It's not worth it
Photo by Leah Kelley.
The sun is out. Yesterday, we ran three whole blocks to catch an ice cream truck. The music, bouncing through the neighbourhood, pulled every child within a square mile out of their homes.
We're teaching our youngest about commerce. She wants to know how much things cost and which coins are worth what. And she points to every face and asks if that, too, is Queen Elizabeth. Most of the time, the answer is yes.
We stare at the price list and figure out that she has enough for a small cone with sprinkles. And a coin left over to say "thank you so much" - which is how she understands tipping.
We have to explain it all like she's five, because she is.
Count up what you've got. Look at what's on offer. Figure out what happens next. It's happening everywhere we look right now. And many people doing that math are deciding it's not worth it.
Complaints that no one wants to go to work in a low wage, low job security, low benefits position. Countered by employers seeing hundreds of applicants for living wage jobs in the same industry.
Media CEOs demanding that journalists come back to the office. Communicated in an 800 word op-ed worth of "because I said so." Followed by the newsroom blacking out the publication.
And tech companies saying we care about politics when it helps us hire you. But after that please don't mention it again kthx. And then watching a third of their team walk out the door because that level of bullshit is not worth it.
We said it at the start of all this. That by the time we came back, we'd be different. Even if the jobs and the offices we left were the same. We'd have changed on a deep level. Transformed beyond recognition.
Early on, CEOs talked about doing a decade of digital transformation in a fortnight. Well, it wasn't just the machines. Whatever timetables the Future of Work people had, they didn't consider the past year. Promise.
After a year of being burnt out, crispy fried, work from home, but mostly living at work, employers are asking if we're ready to come back. Back to commutes and shitty coffee and incompetent management (working on that last one as fast as we can). And for a lot of folks, when they stare down the list, the answer is clear.
It's not worth it.
It's not worth it to sit in a gas line, to sit in traffic, to sit at a desk, to sit in traffic, to sit in another gas line.
It's not worth it to keep playing when the game is clearly rigged. And grade 5 probability coursework can predict who you're gonna promote regardless.
On the heels of finding fullness and meaning in less than 1000 sq ft, we are so clear on what matters. And what does not. Which things on the list we care about. And which ones aren't for us anymore. Even if they once were.
What would be worth it?
Bosses, listen: most people want to do a good job at work. People are pragmatic. They are flexible, they are forgiving, and will give a lot of grace to an organization that gets the basics right. A lot of your job as a leader in an organization is to not fuck things up so badly that you run out that grace.
The work. Give us a reasonable work load and the tools to do it. Tell us what's expected, instead of having us guess, and ground those expectations in reality. Your people are not bothered by accountability, or by working hard. Many of them take pride in doing a great job. What bothers people is burnout workloads, shifting goalposts, and an unending need for heroics to make up for bad planning.
And when we do that great job, make sure we're recognized for it. People want very different things when it comes to recognition, so this is a place you'll have to talk with each of us. Some want applause at an all-hands and for others that will make them want to disappear into their chair. But every employee you have wants to be paid and promoted fairly. Fair relative to their peers. Fair relative to their industry and expertise. And fair relative to what it costs to live their lives. If your business can't pay people fairly, it's a bad business.
The team. We can collaborate as a diverse array of colleagues and do great work for your organization. Just please stop hiring unapologetically hateful people. Nothing saps the morale of an otherwise high-performing team like being asked to re-defend their right to be here.
That is not an ideological purity test, that is bare minimum psychological safety. You can give people room to have grown, and made amends. But treat those claims with every bit of the healthy curiosity you'd apply to any other claim on their resume. Take accountability for the safety of your employees. Fix the missing stair.
The company. We live in a community, several communities really, and we're done with companies who pretend that they don't. We understand – we genuinely do understand – that it's hard to thread the needle on social issues. That it's hard to "keep everyone happy." But we need you to understand that when you tell us to "keep it outside of work channels", you're failing us. You're giving a simplistic answer to a complex problem.
Some people's lives are politicized, whether they want them to be or not. And to navigate that, even at work, those people may need to talk about it. To tell their story. To find allies. To feel like they are seen and belong and that the needs of their community are ones that their employer cares about. A more complete answer will require making some uncomfortable decisions about where your organization stands, instead of just pretending that it doesn't need to make those decisions.
The rest. For the rest, for our life outside of work, just leave it alone. Be clear about when we can be offline, and don't secretly hold it against us when we take your word. Explicitly allocate the most generous vacation you can stomach. Then figure out why your people don't feel safe taking it, and fix that.
Or don't.
You can ignore everything we've written here, and most days your company won't burst into flames. For the most part you probably won't even break any laws. You'll just have a shittier business and maybe a shittier life. That's all.
Your best people, full of passion and ready to bring their all to the work you do, are standing there in front of the ice cream truck. They know what they bring to the table. They are looking at what you're offering. Salary, benefits, perks. Sprinkles. All that. But also the work, the team, the company, and the rest. And they're trying to decide if it's worth it.
- Melissa and Johnathan