Professionals between 18 and 35 are recalculating their path and prefer quality of life to professional advancement
With well-defined priorities, some already upon entering the job market, the new generations are redefining the concept of “professional success“. Features that were once considered “differentiators”, such as a pleasant work environment, communication and well-defined hours, are now as essential as good pay. For some, even more so.
Motivated by these priorities, most professionals between the ages of 18 and 35 have moved away from the possibility of vertical growth, in which they move from collaborator to coordinator, manager, etc. The preference has become horizontal growth: this way you can become an expert in the field, be well paid and have other benefits, without necessarily having to coordinate a team.
This is what data analyst Marcos Ribeiro*, 30, thinks. For him, who works at an American multinational, the idea was born after noticing, in his first job, four years ago, how his superiors dedicated themselves to working continuously, always under pressure and, worse, without adequate remuneration.
“It was a lack of will that I always had. I looked at the positions above and saw that the senior one was already working like a convict. On Saturday and Sunday I went to the company platform and everyone was online. The manager didn’t have it done Even if I went in there at midnight, all the managers were online and I looked and thought: “Guys, I don’t want this person to earn less than R$50,000 a month to make it worth it,” he explains, in an interview to Earth.
He says that after leaving the company to work for another opportunity, he met with his old boss again and discovered that his salary was not as high as he expected for the dedication that the role and the company required.
“And then I said, ‘Bullshit! Would you kill yourself and earn almost the same as I earn now, working abroad, as a junior?'” he commented.
Marcos emphasizes that, at the moment, he has invested in becoming an expert in his field, prioritizing quality of life over traditional professional success. “I prefer to tidy up, make better use of the position I’m in, rather than changing position just to change position”, he adds.
The name of this is “quiet ambition”
Career experts call this movement, which is gaining strength among next-generation professionals, “quiet ambition” – in Portuguese “silent ambition”. The term emerged in the United States and became popular in April 2023, when a respondent from Fortune He used it to describe how he felt and acted in relation to his career aspirations.
According to the magazine, this movement is, in fact, a response from young people, especially Generation Z professionals, to what is valued in the corporate world. Those born between 1990 and 2010 have reevaluated what is truly important, after experiencing the extremes of a pandemic and an unprepared job market.
Read as difficult, managers and recruiters showed disapproval of the new positioning. However, more and more research shows that the change is here to stay and is spreading to other generations.
According to a survey carried out in August 2023 by the company Visier, which specializes in business data, the majority of professionals have fewer and fewer high professional ambitions. Of the thousand interviewed:
- 67% want to spend time with family and friends;
- 64% want to be physically or mentally healthy;
- 9% of those interviewed want to become a personnel manager;
- 4% plan to become a C-level executive (such as CEO and other C-level positions).
The company also noted that when respondents were asked how much they wanted to be successful at their current company, 63% of them responded: “I care about getting good results, but I won’t compromise work-life balance”.
Bad work environments and bad managers are catalysts
After a series of bad experiences in the job market and a case of burnout, human rights and sustainability specialist Julia Silva*, 31, says her priority has been spaces that prioritize mental health linked to productivity. She says that, during the four years of the course, she prepared herself professionally and spared no effort to have a strong CV and the guarantee of a good job. However, with the pandemic and changes in government, her vision of her future has changed.
“When I started university, I had a different reality: a promising work reality, a very positive reality in relation to Brazil and its external vision. And when I concluded, as such, towards the middle, towards the end of the course , I began to understand that perhaps the market would not be as I imagined it”, he laments.
When she entered the job market, Julia encountered terrible leaders. She came up against a reality common to various fields: people who are technically trained, but who don’t understand what it means to manage people.
“This is also one of the points that traumatized me, because you are faced with leaders who are not willing to really guide you, to be with you, to support you in everything that is necessary and they don’t see you as competition. It’s like if I were competing with you,” he says.
As a woman of color, Julia believes the market has made a lot of progress, but her fear is that it has reached a point of stagnation.
“It’s a somewhat square vision of how things should be. And we have to understand, have points of view on diversity, points of view on different realities, on different situations. I’m talking about diversity beyond ethnic issues. We really do I realized that companies were not yet so prepared for the new”, he adds.
Today she works in a company where she feels comfortable and productive, but she guarantees that her priorities have changed after her negative experiences. While Julia five years ago prioritized success and becoming a point of reference in her career, today she prioritizes mental health. “Living, rather than surviving,” she sums up.
What do the experts say?
For Andrea Deis, career manager and neuroscience specialist at the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp), the issue is not generational. Unlike what is generally underlined, the quiet ambition It’s a reflection of other professional-led movements that were already reporting distress in the job market. He mentions “silent construction” and “silent killing.”
“It’s not a withdrawal, it doesn’t mean they’re leaving. […] In my opinion it was an answer: “We don’t want it.” In other words, we don’t want to take on these high strategic positions because the standard of living, the finances and what you offer us do not satisfy us, today, in terms of what we understand as quality of life”, emphasizes Andrea, who is a doctoral student and researcher in the field.
It also warns that if companies don’t pay attention to the changes, they could soon face losses in earnings. The solution, he adds, is to adapt to this new world.
“Technology has arrived and they [contratantes] They have adapted to technology, but not to people. These young people have evolved. There is no new world with old ideas,” she emphasizes.
Madalena Feliciano, a career and human development specialist for over 20 years, agrees that a change in mindset can be reflected in the professional’s dedication to the company. However, some strategies help overcome this moment, such as:
- Understand and enhance the personal objectives of each employeecreating a work environment that promotes professional and personal growth in a balanced way;
- Offer the possibility of flexible working hoursallowing employees to reconcile their professional responsibilities with personal needs;
- Include alternative timessuch as part-time or flexible hours, adapting to individual needs;
- Encourage the use of technology to facilitate remote working it could be a viable option;
- Ability to work from home or hybrid officeto guarantee greater autonomy to employees and contribute to the balance between professional and personal life;
- Implement quality of life, wellness and incentive programs with gyms, conversation clubs, rewards for achievement – such as family trips, show tickets, days off, day spas, among many others;
- Create a collaborative work environmentwhere ideas can be shared freely.
“Certainly by taking some measures together with HR, leadership and employees, it is possible to find excellent alternatives according to the individual needs of each company and have a much lighter and more productive climate and environment,” underlines Madalena.
*Names have been changed to protect the identities of those interviewed.
Source: Terra
Rose James is a Gossipify movie and series reviewer known for her in-depth analysis and unique perspective on the latest releases. With a background in film studies, she provides engaging and informative reviews, and keeps readers up to date with industry trends and emerging talents.
