Reframing our relationships with employment
Summary
The recent slew of layoffs have caused many people suffering that’s comparable only to that of the global pandemic. But this is what we must expect in a world driven by capitalism.
Bad times such as these should encourage us to reflect on our relationships with work and how we think about our careers.
We’ll all do well to make distinctions between work and jobs, colleagues and employers and careers and loyalty. These distinctions will help all parties be candid with each other when talking about employment.
In a calculative world we must protect our time and use it to nurture relationships that’ll outlive our employment and on skills that’ll help us stay relevant.
And lastly, we must give unions and collective bargaining a serious thought. In an unequal relationship between employers and solo employees, unions can provide a collective voice.
I ended my day yesterday with news of a consulting major that’s about to lay off 19,000 of its people. At this point, these layoff numbers have become so high, that it’s mind-numbing. To some extent, I wonder if one round of layoffs normalises the next. This bears itself out in another set of numbers. The company I mention is sitting on close to $6B in cash. They announced a cash dividend for their shareholders around the same time as they announced the layoffs. Yes, revenue won’t grow as much as it did in previous years, but would you say they can’t afford to employ these 19,000 people any more? I don’t think so.
The truth is harsher than we’d care to admit. In a capitalist setup, companies are cynical constructs. Their primary governance aim is to “maximise shareholder value”. Regardless of what the employer brand may say, a publicly traded company has to play by the rules of the game. The market is unforgiving. And there are rewards for playing the hard game. Research shows that CEOs of firms announcing layoffs receive 22.8% more total pay in the subsequent year than other CEOs. This windfall comes almost entirely from increases in stock-based compensation. We see this phenomenon play out even in 2023.
I can’t quarrel with this setup. Markets don’t care about the 19,000 laid-off employees. If public companies won’t play by the rules of the market; it’d beg the question of why they went public in the first place. And the C-suite has the right to get wealthier too. The last I checked, there isn’t a law against that yet. Question is - where does that leave you and me; the employees?
Use bad times for reflection
When the pandemic was raging in my country, India, it was a harrowing experience for us all. While my wife, kids, and I escaped Covid; it gave us a reason to reflect on life, our careers and our priorities. When I look back at the pandemic, I feel like our collective suffering hasn’t ended. It’s only shifted. In those days, the devastation from the virus affected many people around us. Today, there's the news of layoffs which cause suffering for the people affected. But spare a thought for the survivors. You may think of them as the lucky ones. The truth is quite the contrary.
“During downsizing, workers can experience ‘emotional exhaustion’ as an outcome of the higher levels of job uncertainty and lack of personal control. After downsizing, surviving workers cite adverse changes in working conditions, including higher levels of work demands, lower levels of friendship formation, and supervisor aggression, and it is also adversely associated with an inability to unwind after work and lower job satisfaction.”
This phenomenon is playing itself out in corporate corridors, virtual and physical, today. So, I argue that we’re all suffering, just like we did during the years of the pandemic. I think it’s time again, to pause and reflect on our relationships with work. I want to share my reflections with you and see how you feel about them.
Make distinctions clear
When employers act in calculative ways, it’s impractical for employees to be too emotional about their employment. So we must make a few distinctions clear in our minds.
Work and jobs. We spend a third of our day working. At least. We probably spend far more in service of our work - either thinking about it or preparing for it or just commuting to it. So I’m a firm believer in enjoying my work and even being passionate about it. A job, on the other hand, is a contractual obligation. It pays your bills and comes with some tangible benefits, which vary by employer. It’s pernicious to get attached to a job. We must care more about the work we do, instead. Work can provide us with purpose and fulfilment. A job is simply a means to an end.
Colleagues and the employer. Despite being an introvert, I’ve always felt strongly about the relationship I cultivate with my colleagues. Some of my colleagues have become close friends as well; to the extent that I’ll go to any length to support them. And this should matter to most of us. These are the human beings we work with and interact with every day. For a third of our day or more, they provide us with the social connection that makes us human. Your employer, however, is a faceless, abstract construct of capitalism. To expect them to be consistent, and in line with idealistic human behaviour, is naïve. Your colleagues at your current workplace will be part of your network many years later as well. You should, however, expect precious little from your employers once you’ve cut the umbilical cord with them. So reserve your attachment for your colleagues. Consider a more detached relationship with your employers.
