The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Is the Career Ladder Losing Its Appeal?

Episode Date: March 26, 2026

At the Grammys, Pharrell Williams urged audiences to "never stop grinding," echoing a familiar culture of constant ambition. But writer and broadcaster Amil Niazi challenges that mindset in "Life After Ambition: A Good Enough Memoir," as a new generation of workers questions whether success has to mean nonstop hustle. Then, Tricia Williams of TMU's Future Skills Centre, explores how younger workers are redefining fulfillment, balance, and what it really means to get ahead.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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And this is what we see consistently. Women's health is not taken seriously. How did we get here? Find us wherever you get your podcasts, and be sure to check out the video version of the show on the TVO Today YouTube channel. Hope to see you then. Work hard. promotion, work harder, get another promotion, and climb that corporate ladder. That's the script a lot of us grew up with. But according to a 2025 study from Deloitte, that's not what some younger workers are interested in doing. The study found only 6% of Gen Z workers want to move into a leadership position. Instead, they want things like work-life balance, flexibility, and mental health. They want

to make money and find professional satisfaction, sure. They just don't want to get burned out getting there. So what happens when ambition isn't the main character anymore? This is the rundown. At the Grammys this year, musician and producer Farrell Williams told the audience never stop grinding and never stopped working. Stop doing anything else but working. And we're used to hearing that ambition is a good thing, that you should never be satisfied. But in life after ambition, a good enough memoir writer and broadcaster Emil Niazzi challenges us to look at our lives and accomplishments in a whole new way. Emil joins us in studio. How are you doing? I'm good. How are you? I'm doing well. Congratulations

on the memoir. Thank you. From one millennial to another, I have to ask, how did the promise and the responsibilities of the millennial generation sort of shape the ideas of ambition? Well, I mean, I'm so glad you brought up the Farrell quote. I remember him saying that and me just thinking, no, no, this is exactly what I don't want to hear anymore. I mean, it's messages like that that I think, you know, you may recall having hurt a lot as a kid. Work hard. You know, sacrifice anything in your life in order to achieve your dream, even though only a handful of us are ever going to get that dream. But never stop grinding, never stop hustling, never stop working.

And that's what I grew up with. That was the idea was that no matter your circumstance, no matter if you grew up, in poverty, no matter if you were an immigrant, you know, no matter whatever life handed you, if you were willing to work really hard, sacrifice everything, hustle, grind, then you could have the American dream. You know, you could have it always, you have a house, you could have a family, you could have two cars, you could have a cottage, you could go on lovely vacations every year. I'm 43.

You know, I don't know how many of those things you have. I don't have many of, I mean, I have a wonderful family and I have a great life, but I didn't get it following those steps. Right. And so I think that idea of ambition, as we were promised, and very much interlaced with this idea of meritocracy that we were promised, I think, has really exploded in our generation's lifetime. You know, we've lived through multiple financial crises. 9-11, I think, really culturally shifted how we looked at a lot of different things. So, yeah, I think the millennial dream went bust a long time ago. Well, let's talk a little bit about sort of, I want to take it back to one with your family.

We talk about the promise, but I want to talk about a little bit more of the realities. Being specific from an immigrant family, how did some of that make it difficult, you know, in terms of, I would call it the inside where you're at home versus what you were facing and the reality of, your classroom, school, work, and all of that stuff that you document in your memoir. Yeah. I mean, I'm first generation to this country, so my family came from Pakistan. They didn't speak the language. They had very, very little money to their name when they came to this country.

A couple of my uncles were here, so they had just the most bare bones of support. They left everything behind to come and have a better. life. And that also meant that they were really spending most of their time trying to get set up, right? Trying to get a place to live, trying to get jobs, trying to figure out this very, very different bureaucratic system. They didn't really have that same energy to spend on helping us figure it out, right? Like the kids of immigrants often are just thrown to the wolves. And so we're many times not speaking the language either, but we, you know, kids, kids are not as welcoming as you would think to outsiders as much as we, we want to believe otherwise, you know? So I remember just feeling very lost, very confused, and not really knowing where to turn to for guidance and for help.

