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Lets Fix the Stupid Job Crisis Ourselves
The document discusses the broken social contract between employers and employees and proposes individuals take action to solve the job crisis themselves. It analyzes the workforce as being made up of employees, independents, and CEOs/founders. It argues more people could become independents by creating value and being compensated for work. Challenges include awareness, fear, and lack of support systems. However, coworking spaces provide community support and inspiration. By empowering people to define their own work, many could find fulfilling work and begin solving the job crisis from the bottom up.
Lets Fix the Stupid Job Crisis Ourselves
- 1. Let’s fix the stupidjob crisis ourselves. Seriously, this is getting on my nerves. by Tony Bacigalupo
- 2. First: What the hellis going on?
- 3. The social contract betweenemployers and employees is broken. The deal used to work like this: go to school, work hard, do the work you’re given. In exchange, you’ll receive security in the form of a full-time salaried job. People have gone to school. People have worked hard. But the security isn’t there anymore.
- 4. Why did thathappen? There are a lot of reasons. Outsourcing. Automation. Technological advances. Economic shifts. Working a full-time job in one location for one employer for forever is rapidly losing its place as the de facto way of approaching employment. A lot of people still behave like that’s the case, but it’s pretty clear that’s not how it works anymore.
- 5. So what’s theresult?
- 6. Half of allcollege graduates can’t find work. And they have a lot of debt to pay off, which makes the whole thing a lot more scary.
- 7. Boomers are working pastwhat used to be retirement age Whether by necessity, or because they just want to keep doing what they’re doing, Boomers want to stay in the workforce.
- 8. Lots of peopleare working jobs they can’t stand.
- 9. Lots of peopleare working, but not making enough.
- 10. Lots of people areout of work altogether.
- 11.
- 12. So what can wedo about it?
- 13. I see threeoptions:
- 14. 1. Wait forthe government to fix it for us This option does not excite me.
- 15. 2. Wait forthe big employers to fix it for us This option does not excite me.
- 16. 3. Fix thisthing ourselves. This option excites me.
- 17. Awesome, good call. Now what could we possibly do to solve this thing ourselves?
- 18. Let’s look atwhat we have to work with.
- 19. Let’s say thisbar represents the workforce.
- 20. This group representstraditional, full-time employees. At the extreme left is the 30 year veteran of one company: the quintessential employee.
- 21. This group representspeople building & running high-growth business ventures. CEOs. Founders. People who employ, or aspire to employ, the group on the other side of the bar. At the extreme right end of the spectrum is... let’s say it’s Mark Zuckerberg.
- 22. I should notethat this is not drawn to scale... yet. Help me out with better numbers if you have them.
- 23. In between arepeople who are... somewhere in between. Contractors. Freelancers. Small business owners. People who don’t easily fall into the other two groups.
- 24. These are peoplewho are not dependent on a single employer, nor are they dependent on investors or shareholders.
- 25. So let’s callthese people Independents.
- 26. Employees, Independents, and CEOs. Cool.
- 27. Most talk aboutjob creation focuses on the left side of the spectrum. Getting people back to work. Obvious, right?
- 28. But that’s notsuper useful to us, because there’s not much we can do ourselves to address that. We can’t will businesses into hiring again.
- 29. A lot ofattention is focused on the right side of the spectrum. The logic is compelling: create more jobs by creating more job creators! More startups = more jobs. Yes?
- 30. That’s cool. Idig it.
- 31. Except there’s aproblem.
- 32. Only a tinyfraction of people will ever succeed in building high- growth businesses.
- 33. The number ofpeople who succeed in building scale businesses doesn’t change much, despite tons of efforts.
- 34. Building a growthventure is just not something most of us are going to do.
- 35. So should therest of us wait on the sidelines until the future Zuckerbergs of the world decide to show themselves and start employing us?
- 36.
- 37. What should wedo, then?
- 38. Let’s take anotherlook at that spectrum. What haven’t we covered yet?
- 39. How about thesefolks in the middle? What’s their story? We don’t hear much about them in the news. Let’s break it down a little further and see what we find.
- 40. These folks onthe left side of the spectrum service the traditional employers, just in a more transient capacity. This group is growing drastically.
- 41. These folks onthe right side of the group are running small and medium sized businesses. These businesses make money by providing goods and services. They don’t make billions or employ thousands, but they do make enough to employ the people they need to sustain themselves. This group is growing too.
- 42. So this wholeIndependent workforce is growing. Why?
- 43. Work is increasinglydone on the internet. That’s increasingly something that can be done anywhere. So things like telecommuting and contracting become more practical, while working full-time in one designated place becomes less necessary.
- 44. The internet happensto be a great place to make money building, selling, and generally doing stuff. So the line between doing business and starting a business is getting blurrier. Who isn’t engaging in some kind of commerce online these days, right?
- 45. These people areself-reliant. They are making money doing stuff. They are using readily available technology. That sounds like a good start!
- 46. Independent workers neednot wait for an employer to hire them or an investor to back them.
- 47. That means, ifyou are an independent, you have the ability to CREATE value by doing the work you do.
- 48. (From what Iunderstand, offering something of value and being compensated accordingly is sort of how an economy is supposed to work in the first place.)
- 49. So when youget people to pay you for something that you build or offer yourself, you happen to also be helping to strengthen the economy. That sounds pretty good! So what’s stopping more people from doing this?
- 50. The first challengeis awareness. People aren’t used to thinking of an independent path as a viable option.
- 51. The second challenge is scariness. Working for yourself means you don’t enjoy the support systems you’d expect in a traditional job. It also means you’re responsible. For everything. That’s really scary.
- 52. The third challengeis support. If you want to get a job or start a growth business, there are tons of systems designed to shepherd you through the necessary processes. But to hack it on your own? Not so much.
- 53. What would happen if we started to try tackling these issues?
- 54. Maybe, just maybe,we could start creating jobs for ourselves. And each other.
- 55. In fact, it’salready begun. New communities of independents are emerging everywhere. These would be perfect starting points for people to gather and work on these things together. (They’re called coworking spaces.)
- 56. So we havea way of looking at work that empowers people to to create value for themselves on terms they define. We have the beginnings of a local support system. We have a decent idea of what’s holding it back.
- 57. Is it possibleto inspire enough people to hire themselves to put a serious dent in the job crisis?
- 58. I believe itis.
- 59. It doesn’t haveto be a big deal at the beginning. It can start as a side project or hobby.
- 60. It doesn’t haveto work for everyone. It doesn’t have to work for most people.
- 61. But it couldwork for a lot of people. It’s a start. Maybe a good start.
- 62. It would bea shame to spend our short time on this planet worrying about jobs we don’t want.
- 63. We can thinkof our work as something more.
- 64. We can thinkof our work as not just a necessary drudgery to be avoided, but something to be celebrated.
- 65. This isn’t acomprehensive plan. It’s mostly just an idea. A starting point. Challenge it. Disagree with it. But let’s talk about it.
- 66. Let’s build betterways to help ourselves and each other.
- 67. Join a localMeetup group or coworking community. If one that fits your needs doesn’t exist, find others who feel the same way and start one.
- 68. These problems aren’tgoing to solve themselves. These problems get solved when we solve them.
- 69. Work is nota job we get. Work is a thing we do.
- 70. So let’s getto work!
- 71. Link to thisand more: nwc.co/letsfixthestupidjobcrisis References: nwc.co/job-crisis-references Get email updates: nwc.co/job-crisis-list
- 72. “I have sometime, and if I use it well, it will be enough.” - Amit Gupta Entrepreneur, Leukemia survivor, and inspiration to many