If you’re waiting for your boss to notice you and hand you a juicy promotion on a platter, McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski has some brutal advice: No one is swooping in to make your career happen.
The 57-year-old chief took to Instagram to share the “tough love” tip he’d give workers if he “wasn’t afraid to hurt their feelings.” And it’s an important reminder for Gen Z and young millennial workers who are starting out that the onus of your success is on your own shoulders—there’s no magical mentor, no benevolent boss.
“Have a thick skin,” Kempczinski said. “Remember, nobody cares about your career as much as you do.
“So this idea that there’s somebody out there who’s looking out for you; who’s going to make sure that you get that opportunity; who puts you in the right thing—great if it happens—but at the end of the day, nobody cares more about your career than you do.”
The Harvard Business School alumnus, who worked his way up the ranks at Boston Consulting Group, PepsiCo, and Kraft Foods, before joining the $215.7 billion fast food giant in 2015, wrapped up with a motivational message: If you want it, go get it.
“You’ve got to own it. You’ve got to make things happen for yourself.”
The harsh career truths that got Instagram buzzing
In his caption, Kempczinski apologized in advance for being “a little blunt.” But as it turns out, he’s not the only one with harsh yet helpful career advice.
“No employer will ever give you a two-week notice before firing you. So do what’s best for you and your career,” one user commented on the video.
Another commented: “People only remember how you make them feel.”
Another Instagram user shared that they’ve been using the same mantras as Kempczinski for 30 years. “I’ve repeated them over and over up to last week,” the user added. “Your supervisors should look out for you providing opportunities to excel, but it’s your responsibility to shepherd your own career! No one cares more about your career than you!”
Others were quick to turn bold feedback back on the McDonald’s boss himself. Some users pointed out the massive pay inequality at McDonald’s; others slammed specifically his career advice.
“Says the guy who went to Harvard and then on to Duke. And his dad is a surgeon,” one user wrote, adding that Kempczinski’s career experience had more “privilege,” “available resources,” and therefore helping hands, than the average worker. “You can’t get to the positions this guy was and is in without a lot of people looking out for you and pulling you up along the way.”
“This is a poor take,” another watcher hit back. “While not necessarily in abundance, there are many mentors and leaders who are incredibly passionate about their people. These mentors are often more experienced, and help guide people to make the best decisions that yield the best outcomes.”
Your career—and success—is in your own hands, execs at Skims, McDonald’s, LinkedIn, and Amazon agree
The self-made multimillionaire entrepreneur behind the $4 billion shapewear brand Skims, Emma Grede, has similarly echoed that workers’ career success, work-life balance, and happiness are their own responsibility.
In an exclusive interview with Fortune, Grede said that her entire business empire with the Kardashians—spanning multiple clothing brands with Kim Kardashian, Khloé Kardashian, and Kylie Jenner, as well as a cleaning product brand with the family—comes down to her taking control, and boldly cold-calling the family matriarch and “momager,” Kris Jenner.
“The difference between me and someone else is that I made the phone call, I took the meeting, and I made it happen,” Grede said.
“I have no impostor syndrome and no delusions of who gets to run a business,” Grede adds. “I just thought, ‘If not me, then who?’”
She also said on The Diary of a CEO podcast that workers need to take responsibility for their own work-life balance: “That isn’t the employer’s job; that isn’t the employer’s responsibility.”
Likewise, during a recent No One Knows What They’re Doing podcast episode, LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky admitted that the data shows people are rarely handing out linear promotions. Instead, the average worker will need to actively seek out opportunities, pivot where necessary, and treat every role as a stepping stone to build skills and visibility.
“If you focus on those shorter steps, gaining learning, gaining experience, a lot of your career path will open up for you,” he said. “And the sooner you realize that, you can take your own career into your own hands. No one is trying to figure this out for you. You have to take care of it yourself.”
But as Amazon CEO Andy Jassy points out, the control you have in your own career can also be a great thing: It means you’re steering the ship, and if you don’t like the direction it’s going in, you can change that.
“Don’t be afraid to try a lot of different things, and don’t let people tell you that whatever you’ve done—even if you’ve done it for a while—is what you must do,” Jassy wrote in a blog post.
“You have the opportunity to write your own story.”
