What is Career Minimalism and How It Can Quietly Weaken Your Career

Sarah Doody (00:00.034)

The idea of career minimalism actually sounds healthy, but it can quietly weaken your career. So let’s talk about the part of this trend of career minimalism that a lot of people are not thinking about.

Hey, I’m Sarah Doody, a user researcher and product designer with 20 years of experience. In 2017, I noticed something a little ironic. UX and product people, despite being great at designing experiences for other people, often struggle to design their own careers. That’s why I created Career Strategy Lab and this podcast to help you navigate your UX job search, grow in your current role, and avoid skill and salary plateaus.

all in a chill and BS free way. So whether you’re stuck in your job search or wondering what’s next in your UX career, you’re in the right place.

So first, in case you’re not familiar with this idea of career minimalism, I want to just define it briefly. I just read about it a couple of weeks ago, and it’s essentially this philosophy, especially popular with Gen Z, around the idea that your job is essentially a tool, not your identity. And it’s about your job being able to fund your life and not letting work be.

your entire life. And at a practical level, career minimalism usually means things like strong boundaries around your time and energy and your availability, focusing on core job responsibilities versus constantly going above and beyond nonstop. It could also mean choosing stability and flexibility and your own mental health over promotions, titles, and chasing the ladder.

Sarah Doody (01:56.527)

And it could also mean just putting ambition, creativity, and passion into things outside of work, like hobbies, relationships, side projects, et cetera. And so this idea of career minimalism is really that success is not defined by climbing the ladder. It’s actually defined by your ability to maintain control and balance.

and wellbeing in your career and your life. And honestly, that makes a lot of sense, right? Like who doesn’t want control, balance and wellbeing in both their job and their life? I get it. I wanna take a step back and just think about, know, how did career minimalism come to be? Like how did we get to where we are today, right? And I-

think this philosophy of career minimalism really exists and is very popular right now because burnout is real, right? Maybe you’re burnt out, maybe you have friends or a partner or family who’s totally burnt out. It’s real. This hustle culture burned a lot of people out, especially when they were not rewarded for that hustle.

Loyalty also has not been rewarded, right? The way it used to be. The notion that you’re gonna spend 30 years in the same job and be promoted and climb the ladder, that is not the world we live in. And many people, maybe even you, watched your parents or colleagues or other coworkers give everything to their job and still get laid off. And no wonder there’s this trend and philosophy of career.

minimalism. So choosing a well-rounded identity or choosing not to make work your whole identity and personality, choosing health over constant grinding, all of that is totally reasonable. But here is where things start to get a little tricky if we think about the big picture. So this trend didn’t come out of nowhere, right? We already kind of talked about this, but it’s growing for a couple of reasons.

Sarah Doody (04:13.869)

The job market is unstable, right? We’ve seen these waves of layoffs, not just in tech, and people realize the fragility of the job market and the fragility of a full-time role, right? Layoffs feel random and kind of looming regardless of what job you hold, right? I think there’s this somewhat of a myth out there that a lot of the layoffs have been related to tech.

It’s not just tech, there’s other industries where people have been experiencing layoffs also. And I think another reason that this idea of career minimalism is really growing right now is kind of the psychological contract between companies and employees, frankly, being a broken contract. And because of that, people really want predictability and safety in a really unpredictable economy. And so…

This idea of career minimalism, it’s almost like it’s a reaction, right? It’s a reaction to this burnout, to the hustle culture, to realizing that even when you do everything right and are like a quote, model employee, it still doesn’t guarantee job security. And that’s exactly where the hidden risk of this career minimalism actually shows up. So.

There’s this assumption baked into career minimalism that most people never say out loud. If you practice career minimalism, you probably won’t stay in the same job forever because when you say no to promotions or no to extra responsibility or you avoid management unless it’s totally worth it or you keep strict boundaries, you’re often choosing stability over growth in the future.

And that kind of means that eventually if you want to grow, you’re going to have to change jobs. That is just the nature of it. And that’s not bad, but it can be bad if you’re not setting yourself up to be able to switch companies in the future. So this trend of career minimalists ending up doing more job hopping, it’s because promotions and internal growth often go to people who

Sarah Doody (06:36.417)

are visible, right, who take on extra scope, extra responsibilities, who play the game of internal politics and who are often emotionally invested in the company. And a lot of career minimalists opt out to all of that. And so when they want to grow or change, they have to go external. They have to leave the company they’re at to see that increase in salary or if they want it, responsibility.

And that’s not bad, that’s just something that career minimalists have to think about as they are performing in their current role and hopefully thinking about what move might be next in their career. Because the real risk here, it’s not the job hopping. No one cares that you’re hopping jobs right now unless you’re doing it every four months, because you’re like getting fired every four months. The real risk here is what you build.

or don’t build when you are being a minimalist. And a lot of people practicing this idea of career minimalism end up building really deep company-specific knowledge or expertise and internal tools and processes or skills that are really useful at that specific company and in that specific job, but may not be transferable to other companies.

