This study examines the effect of the pursuit of self-esteem on an employee's ability to thrive in the workplace. At the heart of this study is a perceived disconnect between the apparent costs of pursuing self-esteem as described by Crocker and Park and the ability to thrive in the workplace as described by Spreitzer, Sutcliffe, Dutton, Sonenshein, and Grant. The findings of this study suggest that criticism, difficult feedback, and other forms of negative recognition elicit a pursuit response—a mechanism whereby an individual attempts to mitigate the negative recognition and replace it with positive recognition, thereby increasing one's self-esteem. This pursuit of self-esteem can, in turn, have an effect on one's ability to thrive in the workplace. However, the nature of the effect depends in part on how the individual goes about pursuing self-esteem and the conditions for thriving present in the workplace. Pursuit mechanisms that support thriving conditions can help one thrive at work while mechanisms that work against thriving conditions can be a barrier to thriving. Finally, the data suggested that factors such as performance, retention, and productivity may drop when employees use pursuit mechanisms that work against thriving conditions.