Late last year, two of Zack’s managers at the construction and engineering firm where he worked pulled him aside. Congratulations, they said. You are promoted to department head. They said the role would come with a 10% raise, maybe even more. They thought they would reward him for all his great work. But all this time, Zack had one thought on his mind: How do I get rid of this?

He loved his current role at the company and had no interest in managing an entire team. Moreover, to be one manager It would require him to go to the office every day, as he did before the pandemic. “I can see my kids so much now,” she told me. “You can’t pay me enough to give this up.”

He told his bosses it was a big change and promised to reconsider. A few days later, to their surprise, he turned down the offer. “I talked about this with my wife, and I don’t think this position is right for me,” he told them. “I’m really happy with what I do. I’m really good at what I do now.”

Climbing the corporate ladder It was once the cornerstone of the American dream. But in the wake of the pandemic, I hear there are people like Zack who no longer aspire to the fancy titles, corner offices, and bigger paychecks that come with promotions. Many are trying to fly under the radar and desperately hope they won’t get a hit on the shoulder. Others flatly reject promotions or even request one. demotion To a position with less responsibility.

In a survey conducted by Randstad, a global human resources consultancy, a whopping 42 percent of U.S. respondents said they did not seek a promotion because they were happy with where they were. This rate was higher than countries known to be more relaxed about business, such as Italy, Spain and New Zealand. Maybe that’s why earlier this year a young New Yorker struck a chord on TikTok and said: “descend the corporate ladder.” “Some people want to be managers, and that’s okay,” he said. “Everyone deserves the opportunity to be directly chewed out by the CEO. But the only team I want to be responsible for is my facilities.”

The lack of career progression is surprising for bosses who have worked hard to move up the ranks. Take Dell, whose executives thought they had come up with an ingenious plan to get everyone back to the office. The company announced in February that employees would not be promoted if they did not come to work at least three days a week. Incoming reply Dell’s workforce It was a collective shrug. Months after the guidance, nearly half of employees were still remote from home, and it seemed they were happy to stay in their current roles as long as they could continue working from home. This was a clear sign that promotions in 2024 are not as stimulating as before.

But what’s at stake is something much bigger than that. RTO wars. After all, careerism has long played an important role in establishing dynamic and successful companies. The prospect of becoming a senior vice president is what drives many white-collar professionals to do their best, even in the face of long hours, harrowing meetings and petty office politics. If the lure of promotions can no longer keep everyone working hard, what will?

The dream of climbing the corporate ladder is as old as America itself. But 200 years ago there was no corporate ladder to climb. The original work ethic in America (the Protestant work ethic espoused by the likes of Benjamin Franklin) dates back to a time when most Americans were self-employed as farmers and craftsmen. This was based on a rugged individualism that was suspicious of authority and hierarchies, and was befitting a country founded on the idea of ​​freedom from tyranny.

This became a problem when the Industrial Revolution arrived. Companies exploded in size, and more and more Americans found themselves working for someone else. In 1820, 80% of the workforce was self-employed. By 1870 this share had fallen to 33%. In 1940, this rate was 20%.

“The moral vision of American society was based on the image of the independent, self-employed person,” writes Shoshana Zuboff, a professor emeritus at Harvard Business School who studies labor history. “Many social critics feared that people would be less likely to work hard under the wage system and, worse, that something in their nature might change.” America was facing an identity crisis.

The solution was to create a brand new work ethic that celebrated the expanding corporate hierarchies that engulfed most Americans. The ideal is no longer independence, inter-dependency, the desire to be subsumed by the needs of the larger whole. “What the managers of these new businesses now had to encourage was obedience and efficiency,” Zuboff writes, “not the inquisitive dogged ways of the autonomous craftsmen idealized by the old work ethic.”

This new “career ethos” came with the carrot. By serving as soldiers loyal to their companyemployees can expect to earn more prestige, better job security, and higher wages. Help the boss out, the pros are told, so maybe you can too become boss. The new ethics were adopted among the ruling class in the 1950s. By the 1970s it had spread to the entire workforce.

Half a century later, the careerist ethos is still the bible of the corporate workplace. Those who try to give up risk being blacklisted as weirdos or losers. silent quitters. But cracks are starting to appear in the system: It is clear that many people are no longer willing to make the compromises it requires. America’s hustle culture. And if employees weren’t worried about portraying themselves as non-careerists, the number of promotion rejections would probably be even higher.

