How Immigrant Entrepreneurs Build Lasting Businesses

ALISON BEARD: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Alison Beard.
The story of the successful immigrant entrepreneur moving to a new country, seeing a need and working as hard as possible to build a business around it isn't a new one. In the U.S, it's a big part of what we call the American Dream. But the stats on this still might surprise you.
While immigrants make up 14% of the U.S population, they own about a fifth of new businesses. 45% of Fortune 500 companies had immigrant founders. Four in five founders or top executives at billion dollar startups are first or second generation immigrants. And the research shows that immigrant founded companies grow faster and survive longer than those founded by natives, contributing trillions of dollars to the economies of their adopted countries.
The most talked about immigrant founded U.S company might be Google, now Alphabet, but consider also Nordstrom, WhatsApp, Chobani, Calendly, Zoom, and thousands of other small to medium sized businesses across the country.
Our guest today has talked to many of these entrepreneurs, studied their strategies and pinpointed the common principles that have propelled them to long-term success. She says that any leader can learn from their examples. And at a time when anti-immigrant sentiment is on the rise around the world, we wanted to ask her what impact related policy changes might have on entrepreneurial innovation.
Neri Karra Sillaman is an entrepreneurship expert at Oxford University, a founder herself of the luxury leather goods company, Neri Karra, and the author of the book, Pioneers, Eight Principles of Business Longevity from Immigrant Entrepreneurs. Neri, welcome.
NERI KARRA SILLAMAN: Thank you very much Alison.
ALISON BEARD: So I'd love to start briefly with your own immigration story and how that led you to both study entrepreneurship and become an entrepreneur yourself.
NERI KARRA SILLAMAN: I was born in Bulgaria to a Turkish ethnic minority, and in June of 1989, the communist dictator, Todor Zhivkov, asked us to leave Bulgaria. So in June of 1989, with only two suitcases to our name, we left Bulgaria.
There were 360,000 Turkish Bulgarians who immigrated that summer. When we got to the border, I remember all the confusion, fear around me, and I will never forget my father screaming like a wounded animal as he ran towards the border and he threw himself on what he called motherland soil. Looking around me at that time, I had two realizations. One was my childhood just ended. The second one was I need to get a good education.
I received financial aid at the age of 18 to go from Turkey to University of Miami, and I was once again an immigrant. I remember feeling very much like fish out of water because all my classmates around me felt very much at ease when talking to the professor, very much at ease, comfortable in their own skin. We had a computer class and it was the first time that I saw a computer in my life.
ALISON BEARD: And as you started studying entrepreneurship, as you continued your educational journey, what gaps did you find in the research on immigrant success?
NERI KARRA SILLAMAN: At the time, I was actually with my family, a few years later started to build a company ourselves. And the lessons that I was seeing in the literature, first of all as someone who wasn't just an academic, but also who was practicing entrepreneurship, some of the advice didn't fit what we were doing as a refugee family trying to build a business with zero capital and with very limited resources. What stood out to me was just how different it was, what you did on the ground versus what was written in the books and in the academic literature.
For me, especially when it comes to immigrant entrepreneurship, for instance, there is a lot emphasis on necessity entrepreneurship. And it is the case for many of the immigrant entrepreneurs because they often don't have the resources, their education is not recognized in the country that they immigrate to, so they are often forced to become entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurship literature will often ask the question, why are immigrants more likely to become entrepreneurs? But they rarely ask a question, why are they more likely to start businesses that last?
ALISON BEARD: So why is longevity the key measure to consider for you?
NERI KARRA SILLAMAN: The majority of startups today fail, even the majority of businesses today last about an average of 18 years. As a refugee founder, immigrant entrepreneur, it was very important for me to create a business that will be prosperous, that will have longevity. I was fascinated to understand how iconic brands are made, for example. But as I start to delve deeper into the literature and into my research, I had to change the definition of longevity and reframe that because no company can last forever, is what I'm trying to say. So it's not so much about the fact that you are going to last for thousands of years but what impact are you making?
ALISON BEARD: And a lot of the companies that you have studied are, in the grand scheme of things, relatively young. I'm thinking Calendly, Noom, WhatsApp, even Chobani. How do you classify them as long lasting companies at this stage?