The important part here to think about is you want to be building portable skills, portable knowledge, portable habits, not just knowledge and habits and expertise that are truly only applicable to that company you are at right now. So if you’re a career minimalist, the reframe I really want you to think about is this idea of building portable equity, meaning

skills that you are going to be able to use after you’re gone from the role you’re in right now, right? So thinking about skills, knowledge, practices, relationships, et cetera, that can travel with you, that don’t just die the moment you leave the company you are at, right? You want to be building this portable equity because that is what is going to help you succeed.

Sarah Doody (09:01.558)

in that job you get next. So I wanna leave you with three really practical ways to practice career minimalism without weakening your career. The first tip is really to optimize for this idea of portability, not just balance. So in your current role, I want you to be thinking about what skills can I develop now that could actually serve me even if I was not at this company.

what knowledge could I be acquiring? What relationships could I be acquiring and nurturing that could be helpful for me eight months, 16 months down the road? Because balance definitely matters in your career and in your day to day, but you don’t want to end up getting too comfortable and then realizing when you go to apply to other jobs,

your skills don’t transfer because you don’t have this portable equity. The second tip I want to offer you is to know the difference between being useful in your current job and valuable somewhere else. Being relied on internally can really give you a false sense of security, right? If you’re the person that people constantly come to to solve problems, to put out fires, to get knowledge that they don’t have,

that can kind of prop up your ego, right? It can make you feel valuable. However, if the balance of how you spend your time and energy in your job is tilted really far towards the spectrum of your skills and knowledge are so specific to that current job, that’s a problem, right? We wanna balance that out. So you are an asset at your current company, but

you are also building portable skills, portable knowledge, portable relationships, et cetera, that are also going to be valuable away from that company. Because being relied on internally doesn’t always mean the market, the job market is going to value those things that make you valuable internally at your company. The third tip I’m gonna give you is to treat every role as

Sarah Doody (11:21.313)

though it is temporary. And that is not meant to be negative, but here’s what I mean. Even if you like the job, you like your boss, you like your colleagues, you like the company’s mission, et cetera, and you could see yourself being there for five years, don’t fall into the trap of getting too comfortable and, for example, not testing the waters of other companies. It’s possible that you could be making

five figures more than what you’re making right now if you just switched companies, right? Maybe you could be having better benefits if you were at another company. One mistake that a lot of people make when they’re in a role for a while is they forget to build relationships with people outside of that company. And the risk there is that if you end up getting laid off one day, you are going to have a really small network outside of your current peers and colleagues because

You didn’t put time and energy into networking and nurturing relationships outside of that company you are at. So that’s what I mean by treating every role as though it’s temporary and making time for nurturing relationships. Of course, making sure that your resume, your LinkedIn, a portfolio if you have one, are kind of in an always ready to apply state so that

If you walked into your job 14 days from now and you were laid off, you would be not starting from zero. In sales, there’s this concept of always be closing. In your career, you should always be seeking, meaning seeking out your market value, seeking out relationships, seeking out skills and expertise that could be taken with you.

if you were to leave the job you’re in right now. So to wrap it up, career minimalism, it’s not bad. It makes a lot of sense. And in the job market today, it makes a heck of a lot of sense. If you’re adopting this idea of career minimalism, the most important thing I think you really need to keep in mind here is that as a career minimalist, if you want to grow in your salary or in your responsibilities, if you want to, it’s likely not going to happen.

Sarah Doody (13:41.571)

by climbing the ladder at your current company, it’s going to happen by hopping around to different companies. And if you wanna position yourself to be ready to hop around to different companies, you need to be building this portable equity and you need to be investing in relationships with people outside the company you are at right now. Career minimalism, it’s not about caring less. It’s just a different way to look at your career.

It’s about being intentional, about carries you and your career forward in a way that supports the lifestyle that you want. The goal isn’t to make your career smaller, it’s frankly just to make it sturdier and make it support the life you want to live. So I’m curious, have you adopted this philosophy of career minimalism? If so, feel free to share with me on LinkedIn or drop a comment.

on YouTube if that’s where you’re watching or in the comments of the podcast, if you’re listening on Spotify, I would love to hear how this approach of career minimalism is going for you. Hey there, I just wanted to say thanks for listening to this episode all the way to the end. If you’re looking for links or resources mentioned, visit careersstrategylab.com slash podcast to find this episode details and the details of the hundreds of other episodes.

If you’re looking for help with your UX or product job search, you may want to consider checking out my program, Career Strategy Lab, where I help UX and product people just like you navigate unexpected challenges in their careers, whether that’s a layoff, trying to get promoted, or getting hired without applying to hundreds of jobs. To learn more about that, just go to careerstrategylab.com and click.

UX Career Coaching at the very top. That’s all for today and I’ll see you next time in another episode of the Career Strategy Podcast.