About a month before I was to graduate college, it dawned on me that I needed to get a real job.
Like, soon.
Even though I had 22 years to process this fact, it still blindsided me for some reason. Perhaps a lifetime in an educational system built for the Industrial Age did little to prepare me for the reality of modern work, or maybe I was just too immature to come to terms with it. (Or more likely, a bit of both.)
I remember sitting at a bar with my roommate when he casually asked me where I was going to live after graduation. I had no answer for him. I just sat there staring into my $1 beer (college towns are the best), wondering how the “fun part” of life had flown by so fast.
That very moment I walked outside and did what any semi-intelligent, moderately privileged, and somewhat lazy 22-year old would do in my situation: I called an uncle and asked for a job.
Three weeks later I showed up to my marketing internship in freshly ironed khakis and a newly purchased Brooks Brothers dress shirt. I was given a tour, a laptop, and a cubicle.
I looked at my watch: 9:43 am.
“Oh God,” I thought. “I have to do this for 40 hours a week for the next 40 years, just so I can have enough money to pay for my crappy apartment.”
On the bright side, there was free coffee and I only had to work 4.8 million more minutes until retirement.
Trading your time for money is a bad plan
There are two reasons this view of work is problematic:
Inherent to the transactional nature of this arrangement is the idea that you’d rather be doing something else with your time.
You aren’t getting anything in exchange for your work beyond a paycheck.
For most of my life I viewed work as something you just had to do. I don’t think any adults explicitly told me this, but their actions spoke volumes.
My parents (who, to be clear, gave me just about the best childhood imaginable) worked extremely hard and never complained, but they never said much about enjoying their work either.
My father had a lengthy commute for most of his career (just so my sister and I could live in a nice house and go to a good school), so he left for work before the sun came up most days-and he didn’t exactly do cartwheels out the door. I believe my mother genuinely loved being a teacher, but she would still count down the days until summer break. The message being, the days we look forward to the most are the ones where we don’t work.
For most of our childhood we are all told how good we have it and how fortunate we are to not have to worry about things like work. How could this not warp our view of what work is? Forgive us if it sounds like a punishment or something to be avoided.
This is why I correct my kids when they say “Do you have to go work today?” I always tell them that I “get to” and that my work is fun. (Hopefully this parenting move pays off and they grow up to be well-adjusted, happy adults. At a minimum I hope it cancels out all the non-organic food I am poisoning them with.)
Even if there isn’t anything you'd rather be doing with your time than going to work, selling that time for nothing more than money is shortsighted too.
Money is great and your compensation is a hugely important part of your career. But if the work you are doing is not helping you learn new skills, grow in your career, and ultimately become more marketable, you have no safety net should your partnership with your employer end.
And it will end, it always does.
The new reality
For a long time the deal was pretty straightforward and mutually beneficial:
In exchange for your time you could keep getting paid up until you retired (and beyond in most places). But we all know that old compact is gone. Employees jump from job to job. Companies eliminate positions and use outsourced or contract labor. Loyalty, on both sides, is a thing of the past.
A lot of the “career advice” out there seems to suggest that in response to this new model of work, we should all just become free agents.
“Launch your startup in your garage!”
“Build your platform!”
“Start consulting!”
That messaging is fine if you really want to do it, but branching out on your own is not for everyone.
An alternative path is to adopt an entrepreneurial mindset within the company you work for.
In its most basic form, to be an entrepreneur is to design, launch and run a business. To adopt this mindset at work then, is to run your career as if running a business. To be comfortable with ambiguity and risks. To never overemphasize revenue (salary) in the short term at the expense of growth.
You still have a boss, but you aren’t just focused on taking home a paycheck and keeping them happy. Rather, you are constantly making sure the work you are doing provides exceptional value to the company while also benefiting you (and your resume).
You aren’t beholden to things like merit increase freezes and career ladders and your career isn’t “over” if someone else gets the promotion you’ve been eyeing. You’ve been pumping value into the business that is your career and thus are well-protected.
Of course, just because viewing work this way makes sense for everyone involved, doesn’t mean your employer will agree. In fact, many won’t. But that’s their problem.
Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and author of The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age, has a great quote about this very thing:
An employee who is networking energetically, keeping her LinkedIn profile up to date, and thinking about other opportunities is not a liability. In fact, such entrepreneurial, outward-oriented, forward-looking people are probably just what your company needs more of.
In other words, if you are working somewhere that doesn’t appreciate your entrepreneurial spirit, you need to leave anyway.
If you’ve been doing truly outstanding and meaningful work, finding somewhere else to go shouldn’t be that hard.