Friday time. Let’s go.

The big crisis facing modern work today is not “quiet quitting,” workers-who-don’t-work, unionization, or the Great Resignation; it’s actually that most of today’s work feels illegitimate and people don’t want to waste their one wild and precious life on work that just doesn’t matter.

That’s the thrust of Eirk Baker’s essay in Harper’s Magazine titled “The Age of the Crisis of Work” wherein he describes the various red herrings put forward by the media on why work doesn’t seem to sit right any longer with many employees and employers alike — and why they’re all wrong.

Workplace data doesn’t support that there’s massive resignation underway among white collar workers. It’s true that lots of resigning is happening among our lowest paid jobs, but Baker points out that many of these workers are simply leaving for the gig economy. Why drive a taxi for some jerk when you can Uber in relative peace? With a tight labor market despite layoffs and wages at an all-time high, white collar workers are more in control of their career-destiny than they’ve been in a long time.

Data also doesn’t support a rising organized labor movement. Baker supposes both pro-union and anti-union movements are mostly qualitative in nature. Starbucks and Amazon probably getting unionized makes for big splashy headlines, but this doesn’t affect most workers right away.

Lastly, our favorite topic of “quiet quitting” just isn’t true. Tiktok made this feel like a thriving movement, but the truth is most knowledge workers are still clocking in, doing lots of work, and clocking out later than usual. Sometimes 30-40% later now that work-from-home has made the workday essentially endless.

SO WHAT IS IT???

Legitimacy. When the pandemic hit, “non-essential workers” essentially got a months-long hall pass to retune and reset at home. Baker calls it an “unprecedented amount of slack.” Despite this, the workplace did not fall apart. The modern workplace as we know it continued to thrive and record profits came rolling in for our biggest firms.

The “legitimacy crisis” is because workers are done with feeling like their work just doesn’t matter. Interestingly, this isn’t the first time this has happened. The article goes on to describe the post-industrial workplace crisis of the 1960’s when the rise of “creative work” in professional employment came to be producing nonessential consumer goods and media versus “vital goods and services” like railroads, automobiles, and food. People had a hard time grappling with this new reality as they are right now. Much turmoil ensued.

Today’s workplace crisis boils down to the empty feeling of doing “bullshit jobs” like building hollow software for giant companies, endless strategy meetings, and infinite tiers of middle management. (My bad if this is your job. The examples could’ve truly been endless.)

What’s the solution? Who knows. At this point we’re leaving philosophy and getting into macroeconomics where if there’s a marketplace, there will usually be marketplace participants willing to fulfill the task at hand. Work will likely be in turmoil for a good long time as workers exert newfound power in a tight labor market to find more meaning in their days — and employers struggle to convey a sense of meaning to the work.

Let the games continue.

Read the original piece here: https://harpers.org/archive/2023/05/the-age-of-the-crisis-of-work-quiet-quitting-great-resignation/

ON THE INTERNETS

Guess the Game – like Wordle but video games. https://guessthe.game/

Fictional Brands Archive – all the fake brands from your favorite media. https://fictionalbrandsarchive.com/

Software companies across the US are in mortal danger from massive tax bills this year. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/18/software-firms-face-huge-tax-bills-that-threaten-tech-startup-survival.html

Yokosuka becomes Japan’s first city to use ChatGPT for admin tasks https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/04/20/national/chatgpt-yokosuka-trial/

Clock. https://oimo.io/works/clock/

And another clock. https://www.literaryclock.com/

TWEET OF THE WEEK

See ya next week

— 💬 The EiT Crew at Status Hero