If you think about it, working relationships are very straightforward: the company pays you for the hours you put in. That’s it.

In reality ambition, expectations, quiet quitting, culture and other factors make the whole situation a complex mess. This feels even more painful because the way we work is rapidly changing and the simplified explanation for a lot of these problems is that when society changes people adapt.

An ambitious career vs enjoying life

Before we dive deep into this topic let’s address the elephant in the room: quiet quitting. A topic that was over the news a few years ago and now feels forgotten but I guarantee you it’s not.

What is quiet quitting?

It’s about doing the bare minimum and completing all your tasks without any extra effort or motivation. Not enough to get fired but certainly not sufficient for any career progression.

To me, this sounds very sad and demotivating over the long term.

But why do people end up doing this?

There is no doubt that the dream of our parents is dead: working 40 years in a company that feels like family, making decent money to buy a house and raising kids to retire with a farewell party is no longer real.

When employees realize that going above and beyond leads to no additional gratification (aka hamster well) and the company lays them off as soon as the economy gets worse, the question becomes legit:

What’s behind ambition?

I think ambition is a word that has no meaning without context because there are two kinds of ambition: intrinsic and extrinsic.

A lot of people are ambitious only in the context they are put in and extrinsic motivations drive their behaviour.

If you are paid to put a mark on every postcard that comes through the door and you work hard to beat the company record so you get promoted to mark entire binders, does it make you ambitious?

I’m not sure.

Even if you’re not in that position by choice and you must set goals, I would not call it ambition but survival. The goal is to survive, be better than the colleague next to you and hopefully get out of there as soon as possible.

True ambition comes from within.

From the outside, it looks very similar to extrinsic ambition and many people keep falling for this trick. That’s why context is everything.

Intrinsic ambition comes from what you do when nobody is watching.

The (ugly) truth

If you’re in a company where you don’t want your boss's job and you don’t see the company’s success cascading to you, by all means, quiet quit (if you’re not already doing that) or look for another job.

The reality is that when the relationship with your current company is not working, the best thing to do is to look for another job. It does not matter if it’s because you’ve slacked off too long or because you’re ambitious but they don’t recognize you.

The internal battle is just not worth it.

The untold career secret of high-skills tech employees

I’ve seen a lot of quiet quitters perfect this playbook and “beat” the system:

If you’re ready to leave a company, focus on polishing your CV and perfecting your interviewing skills. These are very different from doing the job so you should invest all your efforts here and you’ll get an offer in no time. Once you get the job, work very hard for the first 6-8 months and then start slacking off. By the time they realize what’s going on, 2 years have gone by and you’re already getting ready for a new role (many times with a sweet pay bump). It’s even easier if you change regions or even industries, so you decrease the chances of bad referrals.

Do I recommend doing this? Of course not.

But I’ve seen it working well too many times not to acknowledge how high achievers can learn the tricks of every game.

The biggest risk with this pattern is that if your job goes away abruptly (maybe because of layoffs or an economic downturn), you might not be ready to be rehired. You’re probably subpar compared to the job market (now full of qualified people) and companies will easily see that you’ve not done much in your previous role compared to your peers.

When ambition meets job hopping

Unfortunately, job hopping is something ambitious people have to do as well.

If you feel frustrated because your company is not recognizing your efforts and talking with your manager did not lead anywhere, your best decision is to look for another job. No company will change because of you.

In this case, you should spend almost all your time identifying the right companies to work at so you don’t end up in the same situation.

There are two potential diagnoses for chronic job hoppers:

• Not knowing how to properly identify the right opportunities for you (e.g. optimizing for the wrong variables or having a wrong decision-making process)

• Having unrealistic expectations of work. Believing that your next job is going be awesome every time while in reality, nobody loves 100% of what they do

The solution?!

The only way to solve for quiet quitters, ambitious professionals and job hoppers is by managing expectations.

It’s ok if some people prefer not to focus on their careers, put their hours in, get paid and then focus on something else.

It’s also ok if some companies are built to optimize for lifestyle, which starts with the lifestyle of the owners and trickles down to employees too.

The problem is that we don’t have full honesty on either side.

When applying for jobs, candidates are expected to say that they can’t wait to give this job their all and push above and beyond.

At the same time, companies are expected to share their ambitious plans, important goals for humanity and progressive behaviours.

This is the reason why things go bad too many times.

If a company expects you to commit to their cause but you’re only casually interested in your job and working on a side hustle while slacking off when you’re not needed, it’s not going to work. You’ll either burn out or get fired.

On the other hand, if you work 80 hours/week to propel your career as much as possible but the company has loose execution, leaders are never present and people only run around when urgent things happen, you’ll quickly get frustrated.

The biggest trap is assuming other people want what you want:

• Managers believe employees want the same careers they have

• Employees think managers see work the same way they do

We are still very far away from being honest about job expectations but this is the only path. Because there is a right place for everyone.

If you enjoyed this issue, share it with someone who is looking for the right company fit.

This week's top scientific reads

1. From Cigarettes to Sodas: A New Tax on Sugary Drinks (JAMA Network)

2. A New Biological Classification for Parkinson's (The Lancet)

3. Neuralink's First Human Brain Implant (Reuters)

4. Unveiling the Intricate Process of Scent Detection (Nature)

5. RNA's New Frontier against Inflammation (Cell)

Read the highlights of these articles here.

Latest European funding rounds in health & bio

• Paques Biomaterials raised €14M to further develop Caleyda, their biobased and biodegradable alternative to plastic 🇳🇱

• Myosotis closed an €8M Series A for their communication platform tailored for elderly care between care facilities, families and service providers 🇩🇪

• Cellex, raised €830k for their cost-effective and easy-to-use bioreactor for suspension cell culture 🇮🇹

• Carcinotech raised €4.9M to expand commercial efforts for their 3D-printed tumours that use patient-derived cells 🇬🇧

• Aqemia raised €30M to build their proprietary drug discovery platform from identifying new candidates to clinical testing 🇫🇷 

• Icoteq closed a €28M round for the development of their spine tumour stabilization implants targeting spinal infection and osteoporosis 🇨🇭

• NeoPhore raised €11.2M to advance their immuno-oncology pipeline of small molecule therapeutics against cancer 🇬🇧

• LimmaTech Biologics closed €2.8M, bringing their Series A to €37M+, for their self-adjuvant and multi-antigen vaccine technology platform🇨🇭

• EraCal raised €235M from Novo Nordisk for the exclusive rights to develop and commercialize EraCal’s oral-active anti-obesity drug 🇨🇭

• Qumea raised €9.6M for their patient monitoring system that prevents falls in care institutions 🇨🇭

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