Careers and loyalty. One of my long-standing colleagues retired from his job last year. He’d spent over 20 years at my company and was 70 when he hung up his boots. It made me think about how long our careers are likely to last. We’re in an era of unprecedented longevity with human lifespans; the pandemic notwithstanding. So, the old retirement model between 50 and 60 is probably behind us. Most of us in the professional class will have long careers. And, likely, our current jobs will only feel like pit-stops in this long journey, when we look back at them. Therefore, I wonder if we should zoom out a bit and think more about our careers than our loyalty to a certain employer. Especially if the employer doesn’t have a corresponding loyalty to us?
These three distinctions help us take a dispassionate view of employment. I know it may feel uncomfortable for some of us, but I argue that a view such as this is healthy for not just the employee, but employers as well. We must all take a step back from the marketing spiel and set our expectations right. Only when we know where each entity stands in a relationship, can we then approach the relationship with honesty.
Protect your time and prioritise your learning
So if the job is a means to an end, the employer a faceless construct, and careers more important than loyalty, what does that mean for us all? I have two thoughts.
First, your job represents a contract. You must do the best you can for the hours that your employer stipulates. But the rest of your day must be yours, to use the way you please. Don’t let anyone sway you into working extra on the back of a polite, nice-sounding request. Not if you won’t enjoy the extra hours. Put those hours back into the people that matter - your friends and family. They will stand by you through thick and thin, unlike most companies. And about the nice-sounding request. Remember that it’s always a one-way street. Try asking your employers nicely for a few extra days of leave. They’ll most likely shove a policy in your face. So if employers can operate by a policy, why can’t you?
And second, your work and career deserve attention. Use your time to build the skills that’ll help you gain mastery of your work. This won’t just be useful for your employers in the short term but it’ll also help your career in the long run. Add new strings to your bow. If you’re a developer, think about how you can learn to train AI models. If you’re a designer, think about how you can use low-code to bring your mockups to life. Whatever your current skill, there’s a big chance it’ll be obsolete in a few years. Obsolescence is a perfect recipe for redundancy. Let’s protect ourselves.
These are actions we take at the individual level, but there’s only so much you can do as a glorified freelancer in an unequal relationship. Because on-rolls, or as contractors, that’s what we all are. People who work in their individual capacities for large, powerful corporations.
Let’s give collective stands a chance
Capitalism has let us believe that “union” is a four-letter word. It isn’t. Many of the privileges we enjoy as modern-day workers, didn’t come from bleeding-heart corporations. They came from extensive campaigning by organised employees. Here are a few examples - fair wages, paid leave, health benefits, parental leave or even the 40-hour work week. So while companies often actively discourage employees from organising, unions level the playing field between the powerful employer and the powerless freelancer.
The bigger a company gets, the less it can stay connected to individual workers. This isn’t because of any malintent. It just represents the limits of human minds that run these companies. With size, you must decide at scale. This is where workers lose their voice when expressing their perspectives to employers. It’s easy to dismiss dissenting voices as the “vocal minority” when you make wholesale calls to lay off thousands of workers or to force them into long commutes. If the company has a union though, they can present a collective, representative voice for employees.
But capitalism doesn’t like collective bargaining; especially not if it impacts power equations. Some employment contracts in certain countries explicitly forbid employees from organising. Other organisations put out propaganda about the ills of unions. John Oliver did a piece about this on his show, some years back. I encourage you to watch it end-to-end. We must take union-busting efforts with a healthy dose of salt. Today, amidst all the suffering that layoffs are causing, the world of work needs unions more than ever. If nothing, I’d urge you to think about what we all may gain by making a collective stand and by speaking in one voice.
If 2020 and 2021 were bad, I argue that 2023 is worse. To everyone who’s lost their job in recent months, my heart goes out to you. I can’t imagine what you’re going through, because I can’t imagine what I’d go through if I was in your shoes. To every one of us who’s dodged a bullet, I understand if you feel anxious. I do too.
I apologise if my post today feels more philosophical than either of us would have bargained for. But I also hope my reflections resonate with you so that when the bad times are behind us all, we can look at our employment with a fresh perspective.