My parents were busy figuring it out for themselves, and I as the eldest daughter was kind of also the one to figure it. out for my siblings. So I felt a lot of pressure. Sometimes I would have to help my parents navigate paperwork. Of course. Right? Yes. The citizenship test. I was helping them study. I was teaching them English while I was trying to learn it myself. And so when you're already taking on all of that stuff, it's really hard to then try and concentrate on your studies or or yourself and figure out what is it that I really want, because I'm so busy trying to make sure that this vision that my parents had doesn't crumble once we're in this new country.

All right. Early in the book, you write, ambition becomes a funny thing when it is blunted by inequality or used against you. It takes on a jagged shape, one that seems designed to maim anyone still hoping to grasp it. Yet for years, I still tried to grab on, inching my way up and across different companies, I took, quote-unquote, strategic pay cuts and job titles

that included a lot more work with no extra salary in the hope that ambition would somehow set me free. Let's talk about the workplace. How is the workplace on the way up the ladder not aligned with what you were experiencing in life? Yeah, you know, I mean, I studied journalism in the hopes that... Yeah, you didn't pick an easy. No, I did not.

It was not the wise. I mean, could I have predicted that the entire industry would essentially collapse and on itself? No. I also picked it because it was sort of adjacent to my dream, right? It was the kind of parental-approved version of what I really wanted to do, which was right. And I was in Vancouver. It was a very, very difficult time to be trying to find the kind of work that I was looking for. I could not get a job to save my life in the end.

industry. I moved to Toronto and I finally did find something and I was so excited. And I took that that idea, work really hard, put your head down, don't make a lot of noise and just do a good job and you will climb up the ladder. Unfortunately, that's not the reality for a lot of I think women, young women, women of color. There are invisible barriers. And we've started to talk about as a society, you know, people had expectations of how much I could accomplish. And there was a sort of an invisible ceiling where I just couldn't progress beyond it. I want to talk about something that must have been very hard to detail in your book. You describe a horrific assault and then also developing an addiction.

How did those instances derail what you were ultimately aiming for? Yeah, you know, it was one of those moments in life where you, I really felt I was like split into two. There was the version of me that had no idea that, you know, something that terrible could happen to a person. And then there's the version of me that has lived through it. And I have to decide if I'm going to come out the other side and how. And at the time, the only thing, the only constant, the only stable thing in my life that I could turn to was work. And so I just felt it was so important that I find a way to navigate something so tragic and awful and life-changing while still doing a great job at work. I was terrified to let what had happened to me affect my career.

I put it in the book because I think a lot of people go through that. A lot of people have these tragedies. Someone I know her husband just died. And all I could think about was what is she going to do about work? You know, can she afford to take time off in this environment? Like, it's so sad. And I think you saw it in the pandemic. It was a life or death situation for so many people.

And yet the biggest conversation a lot of us were having was a best. out work? Could we keep our jobs? Could we keep going? Like, how do we keep making widgets, even though many of us are afraid for our whole families? As you bring up the pandemic, I want to talk about what you were writing during that time. Tell me a little bit about how during that pandemic, talking about the pain points, how that kind of work gave you purpose. In that moment in the pandemic, pregnant with my second, having a toddler at home, my husband and I had just moved back from London, we didn't have jobs or we were looking for jobs. And I was trying to work and parent and take care of my, like my mom was in the house as well, and do it all in this super tiny

space. And I felt like I was, like my brain was on fire. And I did the only thing I knew how to do really in a time like this. And I wrote. And I, and I, and I, was out there first on just on social media, sharing what other parents were sharing. And editor started reaching out and saying, you know, this is very relatable. Will you write this for us? And so that, it really became this like cry for help

that resonated with a lot of people. And that it did spawn ultimately my column in the cut, which continues now called The Hard Part. and it spawned a lot of other viral pieces about just like what we were all going through as parents, as working parents, as new moms, because, you know, parenthood was so different.

If you just had a baby in the pandemic, you couldn't really relate to anyone else because you weren't going to like drop-ins. You weren't maybe even going to the park. Right. You couldn't meet up with other people. You had no support system. And so, you know, I was going through that myself.

