Have you noticed features taking longer to launch at your company? Or routine tasks needing constant follow-ups? Or fewer people signing up for things that are not their core responsibility?

If you chalked this up to a problem with your team, your company, or even your line of business, it’s not. It’s a symptom of where employees’ careers are headed in 2025, as Indian companies—especially new-age tech and IT companies—contend with the insidious rise of the ambitionless.

Ambition is the force that propels careers and companies forward. “It’s that last shot of adrenaline that helps them blow past constraints,” said a senior executive at a public consumer-tech company. But professionals are now seeing a drain in that energy.

“I don’t care anymore. I have to pull off miracles to be able to grow in my career. And I’m not willing to do what it takes,” said a 38-year-old product manager in a multinational ride-hailing company.

Jaded by hustling, anxious about AI, shaken by frequent and random layoffs—all for meagre hikes—means employees are increasingly subscribing to a “what-is-the-point” school of thought.

The Ken took a surveySurvey methodologyThe Ken sent the survey through its email, and social media channels X, Linkedin, and Whatsapp groups to target both The Ken’s subscribers and other white-collar employees. The survey captures views of people from the entry level to those with over 20 years of experience, working across top 5 Indian cities. They work across sectors like IT, new age tech, consultancy, financial services, among others, and in companies with less than 100 employees to those with more than 5,000 employees. to glean how ambitious India’s workforce is in 2025. The employees who responded work across sectors in companies such as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), LTIMindtree, ITC, Accenture, Google, Flipkart, Walmart, Amazon, and Meesho, among others, which together employ over a million people.

Of these, The Ken’s poll captures the ambition of about 600, of whom 27% said they were more ambitious three years ago, 26% said they are more ambitious now, while 35% said their definition of ambition has changed. By “changed”, they meant they were no longer driven by traditional trappings of career growth such as salary hikes, designations, or promotions.

This is hardly in response to any one trigger, like capital constraints, profitability pressures, or TCS’s widespread layoffsMintTCS freezes salary hikes after 12,000 layoffs.