Passion vs paycheck? Why can’t we have both?
Every week, PhilSTAR L!fe explores issues and topics from the perspectives of different age groups, encouraging healthy but meaningful conversations on why they matter. This is Generations by our Gen Z columnist Angel Martinez.
Halfway through my college journey, I found myself longing to shift to another program. Call it the collective COVID-induced existential dread, but I was growing dissatisfied with my stint in the school of management. The world was in shambles, and I was sentencing myself to a lifetime of selling soap? No, thank you.
And so, I looked into development studies or advocacy comms. I joined student organizations and I applied to internships in the space, as my way of getting my foot in the door… only to follow my original plan and graduate with a marketing degree anyway, for a whole slew of reasons.
Years later, I would find myself face-to-face with The Other Side. I’d see batchmates traveling to far-flung areas to help improve access to water or education or quality healthcare. Very recently, I was invited to speak at the Association of Foundations’ forum about Gen Z’s role in the nonprofit workplace, attended by hundreds of people in the industry. It’s times like this when I couldn’t help but wonder: Did failure to follow through with my plan make me less socially aware? Is the path I’m now on less valuable, less virtuous?
Others would be inclined to think so. Existing research from Deloitte points out that Gen Z desires jobs that align with their values: More than 85% say that a sense of purpose is essential to job satisfaction. Over 40% either plan to leave their place of employment or have left one already because of sustainability concerns. “Ever since Steve Jobs’ famous speech on knowing your passion and Simon Sinek’s book on knowing your why dropped, Gen Z has been empowered to apply to jobs that really motivate them and that they can be proud of,” career coach Pat Mallari tells PhilSTAR L!fe.
Add to that, once again, that we grew up in a period of deep economic, environmental, and sociopolitical turmoil. All our actions must, ideally, tackle these—even what we do for a living. We want companies that address social or environmental issues, and remain cognizant of their practices both within and outside of the organization, thanks in no small part to our unlimited access to information.
Yet, many of us are still in what we deem as “soul-sucking, 9-to-5 corporate jobs”: a mindless routine of making pivot tables, producing client briefs, and answering emails amid real, pressing problems in society.
Raven (not her real name), for example, graduated with a minor in humanitarian action and had applied for positions in nonprofits across the country upon graduation. “But, when I suddenly became the breadwinner, I had to start prioritizing other things, too, like which job would give me the higher salary or the better benefits package,” she opens up to L!fe. She’s currently a business analyst for a startup, yet can’t help but feel sometimes that she’s a “sellout.”
The same goes for Jay (not his real name), who had ambitions of entering journalism as an investigative reporter but ultimately ended up in public relations: an adjacent field, with more opportunities and better pay. He says it’s “good, honest work that excites [him] at the end of the day,” but he also notices that a lot of what goes on in his office is made to look more urgent or important than it actually is.
“Sometimes, I’m being rushed and I catch myself thinking: ‘We’re not exactly saving lives here. What’s the hurry?’” he tells L!fe. (Funnily enough, The Washington Post recently released a feature on Gen Z’s resistance to the workplace emergency: After all, it’s just PR, not the ER.)
Finding work at the intersection of passion, profit, and impact is truly a privilege. But while there’s nothing fundamentally immoral about a job lacking one of the main criteria, isn’t it disheartening to live in such contradictions? To have such noble ambitions of changing the world, only to end up another cog in the capitalist machine?
If we lived in a utopia, we could just leave as soon as a job fails to resonate with who we are and what we value. But in a time where prolonged unemployment is on the rise and entry-level positions are slowly edged out by generative AI, some of us simply cannot be choosy. Perhaps, the solution is not to subject ourselves to some litmus test, but to learn to live under these conditions while we can’t afford to fight them.
One way is to try and reframe our mindset. “All jobs have a purpose—they solve something or provide value in their own way,” Mallari says. “So as we try to reconcile our values with what we do for a living, we have to investigate how our products or services impact people and whether we honestly care about that impact.” (I’m reminded of an episode of the hit Apple TV show The Studio, where Matt Remick, head of a fictional film production company, ruthlessly defends what he does in a room full of doctors who find his movies pointless.)
As a writer, I realized that by sparking difficult conversations like this, I can change minds one reader at a time. And in my marketing day job, I’m grateful that we’re developing a product that gives people the chance to tell their own stories. If we’re in a position to advocate for projects or initiatives that will be of actual benefit to stakeholders or make any meaningful change, we should always take the opportunity.
There’s also the practice of charging everything to experience, even what we deem as detours. “Even if you’re in a job that isn’t aligned with what you had in mind, know that whatever learning you developed as a result, you bring with you in your journey of self-discovery,” Mallari advises. The term "transferable skills" does exist for a reason!
And in case these coping mechanisms just don’t cut it, maybe it helps to remember that purpose can exist in other areas of life. Work was meant to be a singular area of our multifaceted existence; not the very center. Purpose exists as well in the company we keep, in the hobbies and skills that we nurture, in what we choose to create when there is no audience to perform for or no metrics to abide by.
Generations by Angel Martinez appears weekly at PhilSTAR L!fe.