April 16, 2026
Editorial GuidelinesAlica is a writer and editor for SideHustles.com. In addition to her work on the gig economy, she has also extensively covered...
In 2025, a study from Deloitte revealed that only 6% of Gen Z said their primary goal was to reach a leadership position.
In fact, many of them now actively avoid it. This phenomenon, which some now call conscious unbossing, has become a structural challenge for HR departments.
But why has the “boss” role lost its appeal, and how can companies adapt to a generation with different values?
Conscious unbossing refers to the deliberate choice by employees to reject managerial roles.
The concept of avoiding promotion to leadership isn’t new, but the movement gained significant momentum and visibility among young people in 2024 and 2025.
Historically, climbing the corporate ladder was the ultimate goal for many. Modern employees are instead prioritizing work-life balance, mental health, and job satisfaction over higher-level, high-stress management roles.
Gen Z has faced a lot of criticism for supposedly being entitled, lazy, and as one viral column from the Wall Street Journal put it, “unemployable” by current corporate standards.
However, for some, their rejection of management isn’t rooted in laziness, but in a calculated cost-benefit analysis.
Research from Robert Walters, a specialist recruitment agency, found that 52% of Gen Z professionals don’t want to be middle managers and 69% of them believe that middle management roles “were too high stress, low reward.” 1
For younger workers, the promotion isn’t worth the hassle. They intentionally reject the stress, conflict, and administrative burdens of management to maintain their work-life balance, especially when there is only a marginal pay increase with the role (or when they can see how burnt out their superiors are).
This aligns with our research from 2024, which found that 52% of Gen Z workers felt like office workhorses, compared to 64% of Gen Xers. 2
Employees already find their workload—some of which they believe should be handled by managers and senior staff—to be stressful. They don’t want to take on the additional duties that would come with being that manager or senior-level employee.
“I just want to show up when I start, do my job, go home, and completely disconnect until tomorrow,” said one entry-level employee on Reddit. “My boss doesn’t even make that much more than me, and he is stressed out and far busier than me.”
Younger workers prefer autonomy and direct impact over administrative oversight.
The research from Robert Walters revealed that some Gen Z see middle management as a buffer role—filled with endless meetings, performance reviews, and corporate red tape—with 18% of respondents saying it offers limited decision-making power and 11% saying it stifles personal growth.
Furthermore, many believe that AI will eliminate middle management, as the technology takes on more and more of these administrative tasks. For some workers, this reinforces the appeal of staying in non-managerial roles.
According to the 2025 Deloitte report, 74% of Gen Z workers expect AI to transform their roles in the coming years. In the ongoing technological transition, many prefer to focus on mastering these new technical tools as individual contributors (ICs), which are employees who work on tasks and projects without managing other people. 3
“Gen Z are known for their entrepreneurial mindset,” said Lucy Bisset, Director of Robert Walters North, “preferring to bring their ‘whole self’ to projects and spend time cultivating their own brand and approach, rather than spending time managing others.”
The rise of remote work and social media allows people to bypass traditional corporate structures in favor of self-created side hustles. “People are making a living by creating jobs that didn’t exist a decade ago, and they’re often far more lucrative and rewarding than your average corporate gig,” as written in one article from The Times.
These new careers—such as podcasters, digital consultants, and influencers—sometimes provide more flexibility, compensation, and personal fulfillment than what a standard 9-to-5 job offers.
More workers are becoming comfortable with not climbing the corporate ladder.
This is in part due to the plethora of posts on social media where employees find community in their shared workplace frustrations. Platforms like TikTok and Instagram have become a digital watercooler of sorts.
Younger workers, in particular, use these platforms to jokingly (but firmly) reject the pressure of career advancement, like this TikToker:
“Crazy too that even if you do the job you were hired for and do it well, not wanting to climb the ladder makes people think you’re lazy, unmotivated, etc.,” one user under the video pointed out. “I want to do the job you hired me to do, not more.”
The most immediate and obvious impact of conscious unbossing is on the pool of middle managers.
“Mid-management has been the glue that holds the organizational book together for decades, acting as the bond between senior management and individual contributors,” wrote Dan Pontefract, a leadership strategist, for Forbes.
“However, if those same senior leaders don’t pay attention to Gen Z’s views on leadership, there will be a talent and succession plan crisis in the years ahead.”
A lack of middle managers, whether that’s from conscious unbossing or AI potentially taking over that role, can have both immediate and long-term consequences.
Junior staff might lose the day-to-day mentorship and advocacy middle managers provide, which makes it harder for them to visualize their career trajectory or voice their concerns to senior leadership.
Without someone to oversee teams and give a formal “sign-off,” there might be decision paralysis and “accountability vacuums,” where team members avoid giving each other the difficult feedback needed to drive projects forward, according to an article by Corporate Rebels.
The traditional corporate hierarchy doesn’t accommodate some modern employees’ approach to work.
As one Forbes article put it, this is a “broken model,” and if companies want to fix it, they should focus on creating changes that make work more appealing.
“Think flatter structures. Skills-based progression. More time off. Better pay. In essence, create management roles that offer real reward—not just more stress, more accountability, and a raise that barely covers the therapy bill.”
Here’s what companies can consider implementing:
In a dual-track model, employees can move up in the organization (both in seniority and salary) through either management or their specialized skills. For example, a marketing specialist can reach “Director” pay levels based on their expertise without ever having a single direct report (i.e., an employee who is directly managed by them).
According to SHRM, the world’s largest HR management professional association, this model is “ideal for people with particular technical skills or education who are not interested in or suited for management.”
Fractional managers are experienced leaders who come in on a contract basis to lead specific projects or sprints (i.e., short, fixed periods during which a team works together to complete a specific set of tasks).
For example, a company might bring in a fractional chief marketing officer for a few months to run a product launch campaign. Once the campaign wraps up, the role ends without them becoming a permanent addition to the team.
Fractional leadership is becoming more common as companies look for flexible, cost-effective leadership.
It also takes the pressure off internal teams by allowing companies to bring on expert leaders instead of pushing their junior employees into management roles before they’re ready—or willing—to do so. At the same time, employees get to stay focused on their own work while still benefiting from having experienced oversight.
Instead of locking people into full-time management roles, companies can give employees the chance to lead shorter projects using their existing expertise.
For example, an individual contributor (IC) might step in as a tech lead for a project by setting the coding standards without getting pulled into admin-heavy tasks like performance reviews.
That said, even short-term leadership isn’t for everyone. And if there isn’t enough support, it can end up causing the same kind of burnout people are trying to avoid by conscious unbossing in the first place.
“It’s very draining and I resent that the industry classifies this type of work as technical IC work,” said one team lead on the Hacker News forum. “A small subset of these higher ‘IC’ roles do get to focus on technical IC work, but for most people a staff/principal role is basically going to be that of a co-manager with no authority.”
HR departments don’t have to completely eliminate managerial roles, but they should provide adequate support for these jobs.
An article by HR Dive, a digital human resources and workforce management publication, lists two pivotal recommendations:
Through ongoing vetting and targeted training, HR can create managerial roles that people do want to take on.
For Gen Z, success isn’t defined by a linear career path. Many younger workers are questioning whether leadership roles are worth the trade-offs in stress, responsibility, and personal time, rather than treating management as the inevitable next step.
In recent years, alternative paths like side hustling have gained popularity, and some Gen Z opt to develop their technical expertise as individual contributors and build income streams outside traditional employment.
For employers, the question is no longer whether this shift is happening (research proves it is), but how to redesign roles and career paths to adapt to it.
