Gen Z is adopting ‘career minimalism,’ killing off the ladder for a ‘lily pad’ mentality, Glassdoor says

Gen Z isn’t actually avoiding management

‘A true side hustle generation’

Management looks different from a Gen Z perspective

The Future of Work

Nick Lichtenberg is Fortune Intelligence editor and was formerly Fortune's executive editor of global news.

Gen Z is changing the rules of work—and the results are redefining what professional success looks like in 2025. According to a new Glassdoor report, “career minimalism” is at the heart of this shift: younger workers see their jobs as a means to financial stability, saving real passion and ambition for hours off the clock and increasingly lucrative side hustles.

Forget the corner office. Glassdoor’s latest survey, canvassing more than 1,000 professionals in the U.S., revealed that the younger cohort of workers is skeptical of the concept of management. A striking 68% of Gen Z respondents said they wouldn’t pursue management if it weren’t for paycheck or title. To be sure, more money and a higher title have always been powerful draws for workers to go into management, but this still signals a rejection of the traditional corporate climb favored

“We’ve traded the rigid career ladder for the career lily pad,” said Morgan Sanner, Glassdoor’s Gen Z career expert and founder of Resume Official, calling it “a path where we can jump to whatever opportunity fits best at the moment. In the long run, that kind of flexibility is more sustainable, more realistic, and better suited to today’s workplace realities.”

The survey, however, is somewhat at odds with other data collected

Zhao referenced the idea of “conscious unbossing” and younger generations eschewing management because they don’t view it as a good path anymore, adding “you don’t really see any evidence of that” in the data. The report, which found that millennials had become the majority of managers for the first time ever, also found Gen Z accounting for roughly 10% of managers. “Management is not for everybody and that’s okay,” Zhao told Fortune in late July, “but it is still seen as the best path for climbing the career ladder.”

Zhao told Fortune in a more recent interview that it’s important not to generalize about whole generations or cohorts of people, but at the same time, “many younger workers and Gen Z feel like the job market isn’t working for them so some of these more traditional paths to success feel like they aren’t open in the same way that they might’ve been 10 to 20 years ago.” 

What the new survey suggests, however, is that management is now overwhelmingly seen as a career-ladder move, not something intrinsically good in its own right. This tallies with other surveys of Gen Z from two members of the Big 4 consulting firms. EY found that Gen Z is notably “pragmatic,” and they approach life’s traditional milestones with a kind of “reasoned skepticism.”

KPMG, meanwhile, surveyed its own Gen Z employees on attitudes to work, and found that they are hungry for mentorship and welcome in-office collaboration yet also desire the death of the 9-to-5 mentality and embrace flexibility. Overall, they have a bit of a “show me” mentality, Derek Thomas, national partner-in-charge of university talent acquisition, told Fortune. It amounts to: “Okay, you’re telling me it’s going to be good for me, but is it really?”

If Gen Z isn’t less ambitious but also isn’t thrilled about corporate management, where’s that energy going? The report cited Harris Poll findings that 57% of Gen Z currently have a side hustle compared to 48% of Millennials, 31% of Gen X-ers, and 21% of Boomers and said Gen Z is a “true side hustle generation where work identity lives outside of traditional employment.”

Side hustles aren’t viewed as distractions or fallback options; they are central to Gen Z’s identity, offering creative, entrepreneurial, or activist outlets that main jobs cannot supply. For many, the “day job” simply finances the “passion project”—as one Glassdoor community member, an Iowa high school teacher, put it, “I always joke that I don’t dream of labor … If people were truly passionate about their job, it wouldn’t pay anything. Passion is for your 5-9 after the 9-5.”

A research analyst offered that “While having a job that you’re passionate about is really cool, it’s important to have other interests that are not tied to your work life.”

And what kind of side hustles does Gen Z actually want? The Glassdoor report doesn’t dive into that per se, but FlexJobs tackled the topic in January, finding that nurse practitioner was most the top remote side hustle for 2024, pulling down $56 an hour. Another popular side hustles is therapist, making roughly $30 an hour. In the $20-per-hour range were translator ($24/hour), accountant ($23/hour), content

When Gen Zers do move into management, Glassdoor finds that they’re rewriting the traditional playbook. Work-life balance is a non-negotiable, not a perk: 58% reportedly dial down work in the summer, compared to 39% of older peers, while 31% expect flexible hours from Gen Z managers.

“Gen Z is reconsidering what it means to be successful at work in this moment,” Zhao said in the report. He added that “They’re not rejecting ambition — they’re redirecting it toward sustainable career paths that prioritize both financial security and personal fulfillment.”

In conversation with Fortune, Zhao said there is ample evidence of workers feeling anxious, overworked and burned out. “This is not because of laziness,” he said. What the data suggests, he added, is that Gen Z is making a rational turn away from a job market that hasn’t treated them well. “It’s not because people aren’t capable. it’s because in this current moment, many workers feel like they aren’t being rewarded for the level of effort and performance that they’re putting out there.”

While critics accuse Gen Z of laziness or entitlement, Glassdoor’s findings paint a more nuanced

The Glassdoor report suggests that older generations have more than a few things to learn from Gen Z and this trend toward “career minimalism,” writing that it “isn’t about doing less work. It’s about being strategic about where you invest your energy.” In other words, this could be a preview of the future for everyone.

Gen Z’s approach offers a new answer to the question: “What if there’s a better way?” Their formula is simple: stable jobs for security, side hustles for passion, and strict boundaries for sustainability. Professional success no longer demands that work eclipse every other aspect of life.

As the workplace continues to change, the rise of career minimalism—fueled