One man I spoke to, a systems analyst I’ll call James, is desperate to avoid the promotion his boss keeps hinting at. But he worries about the consequences of refusing. “I feel like if I tell him I don’t want to go any further, he’ll start ignoring me about any new ideas he has,” James told me. “For some reason, it’s avoided in our society in America. People are expected to keep climbing and climbing.”

Zack, who was in his early 40s, was one of those people who wanted to keep climbing. As an apprentice, he dreamed of becoming a foreman. And after becoming a foreman, he aspired to even higher positions. “I wanted to run the biggest businesses,” he says. “I wanted to gain the most experience. I wanted to manage the largest teams.” She was eventually promoted to a corporate office role, which opened the door to even more opportunities for advancement. “I was pretty ambitious,” he says. “And it worked out really well.” He rose to become the head of an entire department.

However, when the epidemic emerged, he began to question this upward trend. The first jolt was that his business went remote during the shutdown. He realized how much he was missing while working from home. “I could run for 45 minutes at lunch,” he recalls. “I started doing all the things I used to love doing again. I was like, ‘Oh my God, I never want to give up on this life.'”

Later, before the rest of the economy began to open up, his bosses pressured Zack to force his team back into the office. He was stunned. Some of his employees had family members with compromised immune systems; an RTO order could endanger their lives. “This was a betrayal by a company to which I was incredibly dedicated,” Zack told me. “After that, I was like, damn it. I committed myself to this and it was all a big lie.”

Rather than toe the company line, Zack resigned. He found a job that didn’t require him to be a manager and took a $20,000 pay cut. Today, the individual who is free to focus on his own work prefers to contribute; This is another reason why he turned down the promotion he was offered last year.

Younger professionals appear to have an even stronger anti-progressive streak than Zack, an older member of the millennial generation. In Randstad’s survey, generation Z Respondents at the bottom rungs of the corporate ladder and earning the lowest salaries were more likely than Millennials or Gen Xers to agree with the statement “I don’t want career advancement.” In another survey, when Gallup asked people what was holding them back from seeking a senior leadership position, Generation Z was particularly concerned about the long hours and 24-hour demands that come with a senior job. For the new generation, the era of American careerism is losing its appeal.

Older bosses may be tempted to attribute all this to a lack of ambition; This is a sign that young people are not willing to make an effort. But given how much the workplace has changed in recent years, I think the appeal of career advancement is diminishing.

Consider job security. In the 1960s, managers had nothing to fear from layoffs because layoffs were essentially unheard of. But today be a manager It puts a big target on your back because you get paid more. If you accept a promotion, eventually More Not less, expendable. This high risk is the main reason why systems analyst James plans to decline his upcoming promotion. “They always do layoffs every two or three years,” he says of his employer. “I don’t want to be higher on the list as someone who gets paid more.”

And the dream of climbing the corporate ladder was probably never as big as it seemed. Often, as people get promoted, they find themselves doing less than the meaningful work that attracted them to their profession in the first place. This is such a common problem that management scientists have a special term for it: executive blues. The sad irony of corporate America: The higher you rise, the less fulfilling your job becomes.

“Everyone wants to be the vice president or partner of the corner office,” says Michel Anteby, professor of management and organization at Boston University. “It’s imagined that life would be so much better then. But you might actually be losing something that means a lot to you.”

So how can companies motivate employees to work harder if the appeal of promotions fades? I asked this question to Zack. Given how betrayed he felt by his previous employer, I wondered if he now believed in dedicating himself to his job, regardless of the potential rewards. But it turns out there are a lot of things that motivate him. I’m starting to do interesting things. Having the autonomy to create your own program. Feeling like a reliable and valued member of the team. Being surrounded by peers who are great at what they do. Reporting to a manager who, in his own words, “cares.” These are the things that light a fire under him. “I work extra hours,” says Zack. “I’m trying really hard.”

When I asked James what makes him tick, he said something similar. “I love my job and I want to keep getting better at it,” he told me. “And since I work in a hospital, I help nurses and providers help their patients.”

There are important guidance for employers here. As the fire of career passion fades, people can no longer rely on the promise of shiny promotions that will keep them committed to boring, toxic, unsatisfying, or poorly managed roles. However, if they ensure that the work they provide is enjoyable and meaningful, employees will be ready to do their best. The carrots of corporate climbing may be disappearing. But that doesn’t mean the end of America’s industriousness.

Aki Ito He is chief reporter for Business Insider.