For Gen Z, navigating today’s job market can feel daunting—especially as artificial intelligence threatens to upend the very idea of work. But according to Melinda French Gates, that uncertainty is exactly where growth begins.
The billionaire philanthropist said that learning to embrace transitions is the key to personal and professional development.
“If we pause and if we give ourselves time to learn, we can actually grow tremendously during those transitions, whether they’re easy or whether they’re hard,” she said on Bloomberg’s Leaders with Francine Lacqua podcast.
And for new graduates in particular, the 61-year-old said there’s one question that cuts to the heart of it:
“I even tell university graduates these days, you think the transition is when you go through graduation? No, it’s when you wake up the next day and you’re saying, ‘Am I really on the way to where I want to go?’”
It’s a question many Gen Zers are already grappling with as traditional career ladders grow less stable. Early in their careers, young workers are moving on quickly: The average job tenure during the first five years of employment is just 1.1 years, according to recruitment company Randstad. That’s a sharp contrast to earlier generations. Gen Xers and baby boomers typically stayed in their early roles for closer to three years—suggesting today’s young workers are reevaluating their career paths far sooner.
Melinda French Gates’s first post-grad job wasn’t going as planned—but instead of quitting, she embraced the challenge
Learning to question major transitions is something French Gates said she learned early in her career—starting with her first post-grad job. After earning her bachelor’s degree in computer science and her MBA from Duke University, she spent nine years at Microsoft.
“There weren’t very many women at the time, and it was a rough-and-tumble world. Tech is still pretty tough. It was the boys’ debate society,” she recalled to Bloomberg. “And I thought, ‘okay, I can rise up, I can play this game.’ And I did play the game and I did quite well—I was moving up the ranks in the company.”
But around the two-year mark, doubts crept in: “I realized I didn’t like myself. I didn’t like how I was treating people outside of work, because I was treating them the same way I was treating people inside of work, which was the game we had to play. And I thought, no, this isn’t right for me.”
It’s a realization many young workers may recognize today. As Gen Z switches jobs more frequently than previous generations, questions about culture and values are surfacing earlier in careers. French Gates’ experience speaks to why: when the culture doesn’t match your values, no amount of upward momentum feels like enough.
But rather than quit and seek opportunities elsewhere, she decided to try something different: shifting her approach to work.
“I thought, ‘okay, before I leave, I will try—inside this company—being who I truly am,’” she said. “And to my surprise, I did not fall flat on my face. I actually rose in the company, and people came to work under me in my division who wanted that type of leadership. And I thought, ‘oh, this can work. There’s no reason for me to be somebody else—be myself.’”
It’s a realization, she said, that often only comes once you’re in the thick of it—but once you are, it’s worth sitting with.
“I don’t think it’s until you get to the next day that you can really, at least for me, start to process the transition and where you are,” French Gates added. “And this is really the heart of what leadership is also like.”
Lisa Su and Julie Sweet agree with Melinda French Gates: embrace hard times—and you’ll find success on the other side
French Gates isn’t alone in her view that leaning into discomfort is one of the surest paths forward. Some of the world’s most successful executives agree.
Lisa Su, CEO of semiconductor company Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) put it bluntly in a commencement address to graduates of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute last year: “Run towards the hardest problems—not walk, run—and that’s where you find the biggest opportunities, where you learn the most, where you set yourself apart, and most importantly, where you grow.”
“When you choose the hardest challenges,” she added, “you choose the fastest path to growth and the greatest chance to make a difference.”
Accenture CEO Julie Sweet has a reminder of that mantra in her home, with a plaque stating: “If your dreams don’t scare you, they’re not big enough.”
“I look at it every day when I think about where I need to take our company, and where I need to continue to learn as a company,” Sweet said at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit in Riyadh last year.
“So I hope for all of you that your dreams scare you, because that means you’re going to make the impact that I know you can.”
