What Comes After Ambition

Hustle culture is dead. Did American women's drive go away. or has it morphed into something new and maybe better?

- By Ann Friedman

Something’s been happening with the ambitious women in my life.

A friend who used to be focused on climbing the corporate ladder in her marketing job—while dabbling in a series of side hustles—is trying to figure out how to backpedal. A lawyer at a big tech company who’s the breadwinner for her family is taking a leave of absence. A creative force of nature who burned out mid-pandemic is trying to make peace with the not-that-difficult job she took just to hold on to her health insurance.

Then, over glasses of wine one weeknight, I found myself saying to a fellow go-getter: “I’m just not that busy lately.” As someone who has always had a sense of pride in her work ethic and found a sense of purpose in her career, this was a shocking, satisfying, and slightly shameful admission. I realized that something had shifted for me, too.

Women are in the midst of a revolutionary reckoning with our ambitions. We’re not resigning en masse—because who can afford to quit her job in this economy?!—but we are trying to figure out a new set of goals and guidance for our professional lives. Thanks to long-simmering inequality and stubborn sexism, clarified by the pain of the pandemic, our definitions of success increasingly lie outside the realm of work. We are waking up to the fact that our jobs are never going to love us back. And we are trying to adjust accordingly.