More pretentious title: Towards an ontology of labor orientations
I eventually admitted that I didn’t have what it takes to be a good political cartoonist, that is, an interest in politics, and I returned to my first love, comic strips. For years I got nothing but rejection letters, and I was forced to accept a real job.
A REAL job is a job you hate. I designed car ads and grocery ads in the windowless basement of a convenience store, and I hated every single minute of the four and a half million minutes I worked there. My fellow prisoners at work were basically concerned about how to punch the time clock at the perfect second where they would earn another 20 cents without doing any work for it.
It was incredible: after every break, the entire staff would stand around in the garage where the time clock was, and wait for that last click. And after my used car needed the head gasket replaced twice, I waited in the garage too.
— Bill Watterson, Kenyon College Commencement (1990)
I’ve never been particularly intentional or ambitious when it comes to my career. [I’m not sure if I even believe in “careers”. Is it just the series of jobs you’ve had, or does there have to be some sort of overarching narrative? If so, my narrative would be: “My God, that kid loves to be on the computer”.] In college I was legitimately passionate about technology, and intended to pursue a PhD in robotics after graduation. But after spending three consecutive summers working in various robotics labs, I decided that the realities of university research—glacial, isolating, and mired in confusing (for me) interpersonal politics—were untenable. I gave up on grad school right before my senior year, and decided to go work in the software industry for a few years so I could pay off my student loans as quickly as possible. I applied to a bunch of companies, got a few offers, and ended up in Seattle working as a tech writer for Microsoft. My reasons (or rather, reason) for picking that particular job over the others I was offered were straightforwardly mercenary: they offered me the most money.
In light of my rapidly approaching de-employment, I’ve been thinking about what sorts of jobs I should apply for this time around. Money hasn’t been my sole motivator for several years now [ask me again if I’m still job hunting in 6 months], but that leaves a dizzying array of other possible motivations—for example, how much I’ll actually enjoy doing the job in question, and how much work I’ll put into searching for another job with a positive social impact. It’s got me wondering how everyone else is thinking about this stuff (or perhaps not thinking about it), and all the variables that factor into the professions & employers we choose (or at any rate aspire to).
Obviously our choices are immensely constrained, by our skills, temperament, education, social connections, citizenship status, etc. But for those lucky enough to have options, how do we choose what to prioritize and what to ignore, given the list of jobs that we could realistically attain? Because I think that a lot of us [myself included] have more options than we feel like we do on a daily basis, and given that we’re going to spend roughly a third of our waking hours at our jobs, we could stand to be a bit more clear-eyed about how we’re choosing our vocation.
So, without further ado: What factors do we consider (or ignore) when choosing a job or career?
[When I say “job” I am mostly talking about the things we do (at least partially) for money. Cleaning your apartment, baking a cake, taking care of your family, (writing a newsletter,) and volunteering are all forms of labor, but they aren’t usually what we mean when we talk about jobs.]
Money
How much money will you make? This is the first thing that many of us consider [but given that I’ve just limited the scope of the word “job” to mean “thing you do for money,” it’s admittedly tautological to declare now that this is a/the primary factor in selecting a vocation]. While it is technically possible, in some contexts, to survive without money, essentially every adult in a modern capitalist society will need some money if they are to afford a half-decent standard of living. Given this dreary reality, the main reason that almost everyone does their job—a job—in the first place is simple coercion. We’re born into a world where we need money to live, and most of us need a job to get money.
But beyond our immediate need for food, clothing, and housing, many people choose to work in sectors where they think they can make much more money than is strictly speaking necessary [and like, same]. I don’t think I need to explain why, but it largely comes down to a desire for freedom, security, and luxury. As such, it’s often assumed that you’d take whatever job you can such that you can get the largest possible paycheck. The whole point of this essay is to examine the other factors that complicate that assumption.
Power and influence
Will this job give you power or influence over other people? Irrespective of what you might use that power for—monetary gain, social impact, prestige—power is, for some people, its own reward.
In the US, money and power often go hand-in-glove. Our gradual slide into kleptocratic pseudo-oligarchy has created a system in which money gives you power, and power gives you money. [Of course, it doesn’t have to be this way, and there are plenty of examples throughout history of societies in which it wasn’t.] Still, I think that these are better understood as separate motivations, as I don’t think that most of the people pursuing careers in finance or tech feel themselves to be pursuing power, nor do I think most people entering politics see themselves as pursuing money, even if in both cases they may get the other thing as a byproduct.
