The New Era of Work
There’s a new era of work upon us.
This isn’t just workforce trends or shifting labor markets.
This is an entirely new era of work that is being led by multiple macro, market and cultural factors. Let’s break it down ->
The death of the 9-5 as we know it
Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, has been famously quoted as saying the 9-5 will be “extinct by 2034”. Now this is someone sitting on a lot of data! He attributes this to the implications of AI and the growth of non-traditional work. Workers will likely juggle multiple roles across industries simultaneously rather than holding one permanent, full-time position.
Mass and on-going layoffs conducted by tech and big corporations are an additional contributing factor to the dying 9-5 as we know it. Companies like Meta, Oracle, and other large institutions are laying off thousands of talented professionals at once, leaving the old contracts outdated and irrelevant. The corporate ladder and corporate loyalty are gone.
These macro market trends, in combination with the eroding of the traditional career ladder are why many professionals are opting out of the 9-5 altogether. Many professionals do not want to stay engaged in a system that no longer rewards long-term loyalty and can even sometimes contribute negatively to their well-being.
Employee Burnout Is At All-Time High; Engagement At All-Time Low
An alarming number of 9-5 professionals report symptoms of burnout, including but not limited to sleep deprivation and insomnia, depression, relationship & family stress and other health-related issues.
Due to increasingly digitally-based work with a fast-paced work culture, high demands and low support, employee burnout is at an all-time high. According to a recent Gallup Workplace Well-being study, almost 30% of employees are burned out “very often” or “always”. Unfair treatment at work, unmanageable workload, unclear communication from managers, lack of manager support and unreasonable time pressure are the top five causes of burnout.
Employee engagement is also at an all-time low, with global employee engagement falling to 20% in 2025, down from 23% in 2022, according to the 2026 State of the Global Workplace Report from Gallup.
Instead of choosing to stay and suffer in environments that destroy their well-being over time, professionals are choosing to take control over their well-being and livelihoods instead of defaulting to a broken 9-5 system.
They’re choosing to design their best careers, and lives.
Ready to get started? Watch the training.
The AI Revolution
AI is reshaping the way we do work. It has not only pushed many executives of out the current workforce through mass layoffs and restructuring, but it’s also shaping a new set of skills that will be more important than ever in new era of work
In addition to learning AI and how to use it in our work, we will have to prioritize a human set of skills in the Future of Work. Skills like social cognition, strategic decision making, creativity, adaptability, synthesis and interpretation will all become critical in the future of work.
What this means for the new era of work is that we are moving away from a title-based job market, and towards a skills and outcomes-based market. The new era of work is going to reward the people that both learn AI as well as sharpen their human skills, not those focused solely on a job title or resume. It’s time to think bigger.
Lastly, AI provides us with a new set of tools to create and automate that we have never had before. What that means for the new era of work is that the barrier to entry has never been lower, and that there has never been a better time to create what you wish to see in the world.
Career Pauses & Pivots More Prevalent
More senior professionals are choosing to either pause or pivot from their traditional 9-5 in the new era of work. Factors such as caregiving for children and elders, the cost of caregiving, return-to-office mandates and household responsibilities all play a factor in pausing or pivoting from a 9-5 career. Hundreds of thousands have left the traditional work force in the U.S. in the last year alone.
In addition, movements such as The Power Pause that reframe taking a career break for moms have become popular, noting that a balance between career and family is a driving factor for a lot of women that take career pauses or pivot.
There are also many senior talented executives that have been laid off from corporate or tech in the last several years that are choosing to design their own career paths, versus returning to the 9-5. These professionals are designing careers on their own terms, based on them. Their career paths often look like
Portfolio careers
Consulting agencies
Solopreneur models
Creation of new businesses, digital and physical products
Product strategy for existing side gig platforms to scale into full-time
Purposeful career transitions to more aligned industries, roles & companies
The Age of Agency is here
Instead of defaulting to a broken 9-5 system, professionals are taking control of their livelihood and well-being. They are taking agency over their lives and careers. This is the Age of Agency.
According to the Age of Agency, high-agency individuals share distinctive traits:
They act without waiting for perfect information or excessive permissions
They embrace uncertainty as a space for opportunity
They iterate rapidly based on real-world feedback
They shape their environment rather than just adapting to it
They persist through obstacles that stop others entirely
The reason why this is so timely is because we now have the tools to act on the above. The barrier to entry is much lower than it has ever been to create something new in the world.
The Future of Work is YOU
The one thing that AI cannot replicate is YOU.
YOU are your magic ticket in the future of work. No one else has your unique and magic combination of background, strengths & skills, experiences, values, interests and desired impact in the world.
The new era of work is personal, because the new Era of work depends on you. Your ability to differentiate yourself beyond just your resume, but through your impact in the world and the outcomes you create.
Your ability to create what you wish to see in the world and take control of your well-being and livelihood at the same time just increased exponentially.
The future of work is here, are you ready?
Watch our free training to learn more and get started.