Work Is Called Work For A Reason

The 10 Minute Talent Rant is live. I’m James Hornick joined by Jeff Smith and we are on the clock. The 10 Minute Talent Rant is our ongoing series where we breakdown things are broken in the talent acquisition and hiring space, maybe even pitch a solution or two. Before we dig in, all of our content can be found at talentinsights.hirewell.com. It’s a very, it’s a very dystopian episode. I needed to adjust my, my camera a little bit here. I was way too high in the frame. Sorry about that. This week’s topic you’re right, it’s a little dystopian. Episode 105, work is called work for a reason it sucks. No, fuck. Yeah. Does kind of suck.

The too long didn’t read, it sucks. Yeah. So I love- anyone who knows me, I love television. I watch everything. I always wanted to do a TV podcast. So let’s kick it off that way to make this point. Severance, one of my favorite ones currently 2022 to present. Silicon Valley recent one, 2014 to 2019.

The Office, 2005 to 2013. News Radio, if you remember that one, going back to the nineties, 1995 to 1999. Murphy Brown going back to the eighties. 1988 to 1998. Mary Tyler Moore’s show, 1970 to 1977. Dick Van Dyke’s show, 1961 to 1966, and I even threw in I Love Lucy, even though it doesn’t quite fit the theme entirely, but 1951-57, because it did cover this.

What’s the trend here, Jeff? What do all these shows dating from current back to the 1950s have in common? That’s not even an exhaustive list. Look, TV’s been satirizing the work experience for as long as it’s been around, mainly because people have been complaining about work. Yes, correct. Work has always been on some level

not fun. It sucks. Yeah. You know, none of what people are experiencing is anything new. Yeah. This is not, if whatever- it’s not to poo poo what you’re feeling, but just recognizing there’s, you know, we’ve got almost a hundred years of television backing up that this is not anything new. And I want to kind of relate this back to something in the real world.

So I was talking to a colleague of mine. She’s a very senior level leadership level TA in HR person who’s just bailed on LinkedIn. I used to see her commenting on stuff and hanging out kind of all the time. And it’s just the level of negativity from recruiters or about recruiters or complaining about executives or hiring managers.

Like everyone’s just constant bitching and complaining about something on LinkedIn. And this is the person who’s very upbeat, high EQ, you know, affable, you know. And she just says to me, like my grandparents grew up in Italy. They were picking vegetables just to survive. Like what is everyone so upset about all the time?

And it’s just it’s an overwhelming level of negativity that’s constant, not just on LinkedIn, but really anywhere you go and people are kind of talking about work. Yeah. I think the main takeaway for me was God, she’s like the last person we want to go off of the platform because- anyway. But that’s what it is.

That’s what LinkedIn is. You know, there’s this kind of misguided belief that it’s somehow better than Facebook. It stays above the fray of the Twitters and TikToks and it’s the same. It might not swear as much, but it’s the same negativity, you know, just framed in the professional setting and work. To your point

recruiters are the problem, hiring managers are the problem, bad sales people are the problem, execs are the problem. Like, look, maybe you’re 1 of the small percentage of people that, like lives to build spreadsheets. There are people like that. Yeah. Maybe you love creating ad campaigns or whatever office dork job you can imagine up. The rest of us, were tolerating the reality that you need money to live and working is the only way to make money.

It wasn’t meant to be fun and we’ll get these bursts of energy, like, okay, a project well done, like that’s, that feels good. Right? It’s good for the soul. It’s, you know, keeps you moving forward. But day to day, like, for my Seinfeld friends, we’re all just trying to get ahead like grammar. Yeah. And there’s- it’s also like

with all the negative, are things getting worse? No, they’re not. I’m rewatching Mad Men right now, I’m like, do you really want to go back to the 1960s? Like it’s- That’s what the money is for! I mean, it’s just, things have progressively gotten better over time. Which is the thing about it too, is like, no matter, things are never perfect but it’s still working, you know.

Things aren’t as bad as- anyways. I digress. It’s not as bad. We’re going to acknowledge some of that. But again, there’s kind of two forces here that are different, but we think are kind of driving like this angst. One’s kind of a short term problem. The other is like a bigger, like, macro level problem. So what’s number 1?

Yeah. What we call, I think we dropped it three times already. The office dork golden age. Came and went. On the high times of 2020 to 2022. Like it’s just peak awesomeness. If you’re a white collar worker, like salary inflation, everything went up. Remote work went up. Everyone went from working five days a week in office to working wherever they wanted to.

Work life balance is at an all time high. Everyone’s finally attuned to mental health awareness, I’m not pooh poohing that at all, I’m just saying it’s finally something everyone agreed that we need to like, worry about. That like, kindness kind of went up, you know what I mean? It’s just like, all these things kind of clambered, it’s just, it was like the peak, best time to like do what we do, working from our basements right now.

And I would never say that anything is too much too fast, but I think maybe expectation of how good something can get in a short amount of time and how much progress you can make in a short amount of time, I think that was the part and how positively like and how quickly positive change happens.

