At the age of 23, Jacqueline, has had her fair share of job hopping.
About six months ago, she interned at a multinational corporation for three months. Then, she moved to a small tech startup. Now, she’s working as a business development executive at another tech outsourcing agent while juggling two other jobs simultaneously. Yet, Jacqueline is not settling. She is considering moving on again.
“Do I regret switching jobs? No,” Jacqueline said. “Each time I jumped ship, I got a little wiser. My vision and mission get clearer.”
“And I’m not wasting anything—all the skills I learned in my previous job segue well into my next role. It’s like a compounding effect—my basket of skills gets larger and larger.”
A Generational Shift
There was a time when it was normal for employees to stay at the same company for their entire careers. Quitting jobs often was something that employers frowned upon. It was seen as a sign of inconsistency, unreliability, and lack of loyalty.Some even suggested that Gen Z—born between 1997 and 2010—who are much less financially constrained than the older generations would surpass millennials in this tendency.
Why The Change?
While feeling overworked and a low salary are often cited as the most common reasons for leaving a job, they were not the main motivations for Jacqueline.“Maybe I’m just young and overly optimistic, but I believe that I’m crafting a career of my own, one that does not look like that of any others,” the 23-year-old explained. “I don’t think I’m missing out on anything.”
She was not the only one. Australian psychiatrist Tanveer Ahmed noted that younger generations are “much more driven by what might be called meaningful work—work that aligns with their value systems.”
The downside of this mindset, he added, is when the value systems are misguided or are influenced by negative trends.
“They’re much more interested in flexibility. So that could be work from home, it could be sabbaticals,” Mr. Ahmed told The Epoch Times.
“They want personal growth. So they really want to be able to grow with the company or get extra training, and often their expectations are sometimes around rapid promotion.”
Younger generations are also harder to manage, he said, so they tend to prefer a more democratised workplace over the top-down authority structure. They wanted to “still being directed and supervised, but getting more autonomy and freedom to do their thing.”
“They’re often a bit more entrepreneurial in nature, so they want to kind of stamp their own ideas and come up with potential innovations or their own opportunities to pursue,” Mr. Ahmed added.
“So all of these things sort of bring together Gen Z, and then because of the labour market where there are lots of job options, it doesn’t take them that much. If they have good qualifications, they know they can potentially jump ship and go somewhere else.”
And that’s what Jacqueline did. The 23-year-old girl said she was looking for a company that could give her a sense of connection and belonging, something her current employer can’t offer. But she noted such goal is harder to achieve as the nature of jobs has changed.
The Cost of Quitting
Job-hopping, however, is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Stella, 23, who graduated with a teaching degree, had stayed at her teaching job for the past two years. She said changing jobs allows for greater exploration but is not ideal in her case.“It’s not really possible for me to jump from, for example, being an English teacher to a music teacher and then to a math teacher, as it’s hard to be an expert in all fields,” she said. “I might have many years of experience as a teacher overall, but jumping from one field to another means I will lack a depth of experience.”
Constantly searching for greener pastures requires more time and effort, Stella added.
“If you change jobs often, you would always need to think, ‘Where should I go next?’” You would always be in a state of comparison, considering ’this company or that company.' And yet you won’t necessarily get into a position with a high salary,” she said.
Job hopping can also become a career liability.
“Not many companies, especially big ones, would appreciate it. They might question something like, ‘What kind of problems this person might have that caused them to change jobs so often?’” she said.
The opinion was echoed by Mr. Ahmed, who said quitting could come at the cost of mastery, as becoming good at a complex issue takes more than a few years.
“Sometimes you grow with an institution, you commit to their values, you learn corporate memory. Many great leaders become CEOs of companies after serving in them for 20-25 years. So that level of commitment is ... sometimes a bit lacking for Gen Z.”
He suggested that employers can retain millennials and Gen Z workers by helping them grow, engaging with their value system, and giving them a sense of community and autonomy.
“These are principles that can potentially apply to all people. But I think the younger people Gen Z and millennials, care about it more; they'll measure it a lot more and have expectations of it.”
Despite having switched gears several times, Jacqueline was aware of the drawbacks of the Great Resignation. At a time when quiet quitting made headlines and younger employees used social media to live-quit their jobs (also called #Quittok), she believed she “belonged in the old school camp.”
“I still like traditional virtues like hard work, commitment, and purpose. I like the idea of being of service to something greater than yourself,” the 23-year-old noted.
“I think those virtues will diminish in these times where people are resigning en masse. I think it reflects that people are becoming more selfish, and I don’t think that will bode well with the mental health crisis.”