NERI KARRA SILLAMAN: For me, business longevity is a company that has made an impact that has lasted long enough to create an impact in the ecosystem that it finds itself in.
ALISON BEARD: And all those companies I just cited certainly have done that in their respective industries. So you looked at eight key principles that drive immigrant and also second generation entrepreneur's long-term success. Briefly, that's bridging cultures, building from the past forward and the future back, forging authentic connections, generating profit the right way, building community, reframing rejection, frying in your own oil and daring to play your hand. I have to start by asking you to explain the most interesting one. What does frying in your own oil mean?
NERI KARRA SILLAMAN: That's a wisdom from my grandfather. When we were growing up in Bulgaria, he was an orphan at the age of 15, had to look after his five brothers and sisters. He would always tell us it's very important to fry in your own oil, which means to be self-sufficient.
So I work with a lot of start-ups, I advise businesses. What I was seeing especially was that they will try to immediately raise money and grow quite fast. That's almost like a trap that a lot of start-ups tend to fall into. And it can have devastating consequences.
What advice can I give? It was that fry in your own oil; grow at a rate that also matches your profitability and you are self-sustaining as a company first because this will allow you to be a lot more creative. I think that's an important element when it comes to helping them building sustainable businesses of longevity.
ALISON BEARD: And that seems linked to another principle, generating profit the right way. Why do you see this sort of dual pursuit of both purpose and financial success as something that immigrants might do better or more naturally than others?
NERI KARRA SILLAMAN: Because of their backgrounds, they've usually come from countries with a lot of uncertainty. They've seen what lack of education, losing trust in institutions and having lack of resources, not having the right ecosystem can do not only to the people who live in that country, but even to the health of a business.
I have a section in the book that says Milton Friedman's advice is no longer applicable because it's not about putting company profitability and company first, but recognizing that you are part of this ecosystem with suppliers, customers, the nature, you are all part this big ecosystem, and in order for you to be successful, all of these elements have to work together.
ALISON BEARD: That links to yet another principle, this idea of clear vision. And you say that immigrants do that by moving from the past forward and the future back with three specific steps, identity, intention, and imagined future. So explain that process to me.
NERI KARRA SILLAMAN: Founder of Moderna, Noubar Afeyan, he has a plaque on his desk that says trust your crazy idea. He claims one of his main elements is that he builds his businesses from the future back. But what does that mean? You have to have identity. Your past informs your future.
One of the other entrepreneurs I interviewed, the founder of Numi Tea, she said, 'Entrepreneurs have to look within first, understand their past, where they come from, what bothers them and what they want to change and then look out there.'
So I thought that was an interesting one and very much related to vision. So you have to first ask yourself what matters to you, what your values are. And intention has to do with the fact that what in the world doesn't align with your values? And then you have to have that crazy idea and trust in that crazy idea. And trust is the ability that allows you to keep going no matter what, and believing in that crazy idea.
ALISON BEARD: And it's interesting because you think, okay, for an immigrant entrepreneur, they're looking back to their past, that involves migration, but any entrepreneur could look back to the past of things that they experienced in their childhood or a friend or family member who had a healthcare issue or even a consumer problem that they face on a daily basis and sort of use that past experience to inform their intention and imagined future.
NERI KARRA SILLAMAN: One thing I want to really clarify, in the book I talk about immigrant entrepreneurs, but like you said in the beginning of our conversation, this is very much applicable, replicable. It can apply to anyone who is not an immigrant entrepreneur.
ALISON BEARD: Right. Another of the principles, the ability to bridge cultures seems like an obvious asset that immigrants bring to the table. How, though, does it really help them build these kinds of businesses you're talking about, the ones that have longevity?
NERI KARRA SILLAMAN: I put this principle first because it, in my opinion, underpins everything else. Immigrants see the world and look at the problem from a very different angle. They can look at a problem and ask a question that normally other people wouldn't ask. Another important element is the institutional distance because when they start building their companies, their cross-cultural ability allows them to reduce that institutional distance between doing business of two different countries. They can also start a business simply because they come from a different culture, as is in the case of Hamdi Ulukaya with Chobani. He comes from a Kurdish Shepherd family and he brought yogurt to U.S.
ALISON BEARD: I eat it every day.
