In other words, I’m more than simply a worker. I’m more than a cog in the capitalist system that pays me for my labor. We all are, but we don’t always act like it, and I suspect that Helen is correct in her assumption that part of the reason is that we have prioritized work so far above and beyond the rest of our lives that we don’t have anything else to do.
That’s not a recipe for a healthy and balanced life.
The thing is, there are still so many people who look at a resume with a few different jobs in the early years and see someone who is unstable, all the while employers are designing these jobs to turn over, and then laying people off when they don’t turn over as much as they expected them to. So maybe stop worrying so much about whether changing jobs is going to look bad and focus on finding a place where you can do the work that you want to do.
The promise of working hard and being rewarded is hard to swallow when you’ve seen Gen X and Millennials work hard and get absolutely nowhere. Forced to start over again and again as successive organizations let them go, or went under, while the people who ran those organizations got paid millions.
Because really, not many employees are going to remain engaged if there isn’t much in it for them. If they sacrifice and put in the emotional work of being a fully engaged employee and doing the work that helps the company succeed, there’d better be more than a yearly 2% raise and a pizza party to celebrate. Especially when Don in the cubicle across from them left at 5 every day, did the bare minimum to keep his job, and got the same 2% raise. There had better be a path forward for all the hard work, otherwise, they’re just wasting time and effort here.
The advice in the article below might seem familiar. I’ve seen plenty of advice on the topic of how to keep moving in life during difficult times over the last few years. Things like turning off the news, keeping to a normal routine, etc. What I like about this article is that it acknowledges the elephant in the room that typical advice doesn’t when you’re not working.
“Many people are in a job search and have to keep the quest moving regardless of world events.”
Therein lies the rub. The difference between being informed and being overwhelmed often comes down to being able to turn the news off, set boundaries around our social media use, and so on. But it can be especially difficult to do that when your day isn’t filled with things you have to do.
Trust is going to have to be hard-earned in the tech industry after the last year. That’s a shame because figuring out how to not burn out employees is going to take everyone working together.