It is 10pm in Seoul, South Korea, but Hyun Jin Lee is not heading home. The recent college graduate – an employee in the IT industry – is at a mandatory team dinner.
“I end up working late almost every day,” laughs Lee. “By the end of the day, I feel completely drained, like I’ve used up all my energy [and] I can’t really do anything on weekdays after work.”
She begins the workday at 9.30am and ends most days at 10pm, sometimes pushing to midnight. On a single workday, Lee receives about 200 messages. With constant meetings and collaborative work filling the day, evenings are often the only time Lee has to catch up on individual tasks.
This is far from unusual, according to new research. Microsoft’s 2025 work trend index report found that many workers are increasingly grappling with “infinite workdays”, which start before sunrise and stretch late into the night. They are interrupted by some 270 pinging notifications along the way, about one every two minutes.
Many young professionals are struggling with this new reality. “If I pushed myself [too] hard one day, I try to leave work early the next day to get some rest,” Lee said. “There’s usually this unspoken pressure not to work from home, even if it’s allowed, but I do it anyway because I have so much work, [so] commuting feels like a waste of time, and I am just exhausted.”
This traditional work culture is disillusioning gen Z as 94% of the generation are prioritizing work-life balance over climbing the corporate ladder, according to research by Deloitte.
Sal, a New York-based compensation specialist who declined to provide his full name for privacy reasons, believes his generation is facing new hurdles in the workplace such as rising mental health concerns, and stagnant wage increases in the face of inflating living costs.
Despite these challenges, Sal, 24, said he is still expected to conform to an outdated working structure, putting in long hours without the payoff older generations had. “We’re graduating with a high amount of debt [from university] and then working a job that is burning us out, and it’s not even paying for this debt,” he said. “A lot of people my age are job hopping because they’re burnt out or cannot find longevity in their roles.”
Sal’s first year in his current role led him to seek therapy because the workload seemed to be a “constant queue” and he felt perpetually anxious despite “being in a spot that is better than most people in my generation”. He was diagnosed with a general anxiety disorder.
Even in South Korea, a country known for its notoriously long working hours, gen Z is rejecting this lifestyle.
“Young people really value their free time after work, and prefer having enough rest, flexible work environmentsand more freedom,” said Lee. “The younger generation believes working overtime, too, often can sometimes be seen as a sign of poor time management, so people don’t think working long hours is always a good thing.”
For some, long working hours are inevitable. Others are choosing to endure them temporarily, in the hope of buying back their time later.
Jane, who also declined to disclose her surname, is working two full-time jobs with the goal of escaping corporate life in four years, when she turns 30. Based in Toronto, she splits her 70-hour workweek between a 9-to-5 marketing manager role and a 5-to-11 call service representative position. Both are remote.
“My first 9 to 5 internship experience in university was so horrible that it made me very anti-career and anti-work, to the point where I wouldn’t do this until I was 65,” Jane said. “The older management clearly expected employees to make work their entire life.”
In Jane’s previous marketing role with a different company, she drowned in infinite workdays which ultimately led her into a spiral of depression. The management team scheduled meetings off-the-clock, chastised employees who left on time, and expected workers to check messages 24/7, including on holidays like Christmas.
“I would just be very anxious all the time, and I would lose sleep over it,” Jane explained. “I feel like getting sucked into work and over-obsessing while thinking that that’s your life is definitely the wrong approach. Work-life balance is so important.”
Jane experienced burnout numerous times since entering the workforce after college. However, she now sets firm working boundaries and communicates her bandwidth to her team. She refuses to work off-the-clock and prioritizes time with loved ones instead.
“What I’ve realized is that the only way to fix burnout is to leave the company, because if the environment makes you stressed, you cannot fully mentally protect yourself,” Jane said. “I’m working to live, not living to work.”
