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When I was a teenager, I thought Office Space was representative of real life. Yeah, you'd have to show up to a job you hate, but at least you could openly hate it and call out its bullshit brainwashing culture to your friends and coworkers. You could all be united in a "this is fucking stupid, no one actually enjoys this, and all the weird office mannerisms, politics, and minutia are only bought into by the tools who no one likes."
20 years later, that wasn't really true. People seem to buy into the BS, or at least keep plausible deniability about it, such that you never really know. You can't openly call this out to your acquaintances, because you need rely on them for job referrals.
I don't know if this is a real difference between the 90s and 2010s/2020s, or maybe it's just the way it's always been. But it would seem the honesty and rebellious "fuck the man" attitude of the 90s has given way to the "live the hustle" attitude of the 2010s.
Maybe our economic situation being such shit has enforced this, since people don't have the ability to stick it to the man by even pretending they can opt out anymore. Unemployment in the late 90s was around 4%. It's possible that major economic shocks like the 2008 crisis or recent inflation changed how people think about job security.
Maybe also social media caused this, the same way it (in my opinion) caused the major ramp up in politics in the past 15 years. LinkedIn has turned everyone into their own personal brand. In the 90s - or at least in the Office Space/Fight Club version of the 90s - you clocked in and clocked out. Now you're expected to be passionate about quarterly earnings, and if you want to be secure in getting that next job after you're laid off from your current one, you better make sure you have a passionate public image, too. Note also, globalization may have something to do with this as well, since you're competing in a global market now, so you need to be better than more than just the local competition.
I posit that maybe being in a world where everyone seems to believe and live the BS has similar negative effects as social media does for causing people depression due to the highlight reel effect. The plausible deniability of "everyone seems to buy into this crap" makes others pretend to buy in too. This has obvious political parallels as well.
It seems rather logical to me. My parents had little choice in the jobs they did, and just stuck with them due to a mix of necessity and convenience. But they aren't "dream jobs" in any way, and nobody feels the need to portray it as such.
So they wanted something else for me. They supported me, they told me to do something I love. This has also been one of the core messages I grew up with in media: Explore your interests! Find the real you! Self-actualize! etc.
The thing is, work is generally work because it needs to be done, but nobody wants to do it. That's the reason you get paid. Otherwise it would be a hobby. Meanwhile, the few fields that at least sound appealing in theory all turn into such a fierce competition that they debase themselves into working for the absolute minimum survivable amount (see journalism). Sometimes below that, if there are enough nepo-babys who can coast on their trust fund anyway.
But wasn't this your dream job? You sacrificed so much just to get here! Your parents supported you so much! You told everyone that this is what you want to do! So there's two options: a) drop out (and often just rinse-repeat in a different field) or b) accept that yes, this is your dream, but you just have to FIGHT HARD and BE PASSIONATE until you prevail. Even if it wasn't your dream job specifically, people generally get much more choice in what they do, so if you end up hating it, it's your own fault for choosing stupid. That's much tougher to swallow than it was in the past; You didn't get a choice, so it wasn't your fault.
Yeah, I actually have my dream job, and it's not all sunshine and rainbows. Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy with my choices and enjoy my job (because I have realistic expectations of how fun work generally is for most people). But I make half what I could be earning in a less interesting position, and the desirability means there was a lot of competition to get here, so everyone around me is extremely competent and extremely passionate. This is great in many ways, but means I live in a constant state of anxiety trying to keep up with coworkers who all seem better at their jobs than me.
Work is work. Most of the time, it's going to kinda suck, even for those of us lucky enough to be doing "meaningful" work that we love. Such is life.
My rule of thumb (coming from engineering, but probably applicable elsewhere) is "cool" (desirable), well-paying, and work-life balance, pick at most two. There is a reason trendy startups can expect 60 hour weeks, but if you don't want those I'd recommend something less sexy but still necessary.
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That has been my cynical view of the "make your passion your work" urgings. Get people who really want to do this job, are very good at this job, and love this job, to work for you for half nothing and not rock the boat because they love the work and think it is really important that it gets done.
All a part of the employee management bullshit about 'avoid paying actual real money, which will cost you, to your stupid workers but instead incentivise the boobs by pats on the head like 'employee of the month' and crap like that which looks like you appreciate them but costs you nothing'.
Then again I started in the world of work during the 80s so cynicism galore there, not the day-glo happy 90s 😊
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I remember reading David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs a few years ago. It felt strange after I got all the way through it. A lot of what he describes as such would be considered a “dream job” to me and a lot of the people I know. Not because that’s what they wanted to do, but because they can fulfill some labor quota that earns them their daily keep, so they can then turn around and do what they actually wanted to do. That’s not a “bullshit” job. That’s a free lunch.
The idea that if people simply were allowed to pursue what they wanted and their livelihood itself wasn’t permanently in hock to an occupation you hated, that civilization would get along just fine is asinine. Graeber I don’t think made that point himself directly in any part of his complete body of work, but it’s essentially an implication of what he is saying.
The problem we have with labor in our economic system is that the economy doesn’t really serve the interests of the community itself. We work to serve the economy. And that’s our “relationship” to “work.” There can be better conditions under which you will still have to labor, but it takes a lot of the physical drudgery out of things. That question goes more to reimagining the whole social/economic order though. Ironically, it’s one of the things “NatSoc’s” (or AuthCenter, whatever they call themselves) love to debate about so much.
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