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.
Great article ! I'm millennial too and born from babyboomers.
I think the issue was more of generational context.
Babyboomers were born during rough times (wars, starvation, etc.) where survival skills were key, all they needed was financial security and stability, they didn't have the headspace to think about fulfillment. And corporate career responded to that need, they stayed loyal to a company for decades and perhaps retired there, having climbed up the ladders.
That paradigm is shifting now. We now live in a world of abundance where we don't need to fight for those basic necessities. This is where we have more headspace for fulfillment.
Corporate world is a lot of energy spent on navigating politics, and fixing broken processes. That may leave very little space to do things that truly have a meaningful impact.
The recognition has become lesser, there may be little number of fortunate people who can stick around for decades in the same company but this is probably the last generation.
Salaries have stagnated, companies favoring salaries increase over employees who stay loyal.
And layoffs can happen overnight.
The new paradigm looks like now hustling, building passive income, and creating a meaningful life (which may not be a 40-years corporate career till retirement).
I'm writing about this as it takes on average about a decade for millennials to realize it as they were formatted under the old fashion study -> get a job.
The Gen-Z asked themselves the question about fulfillment much earlier.
As an old Gen Z-er/young Millennial, the same is true for my generation. I see this every day with the professionals I work with – we’ve followed the success “script” to the letter (go to uni > get a good job), but it doesn’t seem to work anymore.
The psychological toll is both the uncertainty about the future, and the fact that the “safety” we were expecting feels a little like a trap. I’ve found that the most effective way to navigate this period of adjustment is to start treating my own career like a business, rather than waiting for the corporate environment to stabilise, by diversifying income streams and optimising for freedom instead of relying on internal structures for a promotion.
Have you noticed that the people who seem to be handling this uncertainty best are the ones who have already started building outside of their 9-5?
I think so, yeah. The idea of the portfolio career is really the solution to the particular pain point I think. Some great content on Substack about that, as I’m sure you’ve seen.
I’ve only been introduced to that idea relatively recently in the book Be A Free Range Human and haven’t seen very much about it on Substack yet so if you have any recommended articles, feel free to send them my way.
Great stuff, Caroline. What's distressing is--entry-level people feel this too. Irrelevant before they even got started. And late-career people are feeling this--not secure enough to retire, but seemingly impossible to get re-hired. Mid-career people like me, around 50, also seem to be seen as a bit of a waste as corporate structures get flatter, and all the other reasons you mention in your piece.
So if entry- mid- and late-career people ALL feel insecure and pushed-out...who exactly is this all for?
I totally agree with this and left Corporate several years ago, burnt out, disillusioned, over-worked and overlooked. What I have found since, in my Coaching education and setting up my business, is that there were a number of tools, beliefs and behaviours that I didn't have in the corporate world (because nobody teaches us, our managers, or any other colleague) and looking back, I could have had quite a different experience if I had known how to make the corporate world work for me, instead of the other way around. I cover this now in an on-demand workshop with a framework, because I genuinely wish someone had shown me all the ways that I was holding myself back, playing small to 'stay safe' but really just keeping myself stuck instead. It's classic Good Girl Syndrome at work - not feeling good enough, trying desperately to perform, conform, please and appease just to be recognised and rewarded for 'a job well done' that never comes. It's draining, defeating and demoralising when you are constantly going over and above yet everyone arounds you is completely unaware of the daily sacrifice and compromise that is costing YOU. We definitely need people to learn how to make the workforce work for them, because being the 'good' employee isn't the best answer anymore.
I’ve been writing about this as the reconfiguration of our ambition and deconditioning. So many parallels. As a fellow xennial, we need a lot more of us writing about this, speaking about this, and normalizing the dis-ease we feel about the status quo.
I agree wholeheartedly. I hear so many people saying some version of “this is just how it is so protect yourself” and… I get that need, but also think we need to ask why this is happening, whether it’s fair and what we might be able to change or do better.
Things are definitely different. Not that corporations were ever hubs of virtue, but corporate culture was becoming more people-centered. Now it is regressing back to its iron fist ways. So the hope felt at the start of a career 15-20 years ago was not false hope. It was stolen away by some folks trapped in bygone eras.
exactly what I was describing. They were slowly buying into it and realized its promise at the turn of the century, but were given permission slips to regress, especially after the pandemic.
