Evolving Our Narrative Around Work and Career
On The Future of Work, "Anti-Ambition" and an evolving world of work
Welcome to The Sunday Edition of Work in Progress. If you’re new here, please say hello, drop me a note or leave a comment.
This week, the NY Times Magazine Profiled it's Future of Work Issue, diving into articles written about various topics in the future of work platter ranging from exploring the Anti-Work movement to how Nurses are leaving the profession and finding new pathways due to supply/demand and a harrowing two years of working on the front lines. It’s worth a read if you have the time, if anything, to better understand how an event like COVID-19, which has impacted all of us, has impacted us all in different ways. But one article in particular stuck out, and has caused a lot of buzz. I originally wanted to write about another topic, but I found the urge to chime in to try to offer my own .02 into the discussion.
Where Did The Ambition Go?
The headline article, written by Noreen Malone was titled The Age of Anti-Ambition. Throughout the article, Noreen takes a stab at stitching together numbers and narrative around why 25M people have quit over the past year. At the highest of levels there are some points that make sense - the data and the sheer volume of quits is an anomaly and cause for concern. The core premise of her article seems comes down to what she calls, Anti Ambition:
Not long ago, a young editor I follow on Instagram posted a response to a question someone posed to her: What’s your dream job? Her reply, a snappy internet-screwball comeback, was that she did not “dream of labor.” I suspect that she is ambitious. I know that she is excellent at understanding the zeitgeist.
It is in the air, this anti-ambition. These days, it’s easy to go viral by appealing to a generally presumed lethargy, especially if you can come up with the kind of languorous, wry aphorisms that have become this generation’s answer to the printer-smashing scene in “Office Space.” (The film was released in 1999, in the middle of another hot labor market, when the unemployment rate was the lowest it had been in 30 years.) “Sex is great, but have you ever quit a job that was ruining your mental health?” went one tweet, which has more than 300,000 likes. Or: “I hope this email doesn’t find you. I hope you’ve escaped, that you’re free.” (168,000 likes.) If the tight labor market is giving low-wage workers a taste of upward mobility, a lot of office workers (or “office,” these days) seem to be thinking about our jobs more like the way many working-class people have forever. As just a job, a paycheck to take care of the bills! Not the sum total of us, not an identity.
As someone who thinks, talks, and researches about work and careers for a living, I find that most topics with “anti” frame when it comes to career always falls short of nuanced and meaningful understanding of core issues at play, as well as the insights that we should take from them that inform future decisions. Work and careers are not a monolith, and neither is the workforce. Furthermore, this specific frame, that “it’s cool to be anti-ambition,” has concerning implications especially when it hits major outlets and publications in mainstream media.
Ed Zittron, a writer and CEO of his own PR Firm takes a more passionate stance on this in his article, “Why Should Workers Be Ambitious?”:
The primary thing that I want to address is the extremely broken assumption that Malone makes throughout her article - that we should, by default, respect the nebulous idea of “ambition.” I also find it detestable that someone would conflate someone being excited about not working at a job that ruins their mental health with someone lacking ambition. This entire piece drips with privilege and condescension - the general feeling that any worker that isn’t extremely excited to go to work and planning for their next big move is a lethargic dolt.
He goes on to add:
The biggest philosophical hurdle that none of these articles seem to clear is that work is not a moral good, it is a transaction of labor for money…. America’s moral view of work stems from the protestant work ethic - that our worldly calling is to do hard work - and that those that do not aspire to work hard are bad. This vile, pervasive philosophy underpins many of the dimmest minds writing about labor today, coloring every judgment and statement they make about the workforce.
Ed’s a pretty passionate writer on the topic of work, and when it comes to this topic, mostly due to the fact that he is very pro-employee, and finds it concerning when writers with big audiences like the NY Times put out content like this which puts all of the responsibility on the worker and none of it on the employee. By pushing a narrative that “nobody wants to work” somehow employees are at fault, not the bad bosses, terrible policies and problems in the workplace. I empathize and agree this view - the system is always stronger than the individual, employees have been pummeled over the last two years, and government & society has helped (some groups) but not all, and not to the degree that we’ve needed. No matter what the individual does, if the organization, culture or system doesn’t change, it's hard to make meaningful progress and change.