And yes, I found a community of people. I found my voice, I think, in many ways. And it did create kind of the book in itself, because that was where I finally figured out, like, this is what I have to do. This is what I want to do. And I finally, there's nothing to lose.

Let's go for it. Let's talk about it in our last couple of minutes that we have here. In your book's epilogue, you write, so many times in my life I try to run away from myself, to be someone better. I pushed away the past and denied so many parts of myself

to try and attract a type of success that I was told was the only one worth pursuing. I let poverty shape my desires. I let violence threaten my career. I let other people's idea of motherhood change my focus. Once I learned to embrace every single part of me, I found a story worth telling.

Your story's subtitle is a good enough memoir. How is good enough a new idea of ambition? You know, I think, truthfully, for a long time, it was something that I felt was very external. Like, are you good enough to be here? Are you good enough to be a mom? And it was something that was being defined for you. And now I choose it as something I define for myself. I am good enough to be here.

I am good enough as a mother because I love my kids and they're fed and they're happy and they're loved. And I think that that can be very empowering. You know, a lot of times this idea of mediocrity, it's shunned upon. And I think if we reframe it as contentment and satisfaction and, like I said, redefine good enough for yourself, it can be very freeing. I feel the happiest I've ever felt, the most satisfied in my career that I've ever felt saying no and walking away when I feel like something's not. right and defining good for myself. That's beautiful. We're going to have to leave it there.

Thank you so much, Emil, really appreciate and congratulations on the book. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Okay, we've heard all the expressions. Give it 110 percent. Put your nose to the grindstone. Go the extra mile. But what if you want a more well-balanced life?

What if you're more focused on learning and development than career advancement? Those are the kinds of things a lot of younger workers are asking. I just went through the biggest change in my life, which was leaving my corporate job with really no backup plan. I decided that life is too short to do something that isn't filling my cup and to really take a risk and bet on myself. It just became a lot. I was burnt out. I was really burnt out. And I was feeling very sad sometimes.

So after a lot of deliberation and a lot of back and forth with the HR and the company, I finally decided that it was time for me to move on and look for other opportunities, even though that meant that I will have to go through a period of uncertainty about what I wanted to do next. Tricia Williams is the director of research, valuation, and knowledge mobilization at TMU's Future Skills Center. As you joins me in studio. How are you doing? Thank you so much. I'm great. How are you? I'm doing well. I want to get your thoughts on that video that we just watched. We heard burnout. We heard the phrase, bet on yourself, uncertainty.

Tell me what your thoughts when you see those videos? When I see this, I see young people who are saying, I want something different for myself, and I'm going to pursue some opportunities. So I think they're saying that they want a better future for themselves, however they define that. And we know that young people, by and large, like I'm making broad generalizations here,

generally tend to value quality of work very highly now, more so than previous generations. And that involves having flexibility, having pathways forward, and really saying I want to create those kinds of opportunities for myself. The Deloitte survey, which looked at 23,000 Gen Zs and millennials, and found that young professionals are looking for more authenticity at work. Help us understand what are we talking about when we talk about the concept of authenticity. The Deloitte study really parallels a lot of work that we've done at the Future Skills Center,

which was looking at quality of work. And we did a few papers that specifically looked at young people. And one of the things we find is that young people don't want to have value mismatch between their personal lives and their work lives. It's really, so the word authenticity you said, I think, sums it up very well. It's looking for those opportunities to both make a living but also make a life. And that involves things like mental health supports or work life balance or being able to take time off. That's not just, you know, so many days off, but really feeling supported to do those things.

And I think we saw those kinds of things come through really loud and clear when we did this research with young people that, you know, they were looking for ways to have that life that wouldn't just be, you know, putting in the time clock, punching their card in and getting a paycheck. Okay. With that being said, with how established workplaces are right now, how can they support? those goals, those lofty, what seem like for maybe for some companies, organizations that might be, I don't want to say stuck in the past, but how do they support their goals? Yeah, no, it's really easy to say, oh my gosh, young people these days, they don't want to work hard, they don't want to do what we did. And, you know, I'm guilty. Sometimes as a manager, you're thinking, I want you to work, right? I want you to do these things. And I, yes, we can do all that and. So it's not either or it's and. So I'd say, you know, one of the things I think we're in the midst of right now is a whole transition

from a world in which, you know, we had a scarcity of jobs to one in which we have a scarcity of skills. And so I think, you know, more and more employers who want to access the skills that they really need to drive their business improvement, to drive their program delivery, to drive excellence, they're going to need to compete for those skills among the labor market. And young people have a lot of those skills. They have incredible creativity. They have ideas. They are AI natives.

