Declan Bowring was the first in his family to finish school and attend university. “I came from a very working class place, where everyone works in a factory or they’re a carer,” he says. “The career aspirations were quite low.”
He bucked this trend, and had ambitions of working in the media or publishing industry. After a year of applying for jobs, making more than 80 applications, Bowring was offered a temporary contract at a publishing house. “I lasted about six months, I hated it,” he says. “People would have their work emails on their phone, getting notifications every two minutes. People would still be replying to them at 10pm.”
The 29-year-old wasn’t willing to let work take up so much of his life, particularly a job he didn’t even like. “I’ll only work my hours. If I’m due to work nine till five, I will be on at nine, and I’ll be off at five,” he says. When his contract was up, he left publishing for a job in retail, working as a ticket seller for Magic Mike and in a gay adult store.
When he told people about his career pivot, he was met with negative reactions. “They all scoffed, so that’s your career ambitions?” he says. But he was happier in his retail job than he had ever been in publishing. And when he was offered a promotion, he turned it down.
“It didn’t look worth it in terms of money and level of responsibility.” Bowring had no ambition to move up the ladder if the pay-off wasn’t worth it.
More of us have become less ambitious, with our lives less focused on our work.
More than a third of workers in the UK say their job has become less important to them since the pandemic, according to a survey by 360 Learning. And a lack of ambition is a particularly British trait: while 56pc of workers globally consider themselves to be ambitious, according to a Workmonitor survey, only 42pc of workers in the UK do.
In part, this is a generational mindset. Two-thirds of 18- to 24-year-olds have lowered their career ambitions, according to a survey by the Prince’s Trust, citing the cost of living crisis and their mental health. It also found that carving out a career that was enjoyable and financially rewarding was deemed risky, with half saying they could not think beyond the next six months.
That kind of thinking is alien to most members of older generations. Gen Xers were told “start at the bottom and you work your way up,” explains Blaire Palmer, an expert in the future of work. But while job titles were once used as a yardstick for success, increasingly workers are reconsidering where their ambitions lie.
‘People get promoted to the point of becoming incompetent’
When he was in his early 20s, Robert Weatherhead, 42, described himself as ambitious. Following the traditional path, he fell into a graduate role at a digital marketing agency. He climbed the corporate ladder all the way to a director level position, earning six figures.
“When you’re early in your career, ambition takes the form of seniority, and ultimately comes back to financial reward,” he says.
However, Weatherhead reached a point where he looked up at those above him and didn’t see anything he wanted. “I thought, I don’t want your job,” he explains.
Rather than taking a promotion, the presenteeism, politics and bureaucratic roadblocks turned him off the role and the idea of climbing the corporate ladder altogether.
Weatherhead believes people should be fairly compensated for the work they’re actually good at, without being pressured into the manager pipeline just to get a higher pay packet.
“Everybody gets promoted to the point where they become incompetent,” he says. “That’s the corporate hierarchy – every senior position becomes a manager. That might be miles away from what you’re ever employed to be good at in the first place.”
Weatherhead isn’t the only one to question the logic of the corporate ladder. According to a study by Visier, only 37pc said that they want their boss’s job someday. The most common reasons given were expectations for increased stress and pressure and the prospect of working longer.
“Most companies these days are running on very tight margins,” explains Palmer. “They are typically under-resourced in terms of people.” As a result, managers not only have to manage their teams but also do their day job on top.
“They’re doing a job that would have been done in the past by three or four people, and so is everyone on their team.”
The tax system also serves to crush aspiration, and once-ambitious workers may also find little incentive to climb the next rung of the ladder. Income tax thresholds have been frozen, dragging millions of workers into higher brackets. And if you earn over £100,000, you fall into a tax trap, at which the erosion of the personal allowance can result in an effective income tax rate of 60pc.
As a result, people have never worked harder for less. Post-pandemic, more people are evaluating their jobs, questioning if the sacrifices they make are justified, says Palmer. Many are concluding they’re not. Pay isn’t great, appreciation is lacking, and the once vibrant “work hard, play hard” culture has faded. That is reason enough for many to redirect their ambition into their personal lives instead of getting caught up in the rat race.
‘Flexibility is more valuable to me’
In 2014, Weatherhead was made redundant from a large agency, shattering his belief in corporate job security. By this time he also had two children to consider.
“I felt my priorities shift,” he explains. Now, working as a freelance digital consultant, Weatherhead’s ambitions have changed. He makes it a priority to drop off and pick up his children from school and fit his work around family life. “It became an ambition to have that flexibility.”
Sometimes Weatherhead will do a few hours of work before leaving for the school run or catch up on a few things in the evening after the children have gone to bed.
“It’s really just broken up through the day,” he explains. “Then when I have to catch up on weekends, I catch up on weekends.”
Weatherhead’s career ambitions now look vastly different from simply moving through promotions and pay scales. “It’s always within the boundaries of retaining what I’ve got in terms of flexibility, in terms of the hours that I work. It’s never outside of that.”
The upheaval of 2020 showed that our work lives are far more flexible than previously thought. For many, “flexibility is a more valuable benefit than a bonus or a promotion,” says Palmer. At the same time, it reminded many of the importance of health, hobbies, and relationships, often making career ambitions feel less fulfilling in comparison.
For Bowring, work also does not come high on his list of priorities. “I think the number one on my list is my friends and my family. Then second would be the things that make me happy.”
Not everyone has ambitions of getting caught up in the corporate grind. “Ambition doesn’t necessarily have to be about moving up the ranks, because that’s not terribly rewarding,” says Palmer. “Ambition can be about finding a job that is exciting and fun and makes a difference.”
Lower-level jobs offer little post-day stress and allow for passion projects outside work. “You don’t need to stay in the office until 8pm with one little desk lamp over your head while everyone’s at home or in the pub,” says Bowring. “I think ambition can come in different forms.”
Outside his job, Bowring has been working towards his NCTJ qualification, hoping to rekindle his childhood ambition of becoming a journalist. With his current contract nearing its end, Bowring is planning to leave London for the winter, joining his boyfriend in Brazil for a few months, from where he’ll consider his next career moves.
Disclaimer: The copyright of this article belongs to the original author. Reposting this article is solely for the purpose of information dissemination and does not constitute any investment advice. If there is any infringement, please contact us immediately. We will make corrections or deletions as necessary. Thank you.