I totally agree with this and left Corporate several years ago, burnt out, disillusioned, over-worked and overlooked. What I have found since, in my Coaching education and setting up my business, is that there were a number of tools, beliefs and behaviours that I didn't have in the corporate world (because nobody teaches us, our managers, or any other colleague) and looking back, I could have had quite a different experience if I had known how to make the corporate world work for me, instead of the other way around. I cover this now in an on-demand workshop with a framework, because I genuinely wish someone had shown me all the ways that I was holding myself back, playing small to 'stay safe' but really just keeping myself stuck instead. It's classic Good Girl Syndrome at work - not feeling good enough, trying desperately to perform, conform, please and appease just to be recognised and rewarded for 'a job well done' that never comes. It's draining, defeating and demoralising when you are constantly going over and above yet everyone arounds you is completely unaware of the daily sacrifice and compromise that is costing YOU. We definitely need people to learn how to make the workforce work for them, because being the 'good' employee isn't the best answer anymore.
I just left the corporate world after 26 years, but I never felt the need to be loyal to a firm or even a boss to a point, as with these things it will always be transactional. You get paid in exchange for your skills/what you're hired to do.
Ultimately, that would mean I left when a role stopped feeling aligned or where I took it as far as it could go.
What made me realise I was done was how management and colleagues were handling their own fears, and how the systems within the organisation helped to amplify the self-preservation behaviour around it.
With companies using AI as the reason for job cuts (although I do believe part of it is simply fixing previous overspends on hires as well), that's definitely made the environment much more toxic to even survive in.
I had a midlife career crisis and mental breakdown at 35! And it lasted 2(ish) years. Burnout is no joke, and I’d suggest people do their best to avoid it as I’m still feeling indifferent and I’m naturally a very motivated individual. Thing is with people like that is they get used and abused in work places, which is what happened to me in almost every job I had up until that moment, I was relied on heavily and it did lead to my burnout (although a lot of that is my own fault) every millennial I hear of is experiencing something similar and it’s why many of us are angry! We have been sold a lie of what success looks like and what we need to do to obtain it. The old lifestyles and habits our parents had in the workforce are nil and void and we’re not groveling anymore for a pittance.
I hear you. I’m going to publish my theory on what’s going on at a deeper level in a few days. It’s actually really complex and goes back to things that happened decades ago.
You are exactly right about this not being generational. I am 62 now. I felt all those things in my mid-40s as my chosen field—journalism—was changing rapidly with the Internet at the same time my personal and family life was changing. I followed my own path for 15 years and then took a corporate job at 60. The current corporate world is both easier than ever before if you are able to work remotely or hybrid, and more soulless than ever before. I think the path of midlife questioning is the same although technology makes it more dramatic for each generation.
Really loved this article- 100% agree with your take here, it’s less about the generation and more about the stage of our careers (which to your point, happens to align most with where millennials are right now as we move from middle to upper management roles). This explains it so well!
Wow, great piece! You inspired many thoughts and this is so front of mind right now.
I think it’s in the best interest of mid-career professionals to consider this inflection point mandatory rather than acting surprised or operating under fear.
There’s an inherent friction because we trained ourselves to make long term bets and there are so many hoops to jump through to even land a job.
And now the short term signals have the noise cranked to what feels like an unsustainable volume in our day to day working life (and more broadly).
I don’t think we as humans were built for so much of this ambient fear and uncertainty so now we have to adopt a new skillset of figuring out how to process it.
I hope we can work more effectively as a society in the coming years to make this landscape a little more sane across all generations.
Great insight. And yes, I agree. Humans weren't designed to live in a constant state of threat and fear. It sends us into survival mode, where we operate from the primitive brain (literally putting survival above all else).
The challenge when you're in survival mode is that it's harder to access higher order thinking skills, which are what's required to enact significant change.
Very true and this is American centric, but we don’t really know how to properly relax in our culture either and our time off relative to other countries is slim.
Such a thoughtful piece. Really helps put this “midlife career crisis” I’m experiencing into perspective. Just wrote my 1st couple Substack essays (I’m new here 👋) all about this — but from the POV of inside my creative mktg job that I’ve been building over decades.
Thanks for your kind words and glad I could help. I also have a background in comms and marketing so I feel your pain! Will check out what you're working on too :)
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!
Thanks for the kind words and the insightful comments. Big fan of your Instagram content by the way!
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.
Great article ! I'm millennial too and born from babyboomers.
I think the issue was more of generational context.
Babyboomers were born during rough times (wars, starvation, etc.) where survival skills were key, all they needed was financial security and stability, they didn't have the headspace to think about fulfillment. And corporate career responded to that need, they stayed loyal to a company for decades and perhaps retired there, having climbed up the ladders.
That paradigm is shifting now. We now live in a world of abundance where we don't need to fight for those basic necessities. This is where we have more headspace for fulfillment.