NERI KARRA SILLAMAN: It's a great product. And one thing I want to add here, founder of Wondery, Hernan Lopez, he's an Argentinian immigrant and he says coming from two different cultures allows you to read tomorrow's newspaper today. And that's about recognizing inflection points because they happen so often, especially in today's fast-paced environment, you can spot changes and you are able to adapt a lot faster than other companies would.
ALISON BEARD: So it's almost like your experience with change and cultural differences allows you to anticipate a big cultural shift. And he, with Wondery, anticipated the rise of podcasts.
NERI KARRA SILLAMAN: Yes, that's right.
ALISON BEARD: tConnections is an interesting one for immigrant entrepreneurs because they typically don't have them. There's no existing support networks of family and friends when you've moved to a different country. So what lessons can non-immigrants take away from how they overcame that obstacle to build social capital anyway?
NERI KARRA SILLAMAN: It's very true. So when immigrants come to a new country, they often lose their family, their friendships, the social network that sustained them, and they try to immediately rebuild in any way they can these new connections. And every single connection matters a lot to them. That's why I have many of the principles, for example, homophilic ties, which is birds of a feather that flock together principle, community principle. And in the case of immigrant entrepreneurs, what I've seen is they established these ties in a very strategic way. Nothing is by accident. They use a lot of storytelling, they are very dynamic and they evolve over time, and there is a continuous nurturing of these relationships.
ALISON BEARD: And I think we often, when we think of immigrant entrepreneurs, think of connections within that cultural group, but you cite examples of people connecting over heritage, experience and values as well as geographic background.
NERI KARRA SILLAMAN: Absolutely. So again, you don't have to be an immigrant, you don't have to be a refugee in order to create this, what I call, quasi-family or create connections with other people. You can bond over the fact that you believe in the same thing or you have the same vision for your company. When you are building a company, you can take these elements and implement them yourself.
ALISON BEARD: So that does lead right into community building. How do the entrepreneurs you study do it differently?
NERI KARRA SILLAMAN: They do it differently because the other person matters to them greatly. For instance, in the case of Hamdi Ulukaya, when he first started to build his company, he didn't have a lot of capital, but he had those other people who were part of the old craft factory. And he says, 'When I start to build my business, I ask those people, 'If you see me doing any mistakes, just tell me.'' So that's a very interesting one because there is not this cult of a leader, but rather a cult of a community.
ALISON BEARD: So is this existing community of Americans that had worked in the craft factory and he was turning it into a yogurt factory, and he made that community his own?
NERI KARRA SILLAMAN: That's right. To this day, he hires refugees in his business, and that's a very important part of how he does business. It's based on community. It's based on how can I create better life for other people?
ALISON BEARD: So let's try to quickly touch on the last two principles. How do immigrant entrepreneurs reframe rejection in a way that we can all learn from?
NERI KARRA SILLAMAN: That's one of my favorite principles. With immigrant entrepreneurs, they are expecting almost to be rejected. They expect failure and they are not afraid. Or to them it doesn't mean rejection. To them, the word no doesn't mean it's a rejection. Isaac Larian, the founder of MGA Entertainment, he constantly says no is the beginning of business. No is the beginning of negotiation.
ALISON BEARD: Right. And I imagine that sort of the resilience that they've developed from moving countries, establishing entirely new lives, is a big part of that. Being able to recover.
NERI KARRA SILLAMAN: Absolutely.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. Finally, dare to play your own hand really is about capitalizing on luck. So how did the entrepreneurs that you talked to explain how they did that?
NERI KARRA SILLAMAN: When I was setting out to write the book, I thought I knew what I was going to say more or less, but my analysis led me to some very surprising principles and insights. So luck is one of them. Luck, again, it's quite strategic. It's linked to hard work. So it doesn't happen to you simply because you were there at the right time, met the right people. You may have these elements happen, but you need to know how to recognize it, and then you need to put in the hard work and utilize all the other principles I talk about such as cross-cultural bridging or homophilic ties or importance of community or reframing rejection.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah, it's the ability to make your own luck in a way.
NERI KARRA SILLAMAN: Absolutely.
ALISON BEARD: Sort of create so many opportunities that there will be one you're able to seize on.
NERI KARRA SILLAMAN: Yes.