But I might just be projecting, as I’ve never personally pursued power over others, nor felt myself to be wielding it (at least not intentionally).
Social impact
How much good can you do for others while working in this profession—or conversely, how much harm? [Specifically, I’m talking about the good or bad effects of your work as judged by yourself. See the section below on “social prestige” for “as judged by others”.] People like to help people. We’re just baked that way, evolutionarily speaking, which is the why societies were perfectly functional for thousands of years before the advent of governments or markets. It’s hard to know how much an active desire for positive social impact factored into the daily decision making of prehistoric hunter/gatherers (or later subsistence farmers), but unless you were some sort of raider or warlord, it seems almost guaranteed that the social impact of your labor would be positive for other members of your community. The more you hunt/gather, the less likely that we all starve.
It’s a shame that, in the modern world, the social impact of our labor is often completely ambiguous (except perhaps it’s impact on our coworkers, who depend on us to be a “good teammate”). Like, what’s the social effect of building dashboards that give executives deeper insight into critical business functions?
Incredibly positive impact, actually. Bad example.
Even worse, the American economy tends to devalue jobs that have an unambiguously positive social value—or put another way, the more your job helps others, the less you get paid.
Given how the need (and desire) for money governs so much of our lives, the social effect of our work often ranks far down our list of priorities—which isn’t to say that people are “worse” now than they used to be, just that we’re subject to new pressures. Depending on your financial needs and goals (e.g. raising children, buying a house, sending remittances to relatives, etc.) you may feel that pursuing a job that is socially useful is a luxury you can’t afford. This is why so many rich people get into philanthropy, because they can finally “afford” the “luxury” of helping people.
Difficulty
How hard will this job be (subjectively speaking)? Some people prefer work that pushes them to the edge of their abilities, encouraging as much growth as possible, but risking burnout. Others prefer a job that leaves them with plenty of energy to spare, so they can pursue other activities that they might find more fulfilling in their free hours. Speaking of which…
Personal fulfillment
Will you enjoy the process of actually doing your job? I’m lumping a lot of things here—creative fulfillment, passion, the satisfaction you get from being “good at something”, or even just from “being productive”.* All the good feelings you get from your everyday work, irrespective of its benefit to society. Think artists and athletes. Fulfillment can (and often does) go hand-in-hand with social impact—I’m guessing that many surgeons are very passionate about surgery—but it doesn’t have to. Winning olympic gold in snowboarding or creating a beautiful sculpture both have a negligible social impact compared to healthcare or education (at least according to my values).
*[“Personal fulfillment from productivity” is a feeling that I think many people have forgotten exists, because of how our aforementioned coercive relationship to money & capitalism frequently leads us to resent (or outright hate) our jobs (and sometimes to work in general).]
Location
Do you want to live where this job is? Will the commute make your life a living hell? [Yes.] Being a dogmatically stationary sort of person (as of the last four years), I find it sad how often we choose to move hundreds or thousands of miles away from our friends & families in search of more money or, if we’re lucky, more fulfilling work. While I fully believe that people should be allowed to move without restriction (I’d support fully open borders if not for the inevitable political backlash), they shouldn’t feel forced to.
Speaking as someone raised in a tight-knit & supportive community, with a genuine connection to the land I grew up on, I think that a lot of people don’t know what they’re missing when they choose a life of endless capital-driven nomadism. While I do think travel is good for broadening your horizons (within reason), and it can be useful to try living in a few different places before settling down, I also think it’s ultimately in our best interest to just pick somewhere, committing to the friends and community we find there. In the words of John Green: you gotta live somewhere.
[If you can’t find any friends or community in the place you’ve picked, you have my permission to leave. And if this sounds like a totally unresearched projection of my own preferences onto everyone else, that’s because it is.]
Freedom and flexibility
Will you be forced to work overtime? Will you be micromanaged? Can you work remotely? Are the hours flexible? WIll you get paid vacation, sick leave, parental leave, etc.? Many of us, if given the option, will choose a lower-paying job if it grants us more self-determination in our lives outside of work.
