How to most likely not hate your job
another krappy newsletter #34
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To whom this may concern,
Hello from Northern California.
I am writing to inform you of another edition of my newsletter.
Sorry.
Been writing a lot of professional emails recently. So I was stuck in that Newspeak language we are required to write in at work.
So many unwritten rules for how to communicate in the office. For example, did you know ‘Hey’ is too informal for a professional setting? The more appropriate email greeting is ‘Hi’ or ‘Hello’.
I just learned this. Been saying ‘Hey’ in all textual communications like a fucking idiot for years now. No wonder I don’t run the world yet.
There are so many of these stupid unwritten rules that we came up with a term for it: “culture.”
Culture is a buzz word that is so overused that no one knows what it means.
So allow me to expand:
Any group of human beings forms a culture.
Culture is how decisions get made. Culture is how you are supposed to act.
No one clearly tells you what it is or how it is going to affect your working life. So guess what? I am going to do that.
On to the newsletter!
How to most likely not hate your job
When looking for a new job, we ask “where should I work?” But inverting the question and asking “where shouldn’t I work?” is a more useful exercise.
The first question is too hard to answer.
The second question is straightforward. You should not work at a place that makes you sad on a day to day basis.
But how will you know if your job will make you sad?
Sadness tends to be a function of the following conditions:
The expectations being pushed on you
How decisions get made
The people you work with and who you are allowed to be at the office
Those three conditions are what we mean when we say “workplace culture”.
Ergo, if you choose the wrong culture, you are guaranteed to hate your job.
Not saying that if you get it right you will like your job. Just saying you have avoided knowingly entering something that you were going to hate.
You have been blessed with a chance to like your job. You are welcome.
Can you elaborate on culture…that was a pretty hand wavy proof
Woah. Ok John Nash. Didn’t realize I had to give you formal proofs. This is an Internet article for fuck sake.
But, if you insist, I will elaborate more on my three points as well as how they should factor into your employment decision.
You right now:
The expectations being pushed on you
There are two extremes in terms of expectations: hustle culture or retirement home. Most companies are going to fall somewhere in the middle between the two, but thinking about the extremes can help inform the image in your head about what a company expects from you.
Hustle culture is always on. It is adrenal fatigue.
The social cues that you are supposed to pick up on are that if you are not working, you are falling behind. No one ever explicitly explains this to you, but it is common knowledge. You work at an intellectual sweat shop, but they re-market it by having fun corporate language, a ping pong table, and a mini bar. Sometimes they don’t do any of that and instead just pay you a lot of money. A very explicit Faustian bargain.
If you are a 22-year old kid who just graduated college, that is not a bad deal. You will experience a tremendous amount of growth by participating in hustle culture. It will teach you valuable technical/life skills and who doesn’t love money? Additionally, statistically speaking, you most likely don’t have important things to lose. You are 22. That significant other you have is likely gone in the next couple years because you are going to realize that the same magic flare isn’t there. Meaning, you two realize that your entire relationship was predicated off of playing beer pong and listening to Sublime together. Probably better to make money and learn some skills.
Moving consistently at this speed is completely unsustainable. Hustle culture creates a revolving door of people coming in and out. They burn through employees at remarkable speeds because eventually you realize that the job, while exciting, stripped you of everything that you loved or made you unique. Gone are your hobbies, your passions, your relationships. Everything has been replaced with work. You are running analyses at 10p and making slides for someone on Sunday night because someone on Monday needs to see the slides because they need to get ready to show those slides to someone on Tuesday.
Retirement home is always off. It is you falling asleep at your computer.
Retirement home is a bunch of old white guys that show up at 9a and clock out at exactly 5p. They take long lunches and try earnestly to waste as much time as possible. When they somehow transition conversation topics to actual work, they spend the time intellectually masturbating about what could, should, or would happen. Of course nothing ever actually happens. Because that would involve someone actually doing work.
These cultures are what one of my friends calls “middle class welfare.” The whole job is one big live action role play (LARP) where we all agreed that if we came in here and pretended to work for 8 hours we would get paid. Only catch is that you can’t break character. Breaking kayfabe is the only sin in a make believe world.