ALISON BEARD: So in reading the book, I did think of one very prominent counter example, particularly when it comes to achieving profitability the right way. One very famous business flame out recently was WeWork, which was founded in the U.S by an Israeli and had a spectacular rise and fall due to financial mismanagement. Is that just an anomaly or is there a danger that you're cherry picking the best immigrant entrepreneur case studies and ignoring those failures?
NERI KARRA SILLAMAN: Of course. Every research, every study has its limitations and certainly mine does as well, but I want to emphasize what we can learn from immigrant entrepreneurs. Immigrant entrepreneurs are not monolith in any way. There are those who have failed, there are those who have done things that can be controversial as we are seeing today. So I'm talking Elon Musk here. But it doesn't take away from the fact that immigrant entrepreneurs are quite impressive, have built impressive companies, and as you cited in the beginning of our conversation, they make up 46% of the Fortune 500 companies and statistically, they build businesses that last longer.
ALISON BEARD: And so we're talking now about lots of well-known companies. In general, the examples you cite are new companies, certainly, and some startups, but things we've heard of, Noom, Calendly, WhatsApp, etc. Do you see the same principles at work in all of the smaller immigrant-led businesses that we all see in our own communities? Are the same principles playing out?
NERI KARRA SILLAMAN: Yes, they are. Also, when I was writing the book, I was comparing, contrasting these principles to my own lived experiences as an immigrant entrepreneur, and wanted to see how did this affect me? How did this play out in our business? But I went a step further than that as well because as I mentioned, for several years now, I've been working with startups, advising startups, and I wanted to see how do these principles work in their context? And I see it very much applies there as well. For instance, I can give you an example, fry in your own oil. A few years ago, which was a student of mine from Oxford became a financial advisor to a startup, so she would ask me very informally about that particular startup. So one thing I said to them, you are over-borrowing without being mindful of your sales.
And unfortunately that company bankrupted, even though it was created with the right principles, they were clothing in Africa and contributing to the community in Africa, but if they were not careful with their finances… And it was a great idea, but over-borrowing without being mindful of your sales and your profitability, it's basically a death knell for the company.
ALISON BEARD: So it's a good reminder that you can't just adhere to a couple of the principles, you need to work on adhering to all of them. What about intrapreneurs, the people creating new products or services within their organizations? Do you think that immigrants bring something special to the table there too as well?
NERI KARRA SILLAMAN: I think they do. This can apply to even people who are not entrepreneurs, who are not building businesses. For example, it can apply for your career as well, for early career professionals when they have a vision for their career, how they want to build their career. You can even apply it in that context.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. The best example of an intrapreneur that I found in your book was that the founder of Duolingo actually created CAPTCHA also when he was at Google.
NERI KARRA SILLAMAN: Yes, that's right.
ALISON BEARD: You say a few times in the book that you're not trying to make a political statement on immigration, but as I said in the intro, for the past several years, there are countries around the world that have seen increased anti-immigrant sentiment and they're electing leaders who are trying to limit immigration. In the U.S. right now, we are deporting university students, for example. So if that trend continues, what do you think that the long-term result will be for those countries that are less friendly to newcomers?
NERI KARRA SILLAMAN: It'll be devastating. You are right. I do say several times I'm not trying to make political statement in the book, and I don't want to even say I'm political because this is just simply being a human being. I want us to go beyond the divisive rhetoric when it comes to the world, immigrants and immigration, because statistics do not lie. Numbers do not lie.
And if we continue with this, we are already seeing people don't want to come to U.S. There are travelers who are boycotting, students who are not likely to choose U.S. And entrepreneurship at the end of the day needs stability. They need ecosystems that are going to nurture these startups. When you have this constant disruption, while disruption is something that immigrant entrepreneurs are familiar with, you need the right soil in order for the flower to grow, let's say. The founder of Udemy, Eren Bali, he immigrated from Turkey to U.S specifically because he knew that he cannot grow Udemy in Turkey. He wanted the ecosystem of the Silicon Valley.
ALISON BEARD: So which countries would you say are the best environments for would-be immigrant entrepreneurs right now?
NERI KARRA SILLAMAN: A lot of them we are seeing them already. Europe, Singapore, Berlin, we have Paris. We are seeing actually the governments quite mindfully trying to offer the right conditions for entrepreneurs.
ALISON BEARD: And how would you respond to the argument that immigrants, whether they're workers or entrepreneurs, are taking opportunities away from native-born citizens?