But I want to dig on a different topic, in that Malone, other writers seem to miss, which is to actually suss out the nuance and elements of the issues about why people are quitting because they’re own experiences and beliefs are blinding them from seeing the heart of the matter.
Narrative Violations
In my last newsletter edition, I wrote about an experience I had when I was a teenager about when I learned that my Mom didn’t necessarily believe that you had to do a job that you loved, and that you could just to do a job that gave you other things that you loved instead (means to an end, versus the end itself) During that conversation, i remember getting very upset, because I had just strongly come to a belief that I felt was core to my being and way of living that when I heard something outside of that, I couldn’t comprehend.
What I experienced then, was a narrative violation - when we get told, or come across something that’s new or different and that goes counter to a core belief of our life, we often react negatively to it. We may fight it, look at it with disdain, and depending on our circumstances and knowledge, may adopt our views over time. In my example, I initially got angry and upset, because hearing that not all people wanted to do a job they loved seemed to potentially invalidate my viewpoint that was what we needed to do.
I began to push back against my Mom, and I began talking to other people who I knew and respected to see if they agreed with my own view or believed something along the lines of what my Mom had said. Over time, I began to have a much more nuanced point of view on this topic, but the initial narrative violation of hearing someone who I very much respected believe an entirely different world view sent a shock to my system.
I suspect that the narrative violation, specifically around our beliefs and attitudes around work is something that we’re all facing, especially pundits (like the writer) executives, managers and anyone who has a vested interest in the future of work and the workplace (software companies, real estate companies, basically anyone who is writing about the future of work.) To be sure, work is a central part of our lives, and for the majority of us, is necessary for survival (read: healthcare, benefits, putting food on the table.)
As she points out, there are many specific data points out there as to why people are leaving workplaces. Many of these are not new, but perhaps became exacerbated during the pandemic. Poor management is an age-old topic, as are long commutes, benefits and pay, and workers have been longing for flexibility even before the pandemic. But what this article, and the many other articles that try to dissect things like anti-ambition, why people don’t want to work, why people don’t want to return to the office, is that they fail to acknowledge that the nature and realities of how we work and what we think about careers within the context of our lives have had to evolve and change because our world has changed.
But for many of us (especially the pundits and leaders) our dispositions and attitudes towards how we view work, jobs and careers are still ingrained in a world that is different from what we experience today. If anything, it’s from decades and centuries ago.
So much of how we talk about themes and issues in the workplace today in the United States stems from decades (maybe even centuries?) ago. The Protestant work ethic, and post-World War 2 Industrial Era were critical moments of our history, that serve an importance, but with respect to the workplace and views on careers, perhaps not in the same way. Figuring out how to manage child care in a dual-income household while saving for 6 figure higher education tuition wasn’t an issue decades ago. Cobbling together multiple hourly wage jobs on gig platforms to try to make ends meet, or having to stress to try to live a middle class life because higher education and healthcare are exorbitant costs were not as prevalent when the path to middle class was much more achievable.
And the desire to have a separation around digital communications between you and your boss/team/customers in the 1970’s didn’t matter because there literally wasn’t a way that it could actually happen.
But when the authors of these articles, managers trying to hire, or executives who are trying to figure out why people don’t want to commute to an office, “be ambitious,” or hint that the only way to succeed in your career is to be “in the office” fail to realize that some people are waking up to the changing world, and recalculating accordingly.
They’ve recognized the world (and as such, work) has changed, and they want to use the tools and resources at their disposal to figure out a path forward in this world. And while for some this may mean working less (which I guess is being Anti-Ambition?) For many, it's figuring out how to make work work in a new way. As Albert Einstein once said, ‘you can’t use an old map to explore a new world.”
As someone who left the corporate path for solopreneurship but who still works with many corporate companies, I spend my time collaborating and engaging with two different worlds. One is a community of solopreneurs and freelancers, mostly of people who used to work corporate jobs who became solopreneurs to work on their terms and to have more agency of their work, and one is full of people currently working in the traditional corporate sector.
