If you don’t love your job, change it
But don’t quit just yet …
How many times have you heard: “I’m not paid enough to <x>”, where x is to go the extra mile in some way? Do you ever hear yourself saying that? In the short term, if our pay was doubled, we might change our minds — but only temporarily. Not being motivated to go the extra mile shows how jobs are about more than just pay:
“Human nature has been sold short … (it) includes the need for meaningful work, for responsibility, for creativeness, for being fair and just, for doing what is worthwhile, and for preferring to do it well”
- Abraham Maslow
If that Maslow quote above resonates with you, you might instinctively realize that your employer doesn’t respect you, your value, and your capacity to contribute. There are reasons for that which I’ve outlined below. I hope they will help put that lack of respect in context — help make sure you don’t stop respecting yourself by putting up with it.
I’ve made some practical suggestions at the end. I hope these help too.
Good, fast, cheap — pick two
This is an old saying from the technology industry; it means that a product or service can be any permutation of two of the qualities but not of the third. So, for example, if it is good and fast, then it can’t be cheap as well. Or cheap and fast, but not good. You get the idea. A similar formula applies to jobs as well, where the three qualities are the hours, the conditions, and the pay.
Warning bells should be ringing for you if you’re in a job that only scores one out of three (or none).
“Be happy while you’re living, for you’re a long time dead.”
-Scottish Proverb
So maybe your job is okay? At least for a while — even if it doesn’t pay well, because the hours suit your life arrangements and it’s a relaxed and friendly workplace. Or perhaps it pays well with convenient hours, but it’s a toxic place to work.
Of course, money makes a difference
“Life is a shit sandwich. But if you’ve got enough bread, you don’t taste the shit.”
― Jonathan Winters
No amount of money can make up for some things, though. And when you feel zero motivation to make an extra effort somehow, it’s never just about the money anyway, it’s about whether any of these things matter to your boss and his or her company:
- what you feel
- what you think
- what your aspirations are
- what you have to offer
- how you could suggest improvements
Because these are all about respect. Respect for you as a person; respect for you as an individual.
“I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer, because you paid for all of this.”
Jeff Bezos, billionaire space-racer
Individual managers within an organization might care about some of these things, but it’s important to remember that it’s structurally impossible for the Company to care. To the Company you’re just a Human Resource — a meat-puppet to be exploited and make the stockholders even richer than they already are. And rich (extremely wealthy) people just don’t see you — physically or figuratively.
Corporations and Extreme Wealth work against us and those two problems are worth examining and internalizing carefully, to disabuse yourself of any notion of your employment being anything other than a business transaction.
The Problem with Corporations
To ‘incorporate’ literally means ‘to give body to’ (see Golem) and it’s a universal legal mechanism that allows corporations to do the things that real live human beings can do, in law: enter into contracts, own property and so on — whilst protecting the company’s shareholders from individual liability.
Entities like this exist purely to enrich their shareholders and, unless regulated by law, will end up doing whatever it takes to accomplish that. This clarity of purpose makes them powerful opportunity-seeking, problem-solving organizations.
Popularized by the Romans in the sixth century and articulated for the modern age by Adam Smith in ‘The Wealth of Nations’ in the eighteenth century, corporations have shown themselves — for hundreds of years — to be incredibly effective wealth generators.
There are two key problems though:
- These ‘Golems’ are functionally incapable of respect for anything, least of all you. Those hundreds of years of history also show corporations not even having basic respect for human life (see Slavery, Child Labour and pre-unionization treatment of workers in the Industrial Revolution) . So when HR says that “our people are our most important asset” remember that’s the Golem talking. They would skin you for a dollar if the law didn’t stop them.
- All the real wealth generated ends up at the top
Never forget that you are selling days, weeks, months and years of your life for money. What is your life worth?
The Problem with Extreme Wealth
There isn’t one — at least not in the short term — if you’re a rich person. And some rich people are extraordinarily generous; which is nice. But most rich people are not nice, by definition. Look around you, two billionaires just took joyrides into space whilst 1 in 3 children globally have malnutrition and over 3 million of them die from it each year (Unicef). And that’s a vast improvement on how it used to be.
How is it possible for so many people to be so inhumane?
- By creating narratives for themselves where they deserve what they have (and others don’t), ignoring how much luck and circumstance put them in their privileged positions — the circumstances of their birth, for example. Not being born poor in a third-world country is an immediate bonus.