They are the highest group that is adopting artificial intelligence among any of the different groups we've surveyed. And I think businesses and companies that want to harness that will need to look at making some changes to entice young people. It doesn't always have to be difficult or expensive. So I mention flexibility whenever possible. So I know we're in an era of return to office mandates. But is there any flexibility around that, maybe one or two days a week,

or even just say occasionally we know you're going to need. to work from home. Is there any kinds of flexibility on start times or end times, those sort of things, like finding that flexibility and dynamism where you can. Okay. I want to have a better understanding of, I'm going to quote Toronto rapper Drake, Yolo. You only live once. He popularized that phrase in the early 2010s.

How much does quitting because of that sort of concept play into some of the decisions? for people to quit. Yeah, it's something, you know, I've thought a lot about because, you know, like many people, I have young people in my life. I wish I was one of them sometimes. I can't say that I am anymore. But I do see, and, you know, people talk about this with young people, oh, they're just doing this yolo life. One of the things I think young people are doing is saying, we want a better social contract, right? So yes, I will work. I will put time in to make my career, but I want to know, can I buy a house when I do all that work,

or am I not even going to be able to afford a condo? Can I afford to go out to eat on the weekends? Like affordability is a key part of this. So I think, you know, if some times people are saying, look, I can't save, I can't buy a house, I am just going to live in the moment. I mean, can we blame them? You know, if you're going to do all of that saving and work so hard,

and you still can't get the life that you have. have dreamt of and that your parents have dreamt of for you. I want to talk about the job market is also different in that when we look at the options, the alternatives, do we think that the younger generation perceive that they have more options available? I'm thinking in comparison to you put that analogy of kind of putting in your punch card, well, their alternative now might be for a lot of people content creating or being an influencer.

There are these options like, well, if this doesn't work out, well, I can possibly do this. Or if I was doing this as a side hustle, you know what? I am seeing some of the, my fruits of my labor. Let me transition over there. Yeah. You know, it's funny because, you know, I would never want to be a content creator. I can barely post to my family and friends. But a lot of people do aspire to this.

And I think, you know, the same way, like, it was hard to imagine 30 years ago that you could have a fully online business. Right. So new jobs get created with any kind of technology or, you know, era of development. The same way some disappear, right? We might administrative assistants now can use AI tools and their role is changing. So when we say, like, is it a problem if young people want to be content creators? No, I think, you know, this is the new economy we live in. Do we think there's value there?

Now, the extent to which is a viable lifestyle, a viable career, I should say, not lifestyle. Is it a viable livelihood for young people in Canada? Well, I'd say that's a little bit less than other places. So you might be looking at young people in the U.S. that have a much different monetization structure. Here, you can't earn money the same way from views and clicks and so forth. So it is less of an option. All right.

I want to talk, bring back the survey. The survey found that GenZeds are more focused on work-life balance than climbing that corporate ladder. How can companies turn that attitude around? Well, you know, when we did research on the quality of work, we really found that people were unanimously clear in that they want opportunities to learn and grow. Right. And this is great. We need that as Canada. We need people to be continually learning, not just early in their career, but throughout their careers. Because, you know, technology is changing so fast and the skills we need. So when we say, do young people want to go into leadership, I'd say they might, but under the right conditions.

So what are the conditions? Maybe you want to make sure your middle managers aren't burned out and aren't so overworked. Maybe they need to be supported more. This is famously something that middle management struggles with, right? And having been a middle manager myself, I know, it's true. You're squeezed in the middle. So I think, you know, young people are saying we don't necessarily want the deal that previous generations have accepted. And I think more than anything, that's a challenge to all of us to adjust.

