Hot Takes 🔥 by Hot Jobs
Generations at Work | Part 5: Gen Z, Unit II
A Hot Jobs series exploring what shaped each generation’s relationship with work—and what employers, leaders, and coworkers can learn from them.
✉️ A Note From Katie
When I started my career in corporate America, climbing the ladder was practically the definition of success.
You worked hard. You earned the promotion. You got the bigger title, the bigger paycheck, and eventually, the bigger office.
And if someone offered you a management position?
You took it.
Because that’s what ambitious people did.
Fast-forward nearly 20 years, and I find myself looking at that traditional career path a little differently.
After years in corporate leadership, I eventually chose entrepreneurship. Today, as a business owner, I understand something I didn’t fully appreciate earlier in my career:
There’s a big difference between wanting to be successful and wanting to be someone’s boss.
And apparently, Gen Z is figuring that out much earlier than many of us did!
There’s even a name for it.
Conscious Unbossing.
And when you combine that with the explosion of side hustles, personal brands, and the creator economy, I think we’re witnessing a fascinating shift in how the next generation defines success.
But here’s what I’m wondering:
Are they onto something?
Or are they underestimating what it actually takes to build a successful career?
— Katie, Hot Jobs Staffing & Recruiting Owner
***Connect with me on LinkedIn Here
🔥 The Hot Take
Gen Z Wants to Get Ahead. They’re Just Not Convinced Becoming the Boss Is the Best Way to Do It.
For decades, the traditional career ladder was pretty straightforward.
Individual contributor.
Supervisor.
Manager.
Director.
Vice President.
Maybe someday, the corner office.
Each promotion represented progress.
More responsibility meant more success.
And becoming someone’s boss was often the clearest indication that you’d made it.
But Gen Z is increasingly challenging that equation.
Enter conscious unbossing: the idea of intentionally declining or avoiding traditional management positions because the added responsibility, stress, and expectations may not be worth the reward.
And before we dismiss this as another example of a generation that doesn’t want to work, consider something interesting.
Deloitte’s 2026 global survey found that only 6% of Gen Z respondents identified reaching a leadership position as their primary career goal.
Yet 76% expressed interest in senior leadership eventually.
Read that again.
They aren’t necessarily saying they never want to lead.
They’re saying leadership isn’t the only thing they’re working toward.
And perhaps more importantly, they’re questioning whether the traditional path is the right one.
👀 The Promotion Nobody Wants
Imagine you’re a talented 26-year-old employee.
You’re good at your job.
Your manager recognizes your potential.
A promotion opens up.
Congratulations!
You can now supervise eight employees, manage scheduling conflicts, handle performance issues, answer emails after hours, attend additional meetings, and become responsible for everyone else’s results.
And your salary increases modestly.
Suddenly, the promotion doesn’t look quite as exciting.
Now imagine you’ve spent the last two years watching your own manager navigate burnout, staffing shortages, unrealistic expectations, and an endless stream of problems.
Would you be eager to inherit that job?
Maybe not.
And that’s where I think employers need to pay attention.
Because when high-performing employees stop wanting to become managers, we have to ask:
Is this really a motivation problem? Or have we made management an unattractive job?
It’s a fair question.
But here’s the other side.
Leadership has never been easy.
Managing people requires difficult conversations, accountability, patience, emotional intelligence, and occasionally making decisions nobody likes.
You don’t develop those skills by avoiding every uncomfortable responsibility.
And you certainly don’t become an effective leader simply because you want the title and compensation.
Which raises another question:
If we want the rewards of leadership without the challenges, are we actually prepared to lead?
📱 Meanwhile, Gen Z Is Building Something Else
Here’s where conscious unbossing gets even more interesting.
While some younger workers are questioning traditional promotions, they’re also growing up in an economy where the possibilities for earning money look dramatically different.
Previous generations largely depended on an employer to provide the next opportunity.
Want more money?
Get promoted.
Want more responsibility?
Become a manager.
Want financial independence?
Keep climbing.
Today, a 24-year-old might have a full-time job while simultaneously building:
- A TikTok or Instagram audience
- A freelance consulting business
- An online store
- A digital product
- A personal brand
- A monetized YouTube channel
- A service business they hope to grow
And social media makes those alternative paths more visible than ever.
Open TikTok, and you’ll find people documenting their corporate jobs, sharing side-hustle income, discussing business ideas, and explaining why they’d rather build something of their own than chase another promotion.
Of course, social media has a way of making entrepreneurship look considerably easier than it is.
For every creator celebrating a five-figure month, there are countless others earning very little.
