The Future of Work

As I've been transitioning from one job to another, I've gotten into some conversations about work, and career, and planning for the future. Usually they run along the lines of 'so why did you switch jobs?' but they have also plunged deeper into discussions along the line of 'you were your own boss a few years back? Why did you want to get a real job?' which usually tells me that the questioner has never been fully, truly, self-employed. I'm not saying there aren't definite perks to being my own boss. But when you are, well, my boss back then was a cast-iron beyotch who never let me have a day off and expected me to put in 110% 24/7. Now? I'm hourly, at a decent rate, overtime if the job needs it (rarely I'm told) and when I walk out the door in the evening, the job stays in the building and I'm free to do whatever I want (which involves being my own boss. Once you get that monkey on your back, it's really hard to scrape off). 

I was reading a study on 'Autonomy at work in the gig marketplace' and musing on the past, present, and future of work as we know it. The past, when we get back to pre-industrial times, was more complex than most portrayals of it, but it certainly didn't contain 40 hour workweeks with paid time off. What it probably did involve was a bit more certainty than we usually think of in relation to serfdom. Why would there be portrayals in fiction of children that desperately wanted to escape being whatever their father was if work wasn't so secure (in some senses) it was literally generational in terms of job security? The freedom that the Industrial Revolution brought, to break out of those molds, was real. Yes, you wound up being a wage slave in factories working 14 hours a day, but cities centered around the factories boomed for a reason. People would rather work in the relatively safe (yes, I am aware factories of the day were death pits. Still safe relative to some of the other jobs being done) and very high-paying factories that were usually not seasonally dependent. You might work 14 hours, but you got the other ten off din't you? 

Fast forward about 150 years. I'm having a conversation with a gentleman who has been a blue-collar worker for 30 years, most of them in the same plant. He's telling me that he'd like to leave and be paid more elsewhere, but he's this () close to retirement and is willing to put up with the slipping rate of pay versus cost of insurances and inflation to ride it out. I'm telling him that if I want to build a career, I'm probably going to have to use different jobs as each rung in the ladder, because if you sit put the company won't bother to reward you with things like raises and promotions. Maybe that's the way it was, but it's not the way it is now. Every few years I have to job hunt, unless I want to sit fat and comfy and never go anywhere. It sucks - I absolutely hate job searches - but it's life in the modern workplace. 

Which brings me back to the paper on the gig workplace. I was in that, as a 'creative' and I am familiar with the feeling of walking a tightrope with no safety net in place, never knowing if you were going to bring in enough this month to feed the family, let alone pay the bills. "The idealised image of IPros [independent professionals] characterises them as high earners, high spenders, taking steps to protect their income, including for retirement. They are not seen as ‘burdens on the state’ but rather as individuals taking responsibility for the development of their working lives. Indeed, most IPros actively seek independence, autonomy and choice in the workplace." Ideally, yes, the idea of taking off on your own, not being subordinate to a manager who might nitpick your every move, sounds fantastic. The reality, however... I read the paper and sat back thinking about their term of 'classic work' which was looking at the 40-hour workweek with a boss in the corner office as being 'classic' and I was musing that they were awfully shortsighted. What is the future of work? 

Will the future of work look more like serfdom (in a real sense, not the media portrayal which is largely false)? Unlikely. The kind of generational loyalty is shattered and gone, not entirely a bad thing. Will it look like my world, where I muster in and out, but no one looks at a punchcard to be sure I wasn't a minute off? And I can pull up a list of what needs done, confer with colleagues over who's doing what on the team (and that likely a weekly conversation rather than daily), and then have the autonomy to complete my tasks? If I work four nines, and then take off early Friday, no one blinks, and they may even encourage me to do so. Working to live, rather than living to work. That's why I'm not (completely) my own boss any longer. I like the safety net. Some people operate fine without it. Some people need to have more security in their lives. I don't think there's a wrong way. I do think the way we look at jobs is awfully short-sighted.