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CHAPTER 1
THE SPIRIT OF WORK
When arriving at London's Heathrow Airport, one thing always grabs my attention. The HSBC advertisements, which cover the jetway walls right after disembarking from flights, capture so effectively the role of work in the fabric of our daily life. The advertisements are simple, each touching on some facet of an individual's "personal economy." One advertisement reads, "We focus on the most important economy in the world. Yours." Another states, "It's not just leisure, it's part of your personal economy." These and other related HSBC advertisements are as frightening as they are ingenious. They show that this is an age in which work is central to how we define ourselves. We see ourselves as mini-economies, in which we must invest in order to maintain our skills, productivity and competitiveness. It is for this reason that the HSBC advertisements are so powerful.
In the modern world, what matters is that a person is working (this usually refers to gainful employment) and is busy in this work. It is better to have a job than to be without one, whatever this job might be. In other words, individuals must be occupied, taking action, for this signals value. Conversely, the idea of a person sitting alone, not doing anything, is interpreted as being unproductive — and in turn not good for the wider economy. Recent research suggests that millennials are firmly rooted in this work culture, this being a generation that forgoes leisure in favor of long hours. Harvard Business Review editor Sarah Green Carmichael notes that "according to a new survey by Project: Time Off and GfK, Millennials are actually more likely to see themselves — proudly — as 'work martyrs' than older workers, and less likely to use all their vacation time."
A risk in work martyrdom, of course, is burnout, and here the Financial Times management editor, Andrew Hill, provides astute observations on millennial work culture through reflection on his experiences beginning as a trainee journalist. Hill argues that millennials should approach their work with modest aspirations, for some recent research that he cites suggests that viewing work as an intense calling raises the likelihood of burning out. The most successful of employees, in Hill's experience, "did not put work at the centre of their identity, or treat their job as a world-changing mission. As a result, they kept their zest for the job alive long after others had had their spark snuffed out."
We can situate these two commentaries in a broader historical context, notably through the writing of the late German sociologist Max Weber in his classic book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Weber indicates that in the past, work was valued as a moral calling, one that ultimately served God. However, in recent centuries, as the role of religion in society has diminished — and as people have become increasingly dismissive of moral language — work has become an end in itself. For Weber, "It is true that the usefulness of a calling, and thus its favor in the sight of God, is measured primarily in moral terms, and thus in terms of the importance of the good produced in it for the community." However, he acknowledges that "material goods have gained an increasing and finally an inexorable power over the lives of men as at no previous period in his history." As a result, "the idea of duty in one's calling prowls about in our lives like the ghost of dead religious beliefs."
Weber laments the fact that work in his time had lost much of its moral underpinning. As the significance of religion declined in Europe, individuals continued to work diligently but without clear moral purpose in their efforts. Today work remains central to individuals' lives, but is really just a matter of employment. We see work through an economic rather than a moral lens: we need to create jobs to grow the economy rather than ensure these jobs provide individuals with dignity. Weber's analysis rightly suggests that work alone cannot illuminate the human soul. Work needs a larger narrative.
Martin Luther, the German theologian whose relentless efforts in the early sixteenth century gave rise to Protestantism, provides us with some valuable historical background. Born on November 10, 1483, in Eisleben, Germany, Luther received his doctor of theology degree in Wittenberg in 1512, and would over the course of his life produce books, treatises, pamphlets and translations in a way that resembles the kind of output that we in today's world see from a person like Elon Musk.
Of particular relevance for our discussion on work is Luther's thinking about vocation, which laid the groundwork for much of society's current thinking about work, 500 years later. Luther argued that all Christians have vocations. This served as a break from previous Christian thinking on vocation, in which only priestly callings were considered to be vocational activities. Luther's innovation had several effects. First, it leveled the playing field between contemplative and active lives. Prior to Luther's work, the contemplative or spiritual life had been seen as the higher form of living — spiritual activity was accorded special value. By saying that all Christians have a calling, Luther put the life of worldly activity on equal footing with the spiritual life. He argued that a person's worldly calling came through their various stations in life, say, as a husband or wife, as a son or daughter, as a butcher, as a maid, as a scientist or whatever other roles they assumed.