Corporate world is a lot of energy spent on navigating politics, and fixing broken processes. That may leave very little space to do things that truly have a meaningful impact.
The recognition has become lesser, there may be little number of fortunate people who can stick around for decades in the same company but this is probably the last generation.
Salaries have stagnated, companies favoring salaries increase over employees who stay loyal.
And layoffs can happen overnight.
The new paradigm looks like now hustling, building passive income, and creating a meaningful life (which may not be a 40-years corporate career till retirement).
I'm writing about this as it takes on average about a decade for millennials to realize it as they were formatted under the old fashion study -> get a job.
The Gen-Z asked themselves the question about fulfillment much earlier.
Great comments and glad you enjoyed the article!
As an old Gen Z-er/young Millennial, the same is true for my generation. I see this every day with the professionals I work with – we’ve followed the success “script” to the letter (go to uni > get a good job), but it doesn’t seem to work anymore.
The psychological toll is both the uncertainty about the future, and the fact that the “safety” we were expecting feels a little like a trap. I’ve found that the most effective way to navigate this period of adjustment is to start treating my own career like a business, rather than waiting for the corporate environment to stabilise, by diversifying income streams and optimising for freedom instead of relying on internal structures for a promotion.
Have you noticed that the people who seem to be handling this uncertainty best are the ones who have already started building outside of their 9-5?
I think so, yeah. The idea of the portfolio career is really the solution to the particular pain point I think. Some great content on Substack about that, as I’m sure you’ve seen.
I’ve only been introduced to that idea relatively recently in the book Be A Free Range Human and haven’t seen very much about it on Substack yet so if you have any recommended articles, feel free to send them my way.
I can't seem to tag her here, but Jules Fedele is great! She's on Substack as well as Instagram.
Thanks! I’ll check out her Substack.
Great stuff, Caroline. What's distressing is--entry-level people feel this too. Irrelevant before they even got started. And late-career people are feeling this--not secure enough to retire, but seemingly impossible to get re-hired. Mid-career people like me, around 50, also seem to be seen as a bit of a waste as corporate structures get flatter, and all the other reasons you mention in your piece.
So if entry- mid- and late-career people ALL feel insecure and pushed-out...who exactly is this all for?
I’ll give you a hint… starts and ends with S, and has hareholder in the middle 😂
😂 Nail on the head, girl.
I totally agree with this and left Corporate several years ago, burnt out, disillusioned, over-worked and overlooked. What I have found since, in my Coaching education and setting up my business, is that there were a number of tools, beliefs and behaviours that I didn't have in the corporate world (because nobody teaches us, our managers, or any other colleague) and looking back, I could have had quite a different experience if I had known how to make the corporate world work for me, instead of the other way around. I cover this now in an on-demand workshop with a framework, because I genuinely wish someone had shown me all the ways that I was holding myself back, playing small to 'stay safe' but really just keeping myself stuck instead. It's classic Good Girl Syndrome at work - not feeling good enough, trying desperately to perform, conform, please and appease just to be recognised and rewarded for 'a job well done' that never comes. It's draining, defeating and demoralising when you are constantly going over and above yet everyone arounds you is completely unaware of the daily sacrifice and compromise that is costing YOU. We definitely need people to learn how to make the workforce work for them, because being the 'good' employee isn't the best answer anymore.
Yep. That resonates with me. Not trying to get in “trouble” so giving too much of yourself.
I’ve been writing about this as the reconfiguration of our ambition and deconditioning. So many parallels. As a fellow xennial, we need a lot more of us writing about this, speaking about this, and normalizing the dis-ease we feel about the status quo.
I agree wholeheartedly. I hear so many people saying some version of “this is just how it is so protect yourself” and… I get that need, but also think we need to ask why this is happening, whether it’s fair and what we might be able to change or do better.
Things are definitely different. Not that corporations were ever hubs of virtue, but corporate culture was becoming more people-centered. Now it is regressing back to its iron fist ways. So the hope felt at the start of a career 15-20 years ago was not false hope. It was stolen away by some folks trapped in bygone eras.
I actually feel many corporates are regressing in terms of culture, empathy and inclusion right now. I think that’s what you might be describing.
exactly what I was describing. They were slowly buying into it and realized its promise at the turn of the century, but were given permission slips to regress, especially after the pandemic.
And AI is accelerating that because they think they don’t really need people as much. Some hard lessons ahead on that one, I think.
lots of over promising and under-delivering ahead with AI.
I’m already seeing it honestly.
Yeah, I don’t know all the levels of AI available. But the little I’ve experienced lets me know its not as capable as touted.