NERI KARRA SILLAMAN: They do not. Again, they do not. And again, numbers, we have statistics and numbers of… They pay taxes. They are contributing to the country that they immigrate to. This is incredibly important for them. We see it in the businesses that they create, we see it in the everyday lives. And yes, you can take a few examples. If you want to create your political rhetoric and say, 'Oh, they've done this in an unlawful way,' but ultimately what statistics and what facts show us that immigrants build and make America great.
ALISON BEARD: And other countries too. They're creating more jobs than they are taking.
NERI KARRA SILLAMAN: Completely.
ALISON BEARD: Certainly from the economy. Yeah. So in conclusion, you talk about kindness being a unifying theme for all of your principles that you derived from your research on immigrant entrepreneurs. Why is kindness something that you see more in those study subjects and why do you want more of that in business?
NERI KARRA SILLAMAN: Because it's, for me, what unifies all the principles that I talked about. Without kindness, you cannot practice community. Without kindness, you cannot reframe rejection. You have to be kind to yourself too. Without kindness, you can't give back. And for me, it's the secret ingredient that allows for everything else to happen.
ALISON BEARD: Well, you've offered us lots of lessons, and that final one is a good one to end on. Neri, thanks so much for being with me today.
NERI KARRA SILLAMAN: It was my pleasure. Thanks for inviting me.
ALISON BEARD: That's Neri Karra Sillaman, an entrepreneurship expert at Oxford University, entrepreneur and author of Pioneers, Eight Principles of Business Longevity from Immigrant Entrepreneurs.
And we have more than a thousand IdeaCast episodes, plus many more HBR podcasts to help you manage your team, your organization, and your career. Find them at HBR.org slash podcasts or search HBR on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Thanks to our team, senior producer Mary Dooe, associate producer Hannah Bates, audio product manager Ian Fox and senior production specialist Rob Eckhardt. And thanks to you for listening to the HBR IdeaCast . We'll be back with a new episode on Tuesday. I'm Alison Beard.

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Five former Google interns shared tips on securing their internships and converting to full-time employees. They emphasized preparing early and aiming for underclassman-targeted internships. Some also suggested being communicative on the job and networking with other Google employees. With internship application season in full swing, you might be wondering how to make the most of your summer gig — and how to turn it into a full-time offer. Landing an internship at a Big Tech company is highly competitive, but having one on your résumé can help you get in early. Google offers general online guidance for navigating the hiring process, including practicing coding on platforms like CodeLab, Quora, and Stack Overflow. The company also suggests keeping your résumé to one page and considering skills relevant to the role. Business Insider spoke to five former Google interns who turned their summer gigs into full-time job offers at the tech giant. They shared their process of landing internships at Google and advice on landing a permanent offer. If you want direct insight from the perspectives of those who landed internships and turned them into full-time jobs, keep reading. Nancy Qi graduated in the winter and planned to return to Google full-time last June after spending three summers there as an intern, the first two with STEP and the last with Google's Software Engineering internship. Her primary advice: start early. Qi said she started taking data structure classes in high school at a community college and was practicing with leet code the summer before she started college, well before she had interviews lined up. When Qi started sending out applications in the fall of her freshman year, she said her résumé mainly had website initiatives and leadership experience for volunteering clubs from high school. She said she also had some part-time tutoring experience teaching math and English, "I think at that age, you're not expected to have so much CS experience or coding experience," Qi said. "So I think if you have some leadership experience or experience that shows your character, I think that's important at that time." During her internship, Qi said she thinks her strong suit was building relationships with her teammates by getting lunch with them every day. She said doing helped to create "team chemistry," and she also said it helped her feel excited for work and "motivated to pump out code." Islina (Yunhong) Shan interned at Google three times, beginning in the summer of 2022. She graduated from an accelerated computer science Master's program at Duke University and started a full-time role as a software engineer at the tech giant this spring. Shan first participated in STEP and later in the Software Engineering Internship, which is a more competitive program geared toward technical development. When she applied for her first internship, Shan said she had some hackathon experiences and some technical projects from school. After she sent her résumé, she was invited to two rounds of final interviews, both of which were technical and back-to-back, she said. Her advice to interns hoping to secure full time jobs: choose a team during the match process that you're actually interested in. "Interest is really important in driving you to finish the project," Shan said. She also said it's important