In a recent McLean's article, you wrote, coming of age during an economic downturn can hinder a person's growth from a long time, even after the economy has stabilized. What does that mean for people starting out? And it's not necessarily just an economic downturn. If we look at where we are right now, I mean, we are a few years removed from COVID, but COVID had a lot to do with it. Climate is a big thing.

A lot of people are very scared of that. When you package all of the things that are facing young people, how do you even start out? Well, we did some research that looked at the long-term labor market scarring effect that we called. And it really, it's built on data from the early 90s when I was a young person in the early 90s. And people who graduated into a recession, you can actually empirically link a higher level of unemployment for youth with a lower wage level, even up to 10 years later. So we're saying that there was a long, you know, impact of that when you graduated on the economic conditions and your long. term earnings. It took them 10 years to recover from that. So what I think that does is, well,

for one, I don't say that to discourage any young person now or their parents or, you know, family members who are concerned about them. But I do think it points to the need for some social policy interventions. Okay. Well, let's talk about them. You talked about this, what workplaces can do, but also governments. What can they do as well? Yeah. And I mean, This is where, you know, we're in a, and we're making generational investments, to use the government's words, and the infrastructure of our country. The same way I think we need to be thinking about generational investments in the social infrastructure. So young people are absolutely critical. They are our future doctors and lawyers and nurses and the people who are going to be taking care of me when I'm old and gray.

You and I, right? Both of us. So we need to make sure that we are facilitating their education. their transitions to the labor market, and to make sure all of those things happen a little more smoothly than they do right now. So that involves making sure they have really good guidance and information to help make choices

at that critical stage in post-secondary. In secondary school about whether and how to go forward in post-secondary to make sure there's a variety of pathways available, whether it's the skilled trades, whether it's university, whether it's some other sort of program, and to make sure that they have appropriate tuition support, financial aid, all of those things. That's good for young people, but it's really important for us too, to make those investments to make sure that we have the workforce we need in the future.

You make the sort of comparison to the old age security program to sort of what we can do. We're trying to think innovatively here. Yeah. How does that program sort of, what do you see from the benefits of that program to how it can help young people? Well, if I think about when, you know, the Canada pension plan and the old age security programs were developed, they came of age in the middle of the prior century. When there was a real issue with senior poverty. And we still have issues of poverty, right? But like, there's still a lot of retirees who base a, you know, a core plank of their retirement plan is making sure they don't get. an OAS clawback, right? And I have people in my family who are in that situation. And, you know, I think we invest a significant portion of our assets as a country into supporting this group, right? And I think we absolutely need to make sure it goes to where it's needed.

But at the same time, I think there's a group that we're not thinking of in terms of an economic imperative to support and invest in them. We think, oh, young people, they're not working hard enough. They just want to play video games. And by the way, video games is very good training for being a surgeon. Very true. You know, the manual dexterity. So I do think we need to think creatively about the ways and how and which groups we invest in and see it as a moral imperative. And the same way in the post-war period, you know, senior poverty was a huge issue of concern for us. I think young people and their support needs to be a critical issue for us. We talked about, COVID, we talked about, you know, generational investments in this country.

From your research, what does the future of work look like? I think the future of work is more human, to be honest. I think a lot of times we focus on the technology aspect, and I think we're going to learn how to get computers and machines to be really good at the automotive, you know, things that machines and computers are going to be really good at. But the future of our work is this. It's talking to people.

It's engaging with them. It's a pharmacist explaining the medication to a patient. It's a doctor talking to somebody about their mental health or therapy supports. And so I think the future of work is going to be much more human and augmented by tools and supports and automation. Sounds like the future is bright for all generations. I hope so. I mean, I have a nine-year-old daughter, and I think, you know,

what's her future going to look like? And I think most young people, maybe their jobs haven't even been created yet. And, but I do think the future can be bright, but I also think we have to make sure we create those pathways. We're going to have to leave it there, Trisha. I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for your insights. Thank you so much. I'm Jan. Thanks for spending some time with us on The Rundown. We want our show to reflect you and what you care about.

What issues would you like to see us cover? What makes you tune in? Let us know, go to tbO.org slash rundown feedback or leave us a comment on YouTube. Until then, see you tomorrow. Thank you.