- By demonizing the less fortunate, framing them as lazy, unresourceful or timid. In the extreme, you cease to exist as an equivalent human being (see Untermensch).
Now I will understand if you feel that I’m being hysterically socialist here and I don’t mean to demean hard work, personal diligence and integrity but humour me for a minute, how could you live with yourself if you switched roles with your boss or your boss’s boss? What mental gymnastics would it take for you to sleep at night?
You can’t Respect What you don’t see
So, if you’re employed by a corporation, owned and managed by people who make tens, hundreds or even thousands of times what you do, you’re invisible to them. It’s just a fact of life that you will attract no more respect than a company van or any other machine on the production line.
This will end in tears … some time …
Impoverished working environments have been endemic for decades and levels of inequality are rising exponentially now (see Billionaires have gotten $12 trillion richer during the pandemic). It’s only a matter of time before cliche angry mobs with pitchforks and burning torches show up the lawns of private mansions.
Even some plutocrats have realized that time is running out. The enlightened Billionaire Nick Hanauer was warning of this seven years ago in a 2014 TED Salon talk where he said “Growing inequality is about to push our societies into conditions resembling pre-revolutionary France.” (link here)
But time is only running out slowly and juggernaut forces are in play trying to maintain the status quo. You’re going to have a long wait for anything revolutionary to take place, even if there are eventually dramatic upheavals. Better to take things into your own hands.
The Nuclear Option
The simplest answer would be to look for another job — however you can best do that in your line of work:
- Check out ‘Help Wanted’ ads
- Let some trusted contacts know you’re looking to change
- Update your resume or CV
- Get busy on LinkedIn
But that isn’t always practical, and it isn’t always the best option either. So what about some other solutions?
Double-check this is the Hill You Want to Die On
20+ years ago, I had a major disagreement with my then boss and backed myself into a corner where I couldn’t keep an otherwise okay job. Being emotionally invested in the ‘righteousness’ of my position, I didn’t take any quiet time to find some kind of compromise that would have de-escalated us from our standoff. I regret that because I can think of several potential solutions off the top of my head now. Don’t be like me and needlessly throw away something decent. Take a few deep breaths; put the emotion to one side. What are some alternatives?
Get written agreements
This one is pre-emptive — maybe you’re past the point where it would help, but even if you are, it’s worth knowing for the next time round.
Inexperienced, unskilled and low-empathy managers have a tendency to shoot from the hip and then back away from what they’ve agreed to when it blows up in their face — because they didn’t think anything through. Make a habit of keeping yourself sheltered when their crap rolls downhill by getting things in writing. If your boss doesn’t voluntarily put things in writing for you in a timely manner, can you take the initiative yourself without looking passive aggressive?
Environments and protocols vary but perhaps you could try an email on the lines of “here’s what I took away from our conversation earlier — can you let me know if I’ve missed anything or misunderstood something — so I can get this right for you?”
Know that there IS a ‘Magic Money Tree’
When someone tells you that there’s no budget for this, that or the other — they are just making that sh*t up. It’s always there, it’s just a question of finding the right lever to pry it out. Keep this in mind. Here’s an example:
During the 2017 UK Elections, failed Brexit Prime Minister Teresa May appeared on a national TV programme called Question Time and a nurse asked her this question: “Working as a nurse for 26 years, do the Tories (May’s party) expect our support in the light of another 1% pay increase?” Remember, as government employees in the NHS (National Health Service), nurses’ pay had effectively remained unchanged for eight years at this point.
May’s response was
“… there isn’t a magic money tree that we can shake that suddenly provides for everything that people want.”
This was transparent bullsh*t — plenty of money had already been shaken free from that tree by then, to support banks during the 2008 financial crisis. Then again, in 2020, during the Covid pandemic, billions more appeared miraculously. Funds in corporations are no different (How much does the CEO make?)
“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take” — Wayne Gretzky
Have you actually asked for what it would take to correct that aspect of your job that doesn’t work for you? You don’t get what you don’t ask for. If you’re a valued employee and it’s within the gift of your manager or CEO to give you what you ask for, don’t just assume you’ll have to draw blood to get it. It might surprise you how easily you get it.
Summary
- Corporations can’t respect you, only people can and the person whose respect matters most is you.
- Try changing your job before you scrap it.
- Always remember you’re selling chunks of your life for pay and that you can never get any of those chunks back. So get yourself the best possible deal.