I totally agree with this and left Corporate several years ago, burnt out, disillusioned, over-worked and overlooked. What I have found since, in my Coaching education and setting up my business, is that there were a number of tools, beliefs and behaviours that I didn't have in the corporate world (because nobody teaches us, our managers, or any other colleague) and looking back, I could have had quite a different experience if I had known how to make the corporate world work for me, instead of the other way around. I cover this now in an on-demand workshop with a framework, because I genuinely wish someone had shown me all the ways that I was holding myself back, playing small to 'stay safe' but really just keeping myself stuck instead. It's classic Good Girl Syndrome at work - not feeling good enough, trying desperately to perform, conform, please and appease just to be recognised and rewarded for 'a job well done' that never comes. It's draining, defeating and demoralising when you are constantly going over and above yet everyone arounds you is completely unaware of the daily sacrifice and compromise that is costing YOU. We definitely need people to learn how to make the workforce work for them, because being the 'good' employee isn't the best answer anymore.
get on oyster!! https://oyster.thekindsocialmediacompany.com
I just left the corporate world after 26 years, but I never felt the need to be loyal to a firm or even a boss to a point, as with these things it will always be transactional. You get paid in exchange for your skills/what you're hired to do.
Ultimately, that would mean I left when a role stopped feeling aligned or where I took it as far as it could go.
What made me realise I was done was how management and colleagues were handling their own fears, and how the systems within the organisation helped to amplify the self-preservation behaviour around it.
With companies using AI as the reason for job cuts (although I do believe part of it is simply fixing previous overspends on hires as well), that's definitely made the environment much more toxic to even survive in.
Agree with this and love your attitude. Very healthy.
I had a midlife career crisis and mental breakdown at 35! And it lasted 2(ish) years. Burnout is no joke, and I’d suggest people do their best to avoid it as I’m still feeling indifferent and I’m naturally a very motivated individual. Thing is with people like that is they get used and abused in work places, which is what happened to me in almost every job I had up until that moment, I was relied on heavily and it did lead to my burnout (although a lot of that is my own fault) every millennial I hear of is experiencing something similar and it’s why many of us are angry! We have been sold a lie of what success looks like and what we need to do to obtain it. The old lifestyles and habits our parents had in the workforce are nil and void and we’re not groveling anymore for a pittance.
I hear you. I’m going to publish my theory on what’s going on at a deeper level in a few days. It’s actually really complex and goes back to things that happened decades ago.
You are exactly right about this not being generational. I am 62 now. I felt all those things in my mid-40s as my chosen field—journalism—was changing rapidly with the Internet at the same time my personal and family life was changing. I followed my own path for 15 years and then took a corporate job at 60. The current corporate world is both easier than ever before if you are able to work remotely or hybrid, and more soulless than ever before. I think the path of midlife questioning is the same although technology makes it more dramatic for each generation.
Very true that mid-life career questions are very common. The current moment seems to be amplifying things.
Really loved this article- 100% agree with your take here, it’s less about the generation and more about the stage of our careers (which to your point, happens to align most with where millennials are right now as we move from middle to upper management roles). This explains it so well!
Thank you for the kind words. Hope we can find some solutions beyond more generational wars.
Wow, great piece! You inspired many thoughts and this is so front of mind right now.
I think it’s in the best interest of mid-career professionals to consider this inflection point mandatory rather than acting surprised or operating under fear.
There’s an inherent friction because we trained ourselves to make long term bets and there are so many hoops to jump through to even land a job.
And now the short term signals have the noise cranked to what feels like an unsustainable volume in our day to day working life (and more broadly).
I don’t think we as humans were built for so much of this ambient fear and uncertainty so now we have to adopt a new skillset of figuring out how to process it.
I hope we can work more effectively as a society in the coming years to make this landscape a little more sane across all generations.
Great insight. And yes, I agree. Humans weren't designed to live in a constant state of threat and fear. It sends us into survival mode, where we operate from the primitive brain (literally putting survival above all else).
The challenge when you're in survival mode is that it's harder to access higher order thinking skills, which are what's required to enact significant change.
We're really in a double bind here.
Very true and this is American centric, but we don’t really know how to properly relax in our culture either and our time off relative to other countries is slim.
American corporate life seems to be very dire. Australia is slightly better but not by far.
Such a thoughtful piece. Really helps put this “midlife career crisis” I’m experiencing into perspective. Just wrote my 1st couple Substack essays (I’m new here 👋) all about this — but from the POV of inside my creative mktg job that I’ve been building over decades.
Thanks for your kind words and glad I could help. I also have a background in comms and marketing so I feel your pain! Will check out what you're working on too :)