What If People Don’t Want ‘A Career?’
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Growing skepticism around careers
Many people are fed up with their jobs and are quitting in droves
- People are quitting jobs across class and industry lines
- Labor protections are still weak and haven’t caught up to the parameters of modern work, the covid job reshuffling feels a bit like the beginnings of a changing power dynamic
- Employees have a tiny bit of leverage right now and many are trying to use it to send a message about how the status quo in modern work feels exhausting and unsustainable
- The “nobody wants to work anymore” meme began with a McDonald’s drive-thru sign that read “We are short-staffed”
- It spread beyond McDonald’s to include posts about low wages and exploitation in the service industry
- YouTuber Katherout: “I no longer aspire to have a career”
- Aspire is the key word here. She rejects how central it is to our sense of self and worth
- Sometimes work can be a dangerous balance
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Culture fit
In a previous post I wrote this about culture fit: “The culture fit argument might sound intuitive at first. It’s meant to suggest that ‘if you don’t believe in our mission, you probably shouldn’t work here.’ But that’s not what it’s actually saying. Culture fit is really a way that power reproduces and sustains itself in an organization and silences any dissent.”
The author frames her employee’s decision to put boundaries between his work and personal life as a fundamental weakness.
The modern understanding of a career involves a non-trivial amount of sacrifice. The point is to participate in society and reject the modern income structure that most people expect and crave in society
- A career is a device that businesses and managers can use as a motivation to get the deference and feigned enthusiasm that they want (and often feel they need) from employees
- Many in positions of power misinterpret those who strive for a better relationship to work as weak or selfish.
The pandemic has left people sick, tired, exhausted, and rattled. It has also changed peoples’ priorities and upended their notions of what is possible.
For the first time in a while, they’re starting to ask big questions about the status quo. People in charge ought to be listening.