A life without careers - what might Betty say?
- Summary:
- A life without a defining career suggests many problems, even in a world where the definition of work is being constantly rethought.
"What are you going to do when only stupid people will work for you?"
This was the question asked by a participant in one of my workshops when another member of the group was being bullish about banning social tools in his business. His attitude is common, trying to maintain control, clinging to an old world that is disappearing around him. Seeing a world of threat rather than a world of opportunity.
There's no point struggling to maintain stability. Careers are already a thing of the past. A job for life a nostalgic memory. For some this is terrifying; for others it isn't even yet apparent. For the rest it is an exciting opportunity to use their energy and intelligence to shape their world and experience fun and vitality while doing so.
We have at our disposal more resources than ever before to get smarter, faster, and do more with what we learn. It would be a shame to miss the opportunity...
Spot the bit that worries?
Careers are already a thing of the past. A job for life a nostalgic memory.
Now place this into the context of the question being asked. Here's the point: if Euan is right then so is the questioner but for reasons that may turn out to be the ultimate irony. The notion of a job for life may well be gone for many people but it is strange how in recent times I've come across many perfectly happy 'do-ers' as in wise shop workers who proudly tell me they've worked at [name your brand here] for 15, 20, 25, 30 years.
In offering that detail, they're providing the subtext to what really matters: the experience needed to understand how things work and how to handle exceptions, often in a highly complex environment. You can't get that from a person who's been in the job five minutes or five months. In some places, maybe not inside five years.
Those of us who have been in and around technology for 35 or more years well remember the times when exceptions were always handled by 'Betty in the corner.' Betty was the person who had figured out all the system wrinkles and most often proved more efficient in handling problems than placing requests with the IT department. Betty was never rewarded for her skills in the conventional sense but we would all lament the day she retired, especially if her knowledge had not been passed on.
Euan's answer comes from the freedom to tap into 'vast resources' but I question whether that is much more than a fanciful dream. If there are no careers then where does the vested interest in acting as a good player come from? If I am in a job that might end any day, then why would I invest an ounce of myself into helping others? In short - where is Betty when you need her?
Part of the answer comes in the form of creeping commodification. The other week I spoke to a group of consultants about how their daily grind might become a thing of the past much sooner than they think if the levels of automation being applied to routine tasks works out as some have predicted.
In my mind this opens up opportunities to do new and exciting things but it comes at a price: the requirement to become a polymath. It is a very tough reality that requires inter alia, many of the skills that Euan promotes but which are largely foreign in a world where the hoarding of intellectual property is rewarded.
The difficulty is that Euan may well be right. When we see how the nascent careers of hopeful entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley is leading to a new form of exploitation, it is hard to understand how Euan's much beloved view of opportunity plays out in any meaningful sense.
Check this long 2014 story about how it works. Buried in the text is this remarkable vignette:
These young men were only happy when they were talking or thinking about being in the business of wholesale transformation. On the day the iOS developer got his job making doctors obsolete, a Ruby developer who had recently moved out, came back to the house to cook dinner.
He was six months out of a technical institute in the Northeast and had just gotten his first job ever. The company did payroll.
“These guys raised $6.1 million in seed funding out of Y Combinator. That’s probably the biggest seed round in Valley history. We’ve got a ton of momentum, solving real problems. It’s pretty awesome.”
“What problem are you solving?”
“Payroll.”
“What about payroll?”
“The problem of payroll. You should hear the emails we’re getting from our customers.”
The Ruby developer couldn’t name a problem with payroll that his company was solving; he thought they were just solving a problem called payroll. He was only on payroll for the first time in his life, and needless to say had never himself run into payroll problems. But he was working for a startup with YC credentials that had leveraged new technologies and raised a lot of money, so he could reasonably feel now that he hadn’t just joined a company that did something incremental—fixed the various problems with payroll, of which there are many—but something revolutionary, i.e., fixing the problem of payroll.
Anyone with a smattering of payroll knowledge is no doubt shaking their heads in disbelief at the likelihood of this whacked out idea actually working. That's the nature of extreme innnovation today but just on the off chance let's not totally hose yon fella's unbridled enthusiasm.
It's an extreme but all too common example, which, when magnified, speaks to the unerring greed for cash - and lots of it - on both sides of the investor equation. Forget the rose tinted world of 'opportunity' - whatever that means. This is about institutionalizing failure at massive scale, leaving the nuggets for a very small handful of super rich VCs.
Political statements aside, it also means that once burned out from chasing impossible dreams, youngsters are settling into a mundane if well paid existence that likely holds little hope of promotion, little hope of meaningful career development but many hours of drudgery that are little better than filling the canyon shelves at the local Wal-Mart. Short of snapping out of this existence into something completely different, I see this as a hopeless dead end. If that is the end of career then Euan is correct. If it is like that for folk who are in high demand then what of everyone else?
In my early career I spent years learning the accountant's craft. Today, I'm told with confidence by one consultant they could teach the fundamentals of accounting over a few weekends such that a developer could start becoming productive on such systems. The conviction with which I heard this was staggering yet speaks directly to the idea that anything can be deskilled to the point of banality.
That's a lie, the proof of which I have seen among developers at a very large software company struggling to create a trial balance that adds up correctly. If you're not an accountant that likely means nothing but it is one of the foundational requirements of any accounting system. Without it, the system is unfit for purpose.
In short, the ease with which the notion of 'career' is now being consigned to the dustbin of a language around the future of work is both disturbing and deeply troubling. But if true, is it any wonder then that the sustainable positive outcomes put into managing so-called talent are proving elