(Image by kirill_makes_pics from Pixabay)
Joining the workforce is a rude awakening. Your first job may not wake you up, especially if you’re still in high school, but eventually, you’ll find yourself in what you’ll later consider your first real job. This job will teach you things that you didn’t set out to learn. Things like how important workplace politics can be, how power changes people, and why the older working adults in your life have that thousand-yard stare on a Sunday afternoon.
I’m not anti-work. Work is part of life and there are many positive externalities that come from work. But I do think that most people avoid confronting the tacit agreement present in work: fundamentally, we work a job because we need the money. This isn’t the only reason we work, but it is a sufficient condition for having a job. Avoiding this agreement as an employee can make you miserable, and ignoring it as an employer can create a toxic work environment and even impact your bottom line.
I learned so much from my first real job. I acquired new skills, built relationships with talented people, and found direction in my career. I have tremendous gratitude for the opportunities I was given, and I can still see their impact on my life today. All of that is true AND my first real job was a rude awakening. When I started, I hadn’t acknowledged the tacit agreement of work and so I was expecting more satisfaction than any job is capable of giving. However, once I came to terms with why I was working a job in the first place, I saw that a workplace can be an excellent teacher and a fascinating microcosm to study.
One of the first lessons I learned was that life isn’t fair. This sounds bitter, but I mean it clinically. Even in the best environments, good work isn’t always seen and rewarded. People are busy, and in any business, there are a lot of plates spinning at the same time. I think many people enter the workforce under the impression that working hard and keeping your head down is a viable path to pay raises and promotions. I certainly thought this way. But the truth is that hard work, good work, is not a sufficient condition for career advancement. The squeaky wheel may not get the grease, but it turns out that the silent wheel doesn’t either. You have to speak up for yourself. This makes sense. Nobody, not even your boss, can meet expectations that they don’t know about. If you would like to advance in your career, doing good, solid work is just the price of admission. Once you’ve gained admission, then you’ve earned the right to communicate your ambitions in a measured and respectful way.
A workplace is a controlled experiment in human psychology, with sub-experiments on leadership, culture, motivation, and a host of other things. If you’re paying attention, you’ll get an education. The tacit agreement underlying work is what makes this experiment so useful. In statistical terms, it is the independent variable. The constant that enables measurement of everything else. And when you accept this independent variable, as an employee or an employer, it’s easy to see why companies with competitive pay, good culture, amazing benefits, and a meaningful mission find disproportionate commercial success. These companies have acknowledged the tacit agreement of work. They’ve recognized that they start each day at a disadvantage, they’ve aligned the things they can control with this reality, and they are rewarded with a happy workforce that finds meaning in their labor.
Work shouldn’t make you miserable. If it does, that’s something worth examining. Speaking from experience I’d start with assessing your expectations. Are they unrealistic? Are you looking for more satisfaction from a workplace than it’s reasonably capable of providing? If the answer is ‘yes’, then you’ve got some work to do on yourself. Confront your expectations, break them down, and rebuild them from the premise that, fundamentally, you work a job because you need the money.
If the answer is ‘no’, and your expectations are reasonable, you’ve got some choices to make. Perhaps it’s time to start a job search. Find greener pastures. Or maybe you can improve your situation through communication. A meeting with your boss might be in order to, in a measured and respectful way, bring them in on the unmet expectations you’ve been experiencing. It’s expensive to lose good employees, your boss is incentivized to help you.
On average, you will spend 90,000 hours working over the span of your life. That maths out to 10.2 years of straight work. That’s a lot of time, effort, and focus. One way of looking at that time expense is as a necessary evil. But you could just as easily see it as a necessary good. If you live 80 years, you’ll spend 10 of your years at work, so that you can spend 70 of your years on whatever you think is important. Work is the thing that enables us to live full and meaningful lives. It gives us resources to allocate, and it can also give us meaning within those 90,000 hours.
Work isn’t just one thing. It’s a paycheck. It’s an education. It’s a struggle. It’s a community. It’s a sacrifice. It’s a reward.
Work can be what you make it, but only after you accept why you’re there in the first place.
MW 