or the ladder kicked out from underneath you by a bunch of robots, if you will).
Then the ground started moving
The workforce most of us entered is not the workforce we have today. What’s made this uniquely challenging is that the changes didn’t happen overnight. We’ve been boiling the proverbial frog, one degree at a time, for the past decade or so. That’s part of what makes the changes difficult to recognise.
Most of us were busy building careers, managing families, paying mortgages and getting on with life. We adapted as things changed around us. A new technology here, a restructure there. Perhaps a few more responsibilities added to your role as jobs were left vacant, or more management layers were removed.
Each change probably felt manageable on its own. Taken together, they’ve fundamentally altered the environment around us.
Organisations have become flatter. In many businesses, there are fewer management roles than there were 20 years ago. The traditional progression from specialist to manager to senior leader may still exist, but the path is often narrower and more competitive.
At the same time, the relationship between employers and employees has changed. Many of us grew up with the idea that loyalty, experience and tenure would eventually translate into greater security. Today, long-serving employees can find themselves impacted by restructures just as quickly as anyone else.
Now AI has entered the picture.
Whether AI ultimately creates more jobs, fewer jobs or simply different jobs is still up for debate. What’s already clear is that it’s introduced another layer of uncertainty into professions that once felt relatively stable. For the first time in a long time, many knowledge workers are being forced to ask questions they’ve never had to ask before.
Which parts of my role are genuinely valuable?
What skills will matter in five years?
What does career progression even look like from here?
Many of us are having the assumptions on which we built our careers tested to their very limits. And that’s where I think much of today’s frustration comes from.
Many mid-career professionals are arriving at the point where the rewards were supposed to become more visible, just as the ground beneath us is changing. That’s a difficult moment to navigate.
If you’re feeling this way, I hope I can give you some emotional and mental relief here by saying I don’t think you’ve done anything wrong. For most of you, I believe the environment you prepared for no longer exists.
Why this feels so personal
When people talk about burnout, career dissatisfaction or the desire to leave corporate life, it’s tempting to focus on the practical factors like workload and culture. While those things definitely matter, I don’t think they fully explain the strength of the reaction we’re seeing.
Most of us can cope with hard work and setbacks. We have before and we will again. We can even cope with uncertainty - as long as we understand the rules of the game.
What’s harder is discovering that the rules themselves are changing. Many mid-career professionals have spent years building expertise, relationships and experience within a particular model of work. We made decisions based on that model. We invested considerable time and energy into it.
Then, just as many were approaching the stage of their careers where we expected greater influence or reward, the environment started changing. That creates a unique kind of tension and psychological impact, because it raises a fundamental question of whether both the journey and destination still look the way you expected them to (if indeed they still exist at all).
I think that’s why so many conversations about work have become so emotionally charged. People are questioning assumptions they may have held for decades. Assumptions about what success looks like and what experience is worth.
That’s uncomfortable and yes, it can feel unfair and disorienting.
I’ve seen some members of older generations suggesting that anyone questioning the current state of things is somehow weak and should have seen the disruption coming. That to me shows a shallow understanding of the situation.
As a human being, it’s completely reasonable for us to have some confidence that the effort we’re putting in today will help us build the future we’re working towards - particularly if we’ve been told that’s how things work. When that confidence starts to fade, it’s natural to stop and reassess.
Perhaps that’s what we’re really seeing right now. Beyond the talk of career pivots and burnouts, or of people becoming less resilient, here’s the real crux of the issue:
A growing number of experienced professionals are looking around and asking whether the map they’ve been following still reflects the territory ahead, and whether that’s a fair exchange after years of contributing value to the workforce.
What happens next?
I don’t think the answer is to panic or quit your job. It’s tough times out there and you still have to survive, so don’t make any sudden decisions. And I certainly don’t think the answer is to spend our time arguing about which generation is to blame.
The more useful question to consider might be: if the environment has changed, what assumptions do we need to revisit?
For decades, many of us were taught to think about careers in relatively linear terms. Build experience and move upwards; keep moving towards the next rung of the ladder.
That model may still work for some people. For others, it may no longer be enough. If that’s you, maybe it’s time to think about throwing out the old playbook - or even recognising that the playbook itself is evolving.
That could mean building skills in new areas; it could mean thinking differently about flexibility and security. It could mean creating additional income streams, exploring new career paths or redefining what success looks like at this stage of life. The specifics will be different for everyone.
For those of you who are casting yourself as being in a “mid-career crisis”, what if you flipped that narrative on its head, and instead thought of yourself as being in a period of adjustment?
It’s uncomfortable, sure. But it could also be the beginning of a more honest conversation about work, careers and what comes next. Once we accept the reality that the map has changed, we can start deciding where we want to go from here.
One thing I’m thinking about this week
I’m late to the party on this one, but I finally watched The Fall of the House of Usher on Netflix. I’d somehow managed to avoid it for several years, despite being a fan of Mike Flanagan’s work and somewhat of a Victorian era tragic (yes, I was the girl in high school who read Wuthering Heights multiple times).
On the surface, it’s a gothic horror series inspired by the work of Edgar Allan Poe. Underneath that, I think it’s a story about assumptions that really captures the moment we’re in right now.
The Usher family becomes extraordinarily successful under a particular set of conditions. Over time, they begin to treat those conditions as permanent. Wealth, power and influence start feeling like something they’re entitled to.
The problem, of course, is that the world keeps changing whether we acknowledge it or not.
Watching it this week, I was struck by how relevant that feels to the conversations we’re having about work. While I know most of us are not indeed billionaire pharmaceutical executives, it’s still very easy to assume the environment that helped us succeed will continue indefinitely. Sometimes the ground moves underneath us and we don’t feel the consequences until much later.
That feels like one of the defining challenges of modern careers - paying attention to when the assumptions we’ve been relying on stop matching reality.
Worth a watch if you haven’t seen it!
Find me elsewhere
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Things I’ve written and made
🛒 Track Changes On Shop - Coffee mugs designed for corporate rebels
📖 Do Give Up Your Day Job - Guide to corporate exits and transitions to self-employment
I love what you e written Caroline! I too feel like the generational argument isn’t useful because although I just made it into the millennial category, i have clients that are 30 feeling the same as my clients who are 55, all looking to reimagine their careers and launch portfolio careers. I started exploring alternative work formats in 2017 after arriving at the conclusion that my career ladder was leaning against the wrong wall and I’m equally fascinated by what the future holds. I personally think we are moving to what I call a ‘Hollywood model’ of work, and I saw this play out while observing the Cannes content over the last couple of weeks. Thanks for sharing your perspective and now I have to watch the usher doco!
The pace of how the economy, jobs, and the present environment has changed is completely out of sync from the approaches we learnt to careers in schools. And now that's causing a painful ripple effect in the work force. I am definitely seeing more of how its impacted people, especially this year. Even among my peers, as I build my own portfolio career and freelancing practise, those who are only a few years into the role are being made redundant, and because so much value is tied to a job title, it becomes harder to jump back on the wagon.