Gen Z's 'lily padding' strategy: Job-hopping for faster career growth

Brittany Harris-Nelson thinks of her career the way a frog thinks about crossing a pond. Each lily pad—each job—brought her closer to where she wanted to land, even when the route twisted and doubled back on itself. Over nearly a decade, she worked her way through ten different positions across six universities, starting as a student employee and moving through roles as an office manager, admissions counselor, and student advisor. Today, at 32, she sits in the mid-level administrative job she'd long wanted: assistant director of student engagement at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. The salary didn't spike dramatically with each move, but the benefits accumulated—more paid leave, bigger pension contributions, a portfolio of skills that no single job could have built.

Harris-Nelson is part of a broader shift in how young workers think about careers. Industry researchers have named the pattern "lily padding"—the deliberate practice of job-hopping to build diverse skills and accelerate advancement rather than climbing a single corporate ladder. The numbers tell the story clearly. Gen Z workers stay in their first jobs for an average of just 1.1 years, compared to 1.8 years for millennials and nearly three years for older generations, according to a 2024 survey of 11,250 workers by recruitment firm Randstad. In the UK, the financial payoff is measurable: workers who changed jobs four or more times over a decade earned an average of £39,276, versus £30,088 for those who stayed put—a 31 percent premium.

Adam Smiley Poswolsky, now 42, embodied this strategy long before it had a name. Based in San Francisco, he rejected the traditional idea of climbing one company's hierarchy. Instead, he chased meaning. Over 15 years, he worked as a project leader for the Peace Corps, an English teacher at Harvard, a location scout for Warner Bros, a film producer in New York, a campaign staffer for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential run, and a fellow at a think tank. Each jump was deliberate. He knew what skills he was carrying forward, what he wanted to learn next. The strategy worked: he eventually matched the $70,000 he'd earned at the Peace Corps when he was 28, and now makes his living as a paid public speaker and author on workplace culture. "The skills I learned in that government job helped me as a writer, which then led to me writing a book, which led to my current career as a professional keynote speaker," he says.

What's driving this shift? Nicola Grant, chief people officer at the UK insurance company Hiscox, has watched the change firsthand. Younger workers, she says, want to build a breadth of experience faster. They're willing to leave if they sense their development is stalling or their options are narrowing. "Expectations have changed; people want variety, pace and to build skills that will remain relevant," she observes. "It's about a desire for growth."

Lucy Kemp, a strategic communications leader at the IT company La Fosse, goes further: lily padding isn't a trend, it's the future. Younger workers have watched loyalty fail to pay off. They've seen their parents stay at companies for decades and get little in return. They want to shape their own paths, building skills they value rather than waiting for promotion. There's also a practical dimension. Since the pandemic, office learning from colleagues has dried up as remote work took hold. AI is automating basic tasks. Workers are now hunting for skills that will matter in five years, and they'll find them by switching teams, changing sectors, or moving to a new company entirely. "People just want to learn something new and have a purpose," Kemp says.

Harris-Nelson frames it simply: "I see my career as an ongoing journey rather than a destination. I'm always learning and growing." That mindset—treating work as a series of learning opportunities rather than a destination to reach—appears to be reshaping what younger workers expect from their professional lives. The question now is whether employers will adapt to retain talent that's always looking toward the next lily pad.