We Did Everything Right. So Why Are We Still Broke?

Alba Leao
4 hours ago
3 min read

If there is one thing younger generations can agree on, it’s that life is for living, not for working. “Work to live, don’t live to work” could easily be our collective mantra. It sounds obvious enough, but previous generations approached life the other way around.

This does not mean that Gen Z lacks ambition or isn’t invested in their careers. Quite the opposite. The problem is that many no longer believe hard work guarantees stability, let alone success. When a demanding corporate job pays only marginally more than a retail position, people inevitably start questioning the rules they were told to follow.

Somewhere along the way, the system stopped making sense. Why take on endless responsibilities when the paycheck barely reflects the effort? It’s a question many young adults are asking themselves, and some have even started defending jobs that were once dismissed as temporary jobs or signs of failure. Being a florist, a barista or a sales assistant has become strangely aspirational, not because these jobs are glamorous, but because they often promise something increasingly rare: a life outside work.

Graduates are overqualified and still unable to find stable employment. Others have followed the traditional corporate path only to discover that burnout arrived long before success and fulfilment. Social media is becoming flooded with alternative points of view romanticizing slower lifestyles and moving away from the expected nine-to-five, and perhaps they have a point.

But the reality is far more complex. Life has become incredibly difficult for the new generation of adults. Housing is increasingly unattainable at the same time that more people are single and living alone, meaning there’s no second income to rely on. Marriage and parenthood are being postponed, or abandoned altogether, in favor of pets, plants, and simply trying to pay rent. Navigating your twenties in this economy is exhausting, so it comes as no surprise that we are obsessed with stories about groups of friends trying to survive in big cities. It feels too close to home.

But, this is not new. When people worry they’re falling behind in life (a timeline imposed more by social expectations than reality), they look to characters like Rachel Green. She was only twenty-five when she had to start over from scratch and discover who she was while figuring out her career. She wasn’t at all put together.

That’s precisely why Hulu’s new series Not Suitable for Work feels so familiar. Its premise echoes Friends: two apartments, five young adults and New York City. The similarities are impossible to ignore, although this time the fantasy has been replaced with something much closer to reality.

The series uses each of the characters to explore a different anxiety that defines young adulthood today. There’s the shame and the self-destruction that come with realizing that the career you’ve spent years working towards is no longer the one you want. There’s the painful discovery that talent and hard work alone are rarely enough, that connections, privilege and money still determine who gets ahead. And even when the opportunity finally arrives, it often comes attached to an internship, a temporary contract or a salary that barely covers rent.

It also examines what it means to be a young woman navigating a male-dominated workplace, where ambition is constantly negotiated against expectations, power dynamics and the blurred boundaries between professional and personal relationships. At the same time, it captures the uncertainty of pursuing a creative career, with all its instability, financial precarity and the persistent fear that chasing your dream may never be possible. Together, Kel, Josh, AJ, Davis and Abby represent five different ways of experiencing the same generation-wide uncertainty.

Unlike the gang from Friends, they don’t spend every afternoon at a neighborhood café. They are too busy trying to keep their lives together. And after paying rent, there’s not much left for everyday outings. And honestly, so are we. The thing is that the comforting fantasy of Friends was never Central Perk; it was the stability. Even Joey somehow managed to stay afloat, something that feels unrealistic today.

The shift in society is seen through the series. It doesn’t offer escapism so much as recognition, even a critique. Struggling financially, professionally and romantically has become a shared experience among young adults. And if you are also twenty-five, figuring it all out, confused, or simply lost, these characters will probably make you feel less alone. It’s no wonder why this series turns out to be more than suitable after all.