That was part of it that was unrealistic. Yeah. And look, the point of this piece, this little session is just the red reset button. Let’s pause, look at like what we should expect, you know, from work, what are the tried and true versus like, what are the real nice to haves if you can find them. And we are admit, like, you can still find them. They’re out there.

Yeah. And I think it’s also to just acknowledging, we kind of did it to ourselves. We didn’t mean to, but we did play ourselves. We overdid work life balance to the point where, you know, we’re less effective and companies are begging to offshore jobs now and to use AI to replace us.

I mean, it’s, these things are somewhat related. You know, once you’ve proven that you can work completely out of an office, then you can be anywhere- anyway. Yeah, and if you don’t believe that, like, I have bad news for you. It’s a fact. Everyone, managers included, we’re all figuring out post COVID America and the global economy.

It’s not just America and no one, NO ONE has the answer. Not your CEO, not me, not James, no one. Any move is going to come with compromise and a move being employer-employee relationships. Just because you have something, right, in your current role, it doesn’t mean that it’s automatically available in the next role or that that employer is obligated to give it to you.

In fact, companies are actively trying right now to regain that balance, which is why you’re not seeing as many giant, you know, big pivots salary or otherwise when you make a move for the job. Now, the other big force. I love macroeconomic theories and stuff like that. Elite overproduction is probably my favorite one that I’ve heard in the past six months.

I can’t with these terms, but it was fascinating. So it’s a, I should have written the guy’s name down. So economists kind of came up with this and went back. You can actually Google it. There’s some good videos out there on it. There’s a whole Wikipedia page up for it, but if you want a single explanation for what’s driving a lot of the disillusionment, and that that’s really kind of the core one is elite overproduction.

Let me know if you haven’t heard of it. If this sounds familiar. Taken out massive student debt, gotten a degree. Now you’re ready for this nice kind of cushy white collar job, air conditioned office, or maybe remote in your basement. And then whether it’s you or someone like you, it’s just, it just didn’t pan out that way.

And the reason why is because like, we never needed this many office dorks, these “elite workers” to begin with. Everyone wants that elite job. It’s a status symbol to some degree. But there’s, there’s just not that much room economically or demand for it. Which is why so many people are getting college degrees and working and things that don’t require them. Like if you drive

Uber, might be working hospitality, something like that. Nothing wrong with these professions. And that’s part of the reason we have to kind of acknowledge that. But just the way that our economy and the global economy is gone, like there’s this pressure to keep people like strive for these elite level jobs and colleges will take your money and people promise you can have them.

But is there actually that much need for them? And the answer is probably no. Yep. And it’s systematic. Like, we look down, we, collectively as a society, look down on, you know, people who we perceive the work to be less than. And I think, like, the great comeuppance of the tradesperson is like a perfect example of this.

And how in the corporate sector, we’ve offshored all or most of it, at least in the United States. So there’s, there’s even less wiggle room within the managerial class for, again, all these degreed individuals who were promised something to maneuver in. Yeah, if you really want to get. As a side note, if you’re really want to get kind of depressing.

This economic phenomenon, elite overproduction, this is not a new thing unique to us. Like basically every massive economy that eventually collapsed or went by the wayside, fall of civilizations or civil unrest, it’s happened every single time. It’s something that’s always accompanied any kind of like unrest period.

Anyways, getting to the point, we’re going to do takeaways in a second here, but work is called work for a reason. Like on some level, you know, no matter what you do for a living, it sucks at times. Maybe all the time. I don’t know. It’s never going to change. It’s why it’s not called playtime. It’s not having fun time.

The goal is to get to a point where it’s just some of the time. Yeah, exactly. Takeaways real quick. I think and Jeff and kind of digging is the key to dealing with bullshit and de-stressing yourself to be able to function better is just dividing up like what’s acceptable and what’s delusional.

Yeah. So like what you should actually expect, the non negotiables. Not working with jerks, being treated with respect, working in an environment where you yourself feel market compensated, fairly compensated. Working with co-workers who by and large carry their own weight. Having bosses who are sympathetic to life situations, emergencies, and that output is what matters.

Human stuff, right? What you shouldn’t expect is believing and acting as if your company could not function without you. I can’t overemphasize how false that is. Yeah. Having zero expectations to meet people physically or having these absurd expectations about time away and like, again, you have to collaborate to work and you form human relationships, professional or otherwise, by and large, face to face. It is a fact.

The best piece of advice I’ve ever received in my life is that happiness is a choice. And it’s not something that someone else bestows upon you, but it’s an active decision you make every day to do things that bring you happiness or not allow things that don’t bring you happiness to take over your entire mindset.

No matter who you are, there’s things in your day that like, you’re going to like and not like, and it’s which ones you decide to dwell on more is going to impact how you are as a person. I just like throwing that out there because I think it directly relates to this. Same as it ever was. Yeah. So that includes getting involved in LinkedIn and that echo chamber of negativity.

You can just choose not to. Anyways. Yeah. You just need a shit post like us. We are short on clock. That’s a wrap for this week. Thanks for tuning in the 10 Minute Talent Rant part of the Talent Insights series, which is always available for replay on talentinsights.hirewell.com as well as YouTube, Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon.

Jeff thanks again as always. Everyone out there, we will see you soon.