to choose a team with a manager you can see yourself working with because you'll have to communicate with them regularly. When she first started her internship, she said she set unrealistic goals. Once she adjusted expectations, she started seeing more progress. Shan suggested seeking help if needed, adding that Google engineers tend to be friendly. Lydia Lam graduated from college in 2024 and participated in three Google internships, beginning with a STEP internship in 2021. In her internship résumé, Lam included a seven-week Google program for high-school graduates called the Computer Science Summer Institute. She also had experience with a summer program for girls who code and a tech consulting student organization that she joined during her first semester of college. Lam also recommended applying early in the recruiting cycle and said programs geared toward first and second-year students tend to be more aligned with that experience level. Lam said "strong engineering practices" are highly valued at the company and mentioned feeling imposter syndrome and wanting to impress her internship host. However, she said asking questions sooner rather than later can help projects get done more quickly. "It's much more efficient to ask someone else who knows a lot more than you try to figure it out longer," Lam said. She also suggested "producing a lot of artifacts," whether designs or other "tangible pieces of work," that can help show your skill set and contributions. Tawfiq Mohammad interned for two summers at Google before becoming a full-time software engineer at the tech giant. He said the summer after his first year in college, he didn't have any internships, so he took summer classes and did his own projects at home, like a gadget that read the license plate on his car and opened the garage without him having to press a button. Mohammad's biggest advice for incoming interns is to be prepared for imposter syndrome. Mohammad said the "biggest block" for him at first was being scared to do anything, and he suggested tuning out those negative feelings as much as possible. "You're going to feel very out of place initially," Mohammad told BI. "I honestly felt like I had no idea what I was doing." He said interns should set a goal to "learn as much as possible" from the more experienced employees and try to believe that they, too, felt like they didn't fully "know what they were doing" at one point. "They're really smart so you want to absorb as much information as you can from them," Mohammad said. He also suggested thinking "outside the box." "You're going to be given a project that summer and try to own that project. Try to own it from A to Z," Mohammad said. He also recommended networking with other interns and team members, adding that Google provides a number of opportunities to do so. "It's good to build up a good network of successful people and it's just good to network with people that are farther along the career path than you," Mohammad said. Zachary Weiss interned at Google for three summers before landing a full-time job as a software engineer in the Cloud department. He said he wasn't thinking about summer internships when he started as a freshman at the University of Michigan, but an older computer science major encouraged him to apply to Google's STEP program. Weiss said he was "ecstatic" to get the offer from Google a few months later. He went on to intern in multiple teams before returning full-time as a software engineer on the Cloud team. The Googler had two main takeaways from his internships, one of which was the importance of showing a "concerted effort" to management. Google interns are given a summer project, and Weiss said that being proactive and anticipating problems in advance is key to the job. He said a former internship manager complimented him for identifying an issue with a "one in a thousand" chance of occurring. He said interns should think about all the "weird edge cases" and speak up instead of waiting for a manager to say something. "You're given work that would have been going to a full-time employee," Weiss said, adding that employees value your opinion and voice. Weiss said communication was another key skill that he didn't anticipate would be so pivotal. He said that in school, students tend to focus on learning the principles, algorithms, and data structures involved in programming. In a workplace, though, verbal skills matter, too, Weiss said. "My day-to-day, I speak a lot more English. I read a lot more English. I read and write and talk and communicate a lot more than I am actually coding," Weiss said. "And I think communication is something that's really important." He said that at the University of Michigan, there were three courses about technical communications, like writing design memos, emails, and presentations. He said many students didn't take the class seriously, and it ended up teaching a crucial skill. 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4 hours ago

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The millennial Midlife Crisis is in crisis