The Anti-Ambition article has been a hot topic in both camps. What’s been interesting to me has been the varied reactions to the article. In the freelance and solopreneur conversations, there’s been a lot of discussion about how the author frames the article in a reductionist way, and how it misses a major point in that some people have realized that they have choice, agency and tools today to find work that allows them to live what they think is a meaningful life. On the surface, it may seem like they’re not as ambitious, but when you actually dig deeper, they’ve chosen to recalculate the way they work, what they get from work, and how it fits into their overall life.
This often leads to exploring what Paul Millerd calls the Pathless Path, or going down a path that is not the “Default Path” we’re trained to accept, and into things like being a digital nomad or freelancer, or starting the journey to building a solo business like Khe Hy or Nick deWilde. This can also mean simply taking time (temporarily) to be a bit under fully employed to reset and recalibrate priorities around life and work. Having met and connected with many of these individuals, calling them anti-ambitious misses the mark.
They’ve been intentional and purposeful about defining for themselves what a meaningful life is, and found different ways to make it work. For the individuals I’ve met who’ve chosen this path, I can absolutely say that they want to do well, produce good work, and work hard, but each has found a unique way of doing it which for many, falls outside of the construct of how we traditionally see work (hence the narrative violation)
On the other side, in the corporate camp, some view the article as a breath of fresh air and for permission to feel the feelings they’ve felt and to think outside of wanting to solely rely on ambition to grow in their career. I’ve talked with a handful of people who have purposefully tried to carve out more time for other pursuits outside of work as a way of rediscovering themselves who rejected the notion that this was being “anti-ambition.” And finally, others point out to the fact that perhaps the whole point of a reductionist title was done on purpose to spur a discussion and conversation.1
8 months ago when I told people that I was leaving my corporate job, almost everyone was very supportive, however, as I explained to them why I was leaving and what I was doing, I could almost see their brains trying to process my thoughts in real time and struggling mightily to comprehend as if it didn't add up. Paul Millerd, Author of the Pathless Path once wrote or tweeted something about when he left his corporate job to travel the world and explore many people, including his friends and family who didn't know how to talk to him. I felt something similar, and not because people weren’t supportive (they were) but they couldn’t see it because their own narrative of work, ambition and career was violated and you could hear it in the questions they would ask me such as:
“So, how's that thing going?”
“How’s your experiment?”
“What’s new in “your world?”
This is not a criticism of well-intentioned friends and colleagues, but rather to illustrate that we as an American society don’t quite yet have the narrative nor the language for defining work, workplace and careers in modern day terms, and why we keep getting thinkpieces and exploring why people don’t want to work or “why Insert Generation here” doesn’t want to work, etc.
Where We Go From Here To Evolve The Conversation Around Work
A few weeks ago, I finally gave my newsletter a title, calling it Work in Progress. This is symbolic for two reasons:
I believe strongly in growth and learning, and I want to write about topics that demonstrate this within the context of work and careers
I think that there’s a lot of change going on under the surface in the world of work, and I wanted to help people make sense of it to build better workplaces and careers
I believe that for many of us, work is going to be a big part of our lives, and if that’s true, I want to find more ways to make it better for everyone. If we want to do that, we need to start shifting the narrative about how we frame our thinking about work, and giving language to help people (employees, executives, managers, and even the pundits…) understand the world of work within the context of life. Here are a few places that we can start:
Embracing Work and Career Fluidity vs Rigidity
We love to say that change is the only constant, but our views, infrastructure and attitudes about work and careers are still very rigid. We’re still not very accepting when it comes to hiring career switchers, people early in careers from non-traditional backgrounds, and people who take pauses in their career and want to return, and age discrimination toward experienced workers is often rampant but underreported.
And we don’t provide a ton of formal support to individuals who are at inflection points in life and career. We need more resources and tools to allow for the fluidity of changing jobs, careers, types of work, etc. Organizations like The Mom Project the Salesforce Talent Alliance, IRelaunch Aspireship, and the First Round Recruiter Track are examples of this, but more are needed.