I considered lumping these freedoms under “money” at first; freedom is sometimes hard to disarticulate from money, as money can be used to purchase additional “freedoms” (options) that would otherwise be inaccessible, like taking an expensive international trip, or retiring early. It also grants you “freedom” from everyday stressors, like the cost of healthcare and housing. But if your job requires you to work 100 hours a week, with little or no control over your schedule, in what sense are you actually free?
Stability
Will you work for a salary, or is your income based on fluctuating demand for whatever it is you’re selling? Is the schedule reliable, so you can plan your personal life in advance? As with flexibility, many of us will choose a stable job over another that might be more fulfilling, or even potentially remunerative. “A bird in hand is worth two in the bush,” etc.
The gig economy gives us perhaps the best example of how freedom and stability can be disarticulated. As a gig worker, you may in theory have “no boss”, but unless there is constant demand for your work, you also have no guarantee that you’ll be able to make rent next month.
Social prestige/pressure
How much social status will this job give you? Depending on your social circle, this will usually go hand-in-hand with personal fulfillment, social impact, power, and/or money. [Personally I find that those who grant status to people with personal fulfillment/social impact jobs have little to no intersection with those who grant status for money/power jobs].
But prestige can also be its own unrelated thing. Some organizations are just perceived as “cooler” than others, and some jobs are given higher status just for being harder to obtain (implying that the people who obtained them possess higher intelligence or competence). It’s the same way that society assigns status to people who attended ultra-selective universities. There’s nothing more virtuous or even necessarily fulfilling about attending an Ivy League university, but it still grants enormous cultural cache.
[Back when I lived in Seattle and my then-girlfriend worked at SpaceX, I was constantly amazed at how total strangers would view her with awe and admiration as soon as they heard the name of her employer (not that she was remotely unworthy of awe and admiration, just that her place of employment would not rate in my top-twenty list of the coolest things about her). This was before Musk went fully off the deep end—though based on the stories she told me, the signs were already there.]
The flip side of prestige is social pressure, which is just negative status. For instance, maybe your family really wants you to be a doctor or a lawyer, and you’ll receive harsh criticism (reduction in familial status) if you pick a different profession. Or maybe they want you to take over the family business. I have essentially no experience of this phenomenon [thanks mom & dad], but it is certainly A Thing That Is Happening.
Pressure doesn’t just come from your family, either. Maybe you’ve been offered a job for an organization that people in your social circle think is reprehensible? [A fun fact about Substack is it gives you stats on how many people click the links for each post… and almost nobody ever clicks the links. So let me help you out: if you click one link in your lifetime as a Potluck Press reader, let it be this one.] I do have some experience here, as quite a lot of people (though not as many as you might think) believe that the tech industry, and Big Tech in particular, is a blight on society—which is to say, as per my Very Scientific model of labor orientations, that tech workers have a negative social impact—and this is certainly a factor for some tech folks when they’re considering which companies to interview for.
“OK,” I hear you ask, “but literally who cares?”
I think you should care. Whether consciously or implicitly, all of us are stack ranking these factors—which to maximize, which to satisfice, and which to ignore—to whatever degree we have the freedom to choose. For instance, your orientation toward social impact might be:
- “I want to maximize the good I can do for other people during my work hours.”
- “I want to make sure my job does more good than harm.”
- “idgaf about the effect my job has on other people.”
- “I want to kill.”
… or anywhere in between. [“I’m not a crazed gunman dad, I’m an assassin!”]
While few people can afford to fully ignore money, plenty of us accept a bare minimum of personal fulfillment—just enough that we don’t actively want to die. But given how much of our lives we’ll inevitably spend working, we should try to be conscious of the reasons we’re choosing the jobs that we do, and then try to align those reasons (and the job itself) with our actual values.
[If you haven’t thought about what your values are yet, I recommend you start there.]
This does NOT mean that we should all be “hustling” to find jobs that are maximally fulfilling, impactful, or remunerative. It’s equally valid, in my view, to pursue a job that simply stays out of the way, so you can focus on the things you actually value in your free time. Bill Watterson puts it much better than I ever could:
Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential—as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth.
You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you’ll hear about them.
To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble.
— Bill Watterson, Kenyon College Commencement (1990)