For every successful small-business owner, there are years of risk, uncertainty, responsibility, and work that rarely make the highlight reel.
As someone who owns businesses, I can assure you:
Entrepreneurship isn’t an escape from responsibility. It’s often an invitation to take on more of it.
You may not have a boss.
But you have customers.
Employees.
Payroll.
Expenses.
Competition.
And a business that doesn’t necessarily stop needing you at 5 p.m.
The irony?
Some young professionals who don’t want to manage five employees may eventually discover that building their dream business requires managing 25.
And that’s a lesson worth discussing.
💡 What Employers Can Learn From This
I think there’s a temptation to interpret conscious unbossing as a rejection of traditional employment.
But employers should be careful about making that assumption.
Not everyone wants to manage people.
And not every exceptional employee should.
Some of your most talented people may prefer to become highly skilled individual contributors rather than supervisors.
That doesn’t make them less valuable.
It means career development needs more than one path.
Consider what you’re offering employees who want to grow:
1. Meaningful advancement without management.
Can employees increase their compensation, expertise, and influence without becoming responsible for a team?
2. Leadership positions worth pursuing.
Are your managers properly compensated, trained, supported, and given enough authority to succeed?
3. Real development opportunities.
Are you preparing future leaders through mentorship, coaching, and gradually increasing responsibility—or simply promoting your strongest performer and hoping for the best?
4. Room for entrepreneurial thinking.
Could the initiative that drives an employee to build a side business also make them an extraordinary contributor inside your organization?
Employers don’t necessarily need to compete with every side hustle.
But they do need to understand what those opportunities represent.
Autonomy.
Ownership.
Creativity.
Financial upside.
The ability to build something meaningful.
Those motivations aren’t exclusive to entrepreneurship.
Great employers can offer many of them, too.
🔄 What Gen Z Might Be Missing
Now, let’s challenge the other side.
Because I think there’s a danger in assuming that every traditional career expectation is outdated simply because a new generation questions it.
Building a successful career takes time.
Developing expertise takes repetition.
Leadership requires experience.
And sometimes the opportunities that change your career are the ones that initially look inconvenient.
There is value in accepting a difficult assignment.
In learning to manage people.
In working through conflict.
In being accountable for outcomes beyond your individual performance.
And in occasionally doing something that stretches you beyond your comfort zone.
Those experiences don’t always produce immediate financial rewards.
But they can produce something equally valuable:
Capability.
Confidence.
Judgment.
And the ability to create opportunities later in your career that you may not even recognize today.
The same applies to entrepreneurship.
A personal brand isn’t automatically a business.
A side hustle isn’t automatically profitable.
And being your own boss doesn’t mean you stop answering to people.
Sometimes it means answering to more of them.
Gen Z may be right to question the corporate ladder.
But rejecting a traditional path doesn’t eliminate the work required to build an alternative one.
🔥 The Bigger Question
What If Ambition Is Changing—Not Disappearing?
Maybe the most interesting thing about conscious unbossing isn’t that younger employees are declining promotions.
It’s that they’re questioning a definition of success many of us accepted without much thought.
What if success isn’t necessarily managing the largest team?
Or earning the most impressive title?
Or spending 30 years climbing toward an executive office?
What if success means becoming exceptional at your craft?
Building a business.
Creating multiple income streams.
Having more control over your time.
Or pursuing leadership because you genuinely want to lead—not because it’s the only way to earn more money.
There’s room for all of those ambitions.
But there’s also something we shouldn’t lose sight of:
Every organization still needs people willing to lead.
Businesses need managers.
Teams need mentors.
Employees need guidance.
And someone has to make the difficult decisions.
If an entire generation begins questioning the traditional path to leadership, employers have an opportunity—and perhaps an obligation—to rethink what that path looks like.
And younger professionals have a responsibility to recognize that meaningful success, whether corporate or entrepreneurial, still requires commitment, accountability, and hard work.
Maybe the future of ambition isn’t about climbing the ladder faster.
Maybe it’s about being more intentional about which ladder is worth climbing.
💬 Join the Conversation
Here’s a question for business owners, hiring managers, and professionals of every generation:
Would you accept a promotion that came with a bigger title, a modest raise, and significantly more stress?
Or would you rather invest that energy into building something of your own?
Hit reply and tell me what you think.
I’d love to hear whether your definition of career success has changed over time.
— Katie
Hot 🔥Jobs Staffing & Recruiting
Next in Generations at Work: Four Generations. One Workplace. What Can We Learn From Each Other?