Which should you pick?
My recommendation would be to know what you want at that moment in your career. Sometimes you need slow to take care of something else in your life. Sometimes you have space in your life for fast and want to accelerate your career. Both are valid. Just know before you enter a job that the place you are about to work at is closer to one of these extremes than the other. Choose the one that leans most towards the lifestyle you want right now.
How decisions get made
Does the organization make decisions in a top down or bottom up way?
Top down: Executives call the shots on everything.
Top down cultures are hierarchical. Some characteristics of top down organizations:
Clear understanding of who makes the decision. You ask for everything from the higher ups.
Junior members don’t feel comfortable speaking up.
Midlevel managers can have a Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde type of vibe. Where they transition from strong personality to timid personality pending whether or not their boss is in the room.
Feedback is one way (top to bottom) so the boss is only allowed to really get feedback from his boss. This dynamic can feel “toxic.” Your job is to follow demands and ask for permission. And you do not get a say in it.
Bottom up: Employees feel like they are able to say what they want.
Some characteristics of bottom up organizations are:
Unclear understanding of who makes the decision…to a point. In reality, these places will advertise themselves as flat, but eventually some executive makes a decision to break ties. So they are more accurately “not so in your face about there being a hierarchy.”
Junior members speak up a little too much. Youthful exuberance wastes a lot of time…
Everyone is too nice so you don’t get candid feedback. This can lead to people spinning their wheels for long periods of time.
You can walk up to anyone and ask a question. Including the CEO. Not saying you should, but saying if you did, you would not get a stern talking to the next day.
Which should you pick?
Pluses and minuses to both approaches. Most people like the bottom up organizations better for their own personal sanity. They generally report that they feel more autonomy and control in their job. But then again if you are an executive, is there really a better choice than the top down organization? You have a lot of power…
Is everyone chill? Am I chill?
At work, everyone enters an unspoken agreement to pretend to be someone. The only question is how close that person is to the actual you.
Two parties here:
You
Certain cultures will demand you to develop a work personality and an out of work personality. You come to be fluent in schizophrenia as you learn what work you says and what personal life you says in certain situations.
I have come to find that it is a red flag if I need to take on two personalities to succeed in that workplace. I am always at my best when I don’t have to devote cognitive resources to playing a character. I think most people are the same.
Everyone else
You should focus on trying to work with people you like that won’t stab you in the back for a promotion.
This is harder than it seems. If you work at a large company, chances are you work with a lot of social climbers. The types of people who have back channel conversations to undermine you in meetings. These are people who generally do not care about the goal of the organization as much as they care about themselves advancing in the organization itself. Avoid these people at all costs.
Who should you not avoid? People who you would be friends with outside of the office. Those are the best people to be around. I know. Shocking.
Which should you pick?
Pick the role where you feel you can most be yourself and you will genuinely like your coworkers.
BONUS SECTION FOR THOSE WHO MADE IT TO THE BOTTOM OF MY EMAIL
Descriptions and frameworks are great, but how would you go about proactively identifying a great work culture before starting a role?
Figuring out a company’s culture before you join
The right way to find out about a company’s culture is to interview someone who has worked there before or works there now. The person who no longer works there is much more likely to be candid with you and not hold back.
You want to ask specific questions that get meaningful answers to the three components of culture that most matter.
Here are a list of questions to ask to help figure out culture before you join a place:
The expectations being pushed on you
Walk me through your last week of work
How late do you stay up on a typical work week? What about a bad work week?
Do you have any hobbies?
Do anything fun this weekend?
How is the work life balance?
How decisions get made
How often do you present to leadership?
Do you feel comfortable speaking up in meetings?
Do you feel like you can influence decisions?
How is your relationship with your manager?
The people you work with and who you are allowed to be
Use the interview to suss out if you like the person you are talking to or not.
This is one of those topics I wish someone explicitly explained to me before I joined a company. I spent a lot of time in roles I hated and only retrospectively did I realize that I hated it because the culture did not match my personality.
Hopefully reading this has helped you avoid that fate in the future.
Let me know if you have anything you would add to this culture framework or other ways that you think about this problem.
Closing time
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Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are strictly my own.