José has a stable life and career. He wishes he could blow it all up. The 42-year-old has worked in cybersecurity for two decades and earns a six-figure salary. He lives with his girlfriend outside Dallas and earns enough to cover their basic expenses and put some money away for retirement. But he's no longer energized by his work. When he thinks about how he'd like to spend the second half of his life, assuming he lives into his 80s, " sitting in front of a laptop definitely isn't it," says José, who requested that his last name not be used so he could speak frankly about his job. He thinks about getting a degree in exercise science, since he's more passionate about combat sports than he's ever been about computers. He's even thought about moving for a while to Southeast Asia, where he spent time when he was younger. In short, José is having a midlife crisis. Or, rather, he wishes he could have a midlife crisis. As desperately as he wants to make a dramatic change in his life, it feels like an especially bad moment to give up a well-paying job. "I wouldn't take that risk now," José says. He's left wondering: If not now, when? In the clichéd fantasy of the midlife crisis — the one a lot of millennials and Gen Xers grew up with — you buy a red sports car and shed as many trappings of middle age as you can. Research suggests that at least 10% to 20% of the population experiences some form of midlife angst, which typically hits in a person's 40s or 50s. But a crisis can also be clarifying: an impetus to restart your life while there's still time, only now with the financial freedom and hard-won wisdom that was lacking in your early 20s. As two researchers argued in an influential 2008 paper published in the Harvard Business Review, confronting one's mortality can spark a transition from "deficiency motivations" — making up for a lack of something — to "growth motivations," when people can embrace the "freedom that only self-knowledge can impart." People are "looking for a revitalization," but have a hard time envisioning what would work — or daring to dream." It's a nice idea — if only the generation already in the throes of middle age felt like they could afford it. In today's erratic economy, blowing up your life to chart a more fulfilling and productive path can feel positively reckless. Many industries — from tech to manufacturing — are contracting, and companies are hiring at their slowest rates in a decade. Knowledge workers and creative professionals are being pushed aside by AI and other new technologies. A Glassdoor poll conducted in October found that two-thirds of professionals reported feeling stuck in their current roles, including more than 7 in 10 respondents who worked in tech. People are choosing to stay put in jobs they may want to leave. Going back to school is about 40% more expensive than it was 20 years ago. The increasing cost of living has made it more challenging to weather a pay cut that may come with shifting to a new career. In one April 2024 survey of millennials, eight in 10 respondents said a midlife crisis was a luxury they could not afford. Between the 10 midlifers I talked to for this story, there was no shortage of ideas for what they'd do if they were to blow up their lives. But they all agreed that this felt like the wrong time to put personal fulfillment ahead of being practical. The real crisis might be an economy that has so many people feeling trapped. Francesca Maximé, a therapist and life coach, has a front-row seat to this dilemma, though she prefers the term "midlife pivot" to midlife crisis. That's how she describes the shift she made in her own life a decade ago. After nearly 20 years as a TV reporter, Maximé, who's now 54, became disenchanted with how the media had covered the 2016 election. Some personal issues led her to therapy, which in turn inspired her to launch a new career that would allow her to offer that kind of help for others. "Now I work for myself," she says. "I have two businesses. They're thriving." She says many of her clients who come with midlife anxiety are hoping to make a similar pivot. But whereas she could see a bright future for herself when she hit her mid-40s, her clients who are reaching that milestone now say there are just too many unknowns in the job market and the economy. "They're looking for a revitalization in their lives," Maximé says. "But they have a hard time envisioning what would work — or daring to dream." Middle age may be a time when people feel they really know themselves. But it's also the time when a big shift can feel especially risky since they're most likely to have people counting on them, whether children, partners, aging parents, or colleagues. "There's nothing wrong with reassessing things, taking stock of where you've been and where you want to go, and making changes," says Margie Lachman, a psychologist who directs Brandeis University's Lifespan Development Lab. After all, you may become dissatisfied in your 40s simply because you're more clear-eyed about what you actually want out of life. "It's not too late to make changes, and you don't necessarily have to have everything figured out," she says. But older millennials, in particular, tend to feel like they've been casualties of periods of uncertainty that have coincided with key points in their lives. The dot-com bust and the Great Recession hit at the onset of their adulthoods and working lives; the COVID pandemic arrived as they were starting to reach their 40s; and now they're dealing with inflation and new technology like AI just at the moment when they were supposed to be nearing the heights of their professional lives and earning power. "Everyone experiences these same events, but depending on where you are in the life course, they can have differential effects," Lachman says. The sense that now is an especially inopportune moment for midlifers to take a leap of faith is echoed by Gen Xers. We should just be buying sports cars and accruing boy toys. But I guess we're doing something else. Jane, a marketing professional in Canada, has already had one midlife crisis. She got so much out of it that she'd like to have another. A decade ago, when