Is Gen Z anti-work or simply anti-burnout? Can doing what you love pay the rent, build savings and leave room to enjoy life?Study hard, land a campus placement, climb the corporate ladder and settle down. For decades, that was the script. Today, a generation raised on reels and mass layoffs is rewriting it. Is the 9-to-5 really dead? And can passion pay the bills?‘Not dead, just out of fashion’“I wouldn’t say the 9 to 5 is dead, but I do think Gen Z is questioning the traditional idea of what a successful career should look like,” says model and DJ Anaanya Muthanna. For Snehil Verma, who creates food content with her mother, the dissatisfaction runs deeper. “The 9-to-5 persists but is no longer thriving.” In the past, it was a symbol of stability. Now, “with massive layoffs and shrinking time off, they simply cost too much mental peace in exchange for little to no certainty.”Musician Ankita Kundu, who has pursued music since childhood, has never seen herself in a corporate job. “9-to-5 has never been my cup of tea. I’m quite the restless person. I wouldn’t be able to put my body in one place and sit and stare at a screen.”
With massive layoffs and shrinking time off, a 9-to-5 simply costs too much mental peace in exchange for little to no certainty
Snehil Verma, content creator
‘We don’t want careers that don’t make us happy’For Snehil, the problem isn’t laziness. “Hard work isn’t the issue here, it’s burnout and meaningless work,” she says. “You log in every morning, but it feels like you never really log off,” she adds. Ankita, 25, who has never held a desk job, says her generation has the guts to say no to a career that doesn’t make them happy. “I want to be in a place where I’m happy. I wake up happy, I go to my workplace happy, I come back home happy,” she says. “Even if it’s stress, that healthy stress is better than the unhealthy ones.”
Gen Z has the guts to tell their parents, ‘This is not my thing,’ and carry on with something unusual
Ankita Kundu, musician
Can passion pay?Snehil, 23, who started posting recipes on Instagram with her mother, Mamta Srivastava, during lockdown, says it now earns more than her corporate job did. “Influencer marketing pays much more than people realise, however it does fluctuate,” she explains.Anaanya is more cautious. “There’s a difference between doing something you love and building a sustainable business out of it,” she says. Her income isn’t predictable yet: “Creative careers are very project-based, and some months are better than others.” Ankita is more optimistic. Asked whether a passion-led career can last, she says, “Long run. Absolutely, yes. And I’ll tell you why.” Her reasoning draws on a line by actor Ravi Kishan: ‘Fame first, but money follows, my friend’.The glamorous 10%: That’s what a creator life really looks likeCreating content for social media takes time and effort, Ankita points out. “If you don’t constantly put content out, people will actually forget you,” she says. Social media, Anaanya says, shows only “the glamorous 10% of the job”. Behind the scenes are “planning, pitching, networking, editing, negotiating, managing finances, late hours, sleepless nights”. Freedom, she adds, “doesn’t necessarily mean less work!”Snehil points to another less glamorous reality: “The hardest part is definitely the severe payment delays.” The pressure to constantly hustle can also take a toll on creativity. Ankita says taking a break is sometimes the only way to recharge. “We have brain fog. Sometimes we just nap it through, watch a really good movie or head out for a long drive. I think that’s how we come back to our world,” she says.
The future will be less about choosing between a 9-to-5 and a creative career, and more about finding a combination that works for you
Anaanya Muthanna, model and DJ
Beating the algorithmThe pressure to keep feeding the algorithm is real. “If I start creating purely for views and engagement, I tend to lose the very thing that made me want to create in the first place,” says Anaanya. Snehil, meanwhile, feels “very restricted by metrics like skip rates and watch times”. Their advice differs. Anaanya recommends using social media “as a platform, not letting it become your entire career”. Snehil’s advice is more pragmatic: “Learn how to crack it.”A career on their own terms “The future will be less about choosing between a 9 to 5 and a creative career, and more about finding a combination that works for you,” says Anaanya. Snehil is heading to business school next year, funded by her Instagram income. “I can balance creation with business school.” Passion and practicality, it seems, are no longer opposites. Perhaps that’s the real shift. Gen Z isn’t necessarily choosing passion over practicality. It’s looking for ways to make the two coexist.
