Millennial gives up career to have less stress

Courtesy of Kirra Dickinson

Despite years of believing it was the only way, a Los Angeles millennial decided against climbing the corporate ladder. Now she is happier than ever.

Kirra Dickinson, a 28-year-old content creator and manifestation coach, told Business Insider that she worked in technology research for years after graduating from the University of California, California. Where she grew up, she felt “a lot of pressure” to get a traditional job to support herself and her family financially.

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That’s exactly what she did after graduating. In her first job, she was a design strategist at Fidelity, an American financial services company based in Boston. Then she switched to UX research. She eventually found a job at the software company Salesforce in Southern California.

When Dickinson was 26 and at the peak of her career, she said she found her work so uninspiring that it began to affect her mental health: “All I thought about was, ‘Oh my God, this is going to suck.’ . And I really don’t want to do that. I really don’t want to work with these people,'” she says.

At the same time, Dickinson was building a following on social media. She posted lifestyle content, reviews and tutorials and got a few brand deals here and there.

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In 2022, she took the plunge: “I thought to myself, ‘If I can pay my bills, that’s fine. I have enough savings and investment reserves. So I just did an experiment and left the company for a year,” she recalls her thoughts. “If I don’t like it, I can always come back.”

Uninspired Leaders and the Gig Economy

Dickinson is among many young professionals who have become disillusioned with corporate life and the lack of work-life balance it sometimes brings.

Octavia Goredema, career coach and author of the book “Prep, Push, Pivot: Essential Career Strategies for Underrepresented Women,” told Business Insider that she is increasingly finding that Millennials and Gen Zers feel outside of their 9-to-10 -5 jobs attracted to the gig economy. The “gig economy” is a labor market model that is characterized by temporary and flexible working relationships. Employers pay self-employed workers for individual orders, which are usually arranged via an online platform.

This contributes to a general lack of ambition to climb the career ladder.

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“Maybe they’re investing, maybe they’re working on a project with friends on the weekends, maybe they have another skill that they’re monetizing in some way,” Goredema said. She also often hears younger clients say they don’t want to be managers because they find it too stressful.

“When they look at the roles they could theoretically fill, they don’t see anything that appeals to them,” she explains. She also adds that this is usually because managers are clearly under pressure and receive too little support.

Comedian wants to climb down the “career ladder”.

Anti-career sentiment is also widespread on social media. On April 7, New York comedian Aaron Yin posted a Tiktok video describing his career ambitions — or lack thereof. In the video, which has more than 1.1 million views, Yin said he wanted to “move down the career ladder” to improve his health. While he acknowledged that some people want to be managers and be “finished” by a CEO, he wasn’t one of them.

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The comedian said he didn’t want to get promoted or make more money. Because: The additional stress would mean that he would have to spend more on “therapy and food”. Yin did not respond to a request from Business Insider for comment. However, his video sparked a flood of comments from users. They said that they too decided not to climb the corporate ladder in order to prioritize their happiness.

Like some commenters on Yin’s video, Dickinson said she felt “relieved” after leaving the corporate ladder behind her. Not only that, she earned more money than her Salesforce salary after signing a contract with the Next modeling agency, dedicating her time to coaching clients on manifestation, and starting a podcast.

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“It’s hard to give up that security,” Dickinson said, referring to the corporate world. Nevertheless, she does not regret having ridden the “roller coaster” of an unconventional career path. “It keeps things fresh,” Dickinson said.