she was in her mid-40s, Jane walked away from a career in PR and marketing and spent a few years working on a doctorate in history and traveling with her partner. It was, they thought, their "last chance to have the big adventure." (Jane also asked that her last name not be used for fear of professional consequences.) But when the COVID pandemic hit in 2020, and the academic path turned out not to be economically viable, Jane returned to the more stable world she'd hoped to leave behind. She took a job in content marketing for a tech company in Canada. "I've got, by any standards, a really awesome job with a really awesome company," says Jane, who's now 55. "I have no objective reason to feel dissatisfied with this. I should be grateful." And yet, the past few years have felt like being on "a treadmill that just keeps going faster and faster and faster, and you're just burning more energy to just stay in one place," she says. She's desperate to get off that treadmill. She still feels a strong pull to do community work or to train to become a mental health counselor. But she no longer feels confident that a job in her old field will be waiting for her if she finds she can't earn enough to keep up with the household expenses. She's already the oldest person in her company, and she expects AI will eventually take over the kind of writing she does anyway. She fears her 30 years of experience could rapidly become worthless. "I didn't realize that I would get slammed with being obsolete this early," she says. It can be hard to come to terms with wanting to shake things up — to the point of knowing how you'd do it — while realizing that doing so would be irresponsible. But the implications of being caught in a rut are bigger than a slice of the population feeling unable to follow their bliss. "People feeling stuck means that workers are less engaged with their work," says Daniel Zhao, Glassdoor's lead economist. "And employee engagement is important to productivity." Nearly everyone I interviewed for this story said they felt unsure that the path they were on was sustainable, since new technologies are devaluing skills they've spent decades mastering — let alone that it would offer them a lot of personal satisfaction in the long term. "You pass 40-something, and you start to become really aware how much time is left," gripes one millennial dad. "I feel like I am trading away fast-dwindling years doing insignificant things." Kara Haas, a 43-year-old living in Brooklyn, feels caught between a shrinking profession and more uncertainty than she can comfortably manage. Years ago, she dreamed of becoming a film director. When that didn't work out, she thought she'd found a still-great option working as a set designer for TV shows and movies. But smaller budgets and a steep decline in the number of projects getting greenlit have meant there's a lot less work than there used to be. Haas feels like this could be her last, best moment to switch to something different. She's thought about opening an Airbnb. But with less work, she has a smaller cushion to sustain her through a major transition. She worries about falling behind on her expenses or losing the health insurance she gets through her union. Haas sees only bad options, which is a far cry from how she imagined things turning out. She'd always assumed that her midlife crisis would at least be an opportunity to have some fun. "We should just be buying sports cars and accruing boy toys," she says. "But I guess we're doing something else." Whatever the state of the job market and the broader economy, millennials are certainly not immune to having a midlife crisis in the classic sense: feeling bogged down by adult responsibilities, like parenting, and regret over not getting to enjoy the fruits of their labor. For millennials especially, this can be exacerbated by other cultural shifts: parents, including dads, are spending far more time with their kids than previous generations; they take less vacation; and just keeping up with your contemporaries is more expensive than ever. By one estimate, the cost of raising a child has gone up 20% since 2016. "You pass 40-something, and you start to become really aware how much time is left," says Jason, a small-business owner in New York, who also asked to use only his first name in order to express his true feelings. As a married father of a 6- and a 10-year-old, Jason, who's 44, says having his life shaped by his kids' routines has both brought on his midlife crisis and kept him from doing much about it. "I've worked incredibly hard for decades and now have infinite opportunities to travel, participate in exciting things," he says. "And I'm having to say no over and over again so I can just sit at home and be there for bedtime. And that really kills me. I feel like I am trading away fast-dwindling years doing insignificant things." Maximé, the life coach, says the advice she gives clients who feel stuck at midlife is that blowing up their lives isn't the only way to make a change. She encourages them to think in terms of baby steps. "Start by imagining the perfect way of life you'd want to live," she says. "Then, figure out the practical steps you can take to get closer to that ideal." For a lot of the people I talked to, the most immediate way to ward off feelings of existential angst has been through forging deeper ties with those around them. Jane, the marketing professional in Canada, recently joined a dragon boat racing team and started volunteering at a local dance festival. She's embracing the idea of small-scale adventures — at least until a better option presents itself.