There’s plenty of evidence that Gen-Z workers think very differently about their jobs than their older colleagues, but a fresh report suggests that younger workers think the very idea of a “career” is alien. It concludes that the newest members of the workforce are quite uninterested in laboriously climbing the rungs of the traditional career ladder. Why? Because their side hustles — which often have nothing to do with their day jobs — are just as important to them, or are a bigger priority. Gen-Z’s thinking, Fortune says, embodies what’s called “career minimalism,” essentially keeping things clean and simple at the office, without extra frills, fuss and added responsibilities, like taking on a management role.
The report is based on the latest workforce survey carried out by Glassdoor, the San Francisco-based job discussion and recruitment site. It found that Gen-Z workers — people born between roughly 1997 and 2012 — really don’t like the notion of becoming a manager as part of their career progression. In fact, 68 percent said they’d avoid moving into a management role.
The subtlety here is that in July a different Glassdoor report suggested that Gen-Z wasn’t “unbossing” after all, (by avoiding management roles, for example) and were entering the workforce at a rate that matched their older peers’ habits, and at a pace that means about one in every 10 managers will come from Gen-Z person by the end of this year.