Focusing on the How of work versus the Where
So much of the discourse right now on work is about where (in the office or remote) but less of a focus is put on how work gets done and what we constitute as work. The “how” reflects moving beyond seeing this as just contract, or full-time employees, and thinking about for a specific job or role, what’s needed, and the best option for how that work can be delivered. In some cases, that’s a full-time employee, but in others, it may be someone else in the company, or an outside contractor.
There’s been a ton of opportunity in this space, but we still lack the infrastructure to support this at a meaningful scale, and for us in America, healthcare, and in general, economic stability is still tied to full-time employment, and see and viewed that way. For knowledge workers, companies like Gloat help source other internal talent to pick up specific jobs. Other companies like Braintrust are taking this on through new ways of how talent comes together and how the work (contract, flexible, on-demand) gets delivered. And Arlan Hamilton’s Runner, is connecting fractional operations talent to startups in a similar flexible, on demand fashion.
Reframing our definition of What Work is and what counts as work
Research shows we get more engagement out of work when we use strengths in our job. We tell people all the time that they have different strengths and skills, but yet so much of this is restricted to the specific job, at your specific company. This makes sense, as this is how we’ve traditionally thought of the 1:1 relationship between employee and employer with respect to jobs. There is an opportunity to reframe this discussion about how you use skills to do interesting work in your life. For many, that will be a full-time job.
For some, this might be true, and it may mean they use them in other capacities that are paid, or non-paid, in your day job, and not. Alexis Ohanian tweeted the other day that the 2nd biggest trend behind Anti-work is Overwork, as in the individuals out there who are working two jobs. While I don’t think that this is necessary for all of us, reframing the dialogue around “how can I find ways to do more work that uses my strengths” might be a way both individuals and employers can find more ways to put talents to work.
This means that we need to evolve how we think about what “counts as work” and our ideas around an employee only working in one job, one manager for one company. There are some exceptions to this (ex: professional services workers like consultants and accountants have more than 1 client, companies like Google have “20%” projects) but this is also a good model for where we could head. The good news is that this model already exists - many corporate executives regularly sit on boards (profit and non-profit) do public speaking, etc. Startup founders regularly invest in other companies. It’s just allowing it for the rest of us. Some of this is also just acknowledging what’s already happening - for example, almost half the workforce2 reports having a “side-hustle” - TLDR: this is already happening, so ho
Investing in Community (Digital and In-Person)
In their book Out of Office, Ann Helen Peterson and Charlie Warzel chronicle the world of work over the past few years, what’s gone wrong, and offer some solutions for how remote work can help us navigate through the future. One of their main points they see for how work can improve is through community, something that has become a less central focal point of our lives over the past few decades.
With work becoming so central to many of our lives, it often is a huge component of our community. But if your work environment is toxic, difficult, or you just need a break from it, finding other elements of community is critical to well-being.
Finding more opportunities to help people engage in communities, whether those are local and in-person or online, as they navigate their work and careers is a critical component of this. As a solopreneur, I experience lots of alone time, and having other freelancers and solopreneurs to connect with has been so helpful from a personal development perspective, as well as an engagement and well-being perspective. This is one area where I am more optimistic about. While unions and industry association membership continues to decline, other online communities, formal and informal, seem to be gaining traction, especially in niche and focused areas.
The Rideshare Guy single handedly brought Uber and Lyft Drivers together, but other new age online communities focused around functions (ex: Product School for Product Managers) or specific populations (Chief, Kindred) are also antidotes to helping people navigate through the work world.
Work is not a monolith, and neither are workers. If we want to actually make progress toward defining a better world of work, it starts with evolving our own views, language, tools and support for making that happen. That sounds to me like an ambitious, but worthwhile endeavor.
How have your views on work and careers changed and evolved? I’d love to hear what you think.
Have a great week!
One important note: there’s meaningful dialogue around whether or not the author intended for the article to be titled and framed this way. A number of writers and journalists have pointed out that they do not always have final say over the title. Nevertheless, the point still stands
This number seems high, but even if it’s off, having a side-hustle seems much more mainstream than 5 years ago, and I don’t see it going away anytime soon.
Super relevant and thoughtful post. I resonated with the part about reframing and define what counts as work. What is work in the context of time? After the last two years time is more precious.