This meant that part of one's duty toward God consisted in fulfilling responsibilities within their various stations in life. With this, Luther provided his followers with a sense of vocation in the world, but these vocations also limited their ability to progress (in the sense of social mobility), for a vocation was really just a reflection of the roles given to individuals based on their birth. To do something other than what the stations into which a person was born asked for would have violated the worldly calling. However, the innovation remains, this very rough sketch outlining how Luther instilled significance in a person's nonspiritual work.
Puritans built on this understanding of worldly vocation with considerable intensity. As Weber notes, the restlessness with which Puritans carried out their work represented an ethos — it was their way of life. Moreover, as Puritans gathered wealth in their worldly activity, they saw it as their duty to continue to reinvest capital in order to ensure ongoing activity in the world. The Protestant ethic favored restlessness over stillness, though crucially with a moral purpose in mind.
Rational conduct, without emotion, was central to Puritans' approach to work. As this approach "began to dominate worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order." Puritans denied themselves opportunities for luxury, a valuing of luxury conducive to stagnation and thus contrary to their understanding of how salvation would be achieved. The restlessness tied to this ethic certainly resembles how we think about work in modern life. Yet, there remains a critical distinction between then and now. The Protestant ethic was ultimately a moral calling; work was not an end in itself. This is a key distinction between Weber's conception of the Protestant ethic and our modern conception of work.
The calling as Weber describes was ultimately a religious and ethical activity, aimed toward the fulfillment of a purpose that went beyond the individual. He described work lacking a broader moral structure as living within a cage, and based on this he wondered how ethical direction might be recovered. He was certainly on point in his reflections, yet little has changed since: nearly one century later, we are unable to respond effectively to Weber's concerns. Millennials are a particularly intense manifestation of this. Many are work martyrs, but without necessarily considering what, beyond their personal fulfillment, work is really for. Indeed, work provides many of us with purpose, but far too often focuses more on the self than on a broader moral vision. We can examine several examples for further insight into what I mean.
FINANCE AND CONSULTING
There is perhaps no better example of identity residing in work than for many of those in the consulting and finance industries. Companies in these industries generally feed on recruits with "high ambition and low conviction," a phrase I first heard several years ago, and which I believe is accurate in describing what kinds of individuals tend to flock to these industries. This is not to say that there are not good reasons for pursuing jobs with the likes of Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs. Rather, I am continually amazed by how quickly the supposed "critical thinkers" of the world — whose undergraduate studies we would assume develop these abilities — surrender themselves to jobs based mainly on status and remuneration. What we see here is the Weberian account of the cage in full force: most of these individuals wind up deeply unhappy with their jobs, and with a weak sense of why they pursued them in the first place.
In her Yale Daily News article "Even Artichokes Have Doubts," the late Marina Keegan attempts to understand why it is that approximately 25 percent of Yale graduates enter the finance and consulting industries. Her reflections spurred in part by a McKinsey & Company e-mail she received at the end of her second year of university, Keegan interviews a variety of Yale students pondering these options. Keegan writes that interviewees' reasoning goes something like this: "Eventually, I want to save the world in some way. Right now, the best way for me to do that is to gain essential skills by working in this industry for a few years."
These companies emphasize how, through working with them, it is possible to improve personal skills and in doing so develop the capacity to one day change the world. The excellent pay, of course, also piques students' interest and puts pressure on students interested in more uncertain forms of work (such as the arts) to begin considering these options. Additionally, time — the short two-or three-year commitment to these jobs — helps justify a person's decision to pursue a line of work that is for most opaque at best.
We can tie Keegan's comments back to the earlier HSBC example. In thinking of ourselves as individual economies, we limit the language for thinking about who we are to a matter of human capital, that is, we think in terms of our skills. More specifically, we think in terms of how these skills can be marketed. By spending two or three years in a consulting firm or in a large bank, we imagine that we will develop skills that can then be leveraged for jobs in other, more meaningful, places. The two or three years are then viewed as a sort of personal investment. And so we become less fearful of thinking about the opportunity costs in pursuing things that, for the majority of us, do not align at all with what we actually care about in the world.
As a graduate student at the University of Cambridge, I was at first surprised to see so many gifted, curious and hard-working students gravitate toward these industries. It seemed that, although intellectually curious, a significant portion of students lacked social autonomy. In other words, they were largely unable to listen to what their peers had to say, sit on what they heard and then decide where they, as individuals, stood on the question of what kind of life is worth leading. It was not so much that they would enter these two industries that surprised me, but rather that they would do so without much prior careful thinking.
This issue is not unique, however, to Cambridge. I have seen this with groups of high-achieving students at the University of Alberta, where I pursued my undergraduate studies. One of the real challenges that gifted and hard-working students face is simply that they are smart. As a result, they are able to perform psychological gymnastics in which they rationalize why entering an industry such as consulting, about which they know nothing, really is the right path for them.
It is hard to reason with these individuals, as most construct compelling arguments as to why they really should join a bank or consulting firm postgraduation. Their decisions are framed as a matter of preparing themselves for the long term: "I will do three years in consulting, then several years in a hedge fund, then a few years in private equity, and after all of this, I will be able to give back to the city in which I was born!" But their overarching purpose in the long term remains unclear. This is the logic that many individuals fall back on, given the lack of moral vocabulary at their disposal for thinking about meaningful work.
Two additional interpretations might work in order to explain why millennials enter these sorts of industries. The first is that many of the supposed "best and brightest" of this generation are actually just really good box-tickers. Stated differently, the people who put themselves in positions to enter blue-chip firms are the kinds of people who try to check every box conducive to enhancing their social status. In addition to their close-to-perfect grade point averages (GPAs), they compete in several sports, serve on the executive teams of various university clubs and lead some sort of "tech company."
A related interpretation is that this generation is a coddled one, its members considered special by their parents and given highly structured schedules as children. Thus, many delay adult responsibility as they explore themselves through a developmental period now referred to as emerging adulthood. Parents helicopter above, ready to step in whenever called upon to solve their kids' problems. In both cases, people follow structures set out for them, without really taking ownership of their lives as responsible adults.
There is, I believe, a lot of truth in each of these narratives, even though each ignores important structural considerations. What I mean by this is that the behaviors described above might be, in some important ways, beyond individuals' control. They are not completely responsible for their problems. As growing numbers of young people participate in some form of higher education, the reality is that there is now increasing competition for good jobs. Moreover, competition for good jobs takes place not just on domestic but increasingly on global levels.
Given this intense competition for jobs, why wouldn't parents equip their children for success in education and, following this, in the labor market? Moreover, how could students not take advantage of the opportunities provided to them by their parents? Indeed, the higher education system into which young people enter is one where considerable emphasis is placed on nonacademic activities, in large part because millennials know they must pursue every possible opportunity to set themselves apart from their numerous age-mates also likely to have undergraduate or graduate degrees. Over time, the standard for expected accomplishment at a relatively early age rises, until nearly every person tends to be involved in some form of fancy leadership activity.
A final, no less important and related interpretation is that today's learners are simply not provided with many educational experiences in which moral language is used. As high school students and later at university or college, seldom do individuals engage in serious conversation as to the sorts of lives that are worth living and the kinds of people that they wish to be. On these important topics, they are left to fend for themselves; conversations and debates take place within the confines of student dorms, in fraternity or sorority houses, or tangentially as part of student club activities. Naturally, these conversations are exploratory — though no doubt entertaining — and so most lack guidance from individuals with much greater life experience and wisdom.
In my experience, this is a real problem, and we can forgive individuals if they graduate from a university or college without having reflected systematically on these critical life questions. Engaging with these questions is of course hard for anyone, even with encouragement. It is especially difficult to do so on one's own. Apart from several exceptions, the vast majority of millennials whom I know lack this sort of moral vocabulary. They have never learned it, and the places where we should expect this to be learned — schools and universities — generally fail to provide much of lasting value.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Millennials in the Modern Workforce"
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Copyright © 2018 Emerson Csorba.
Excerpted by permission of Wimbledon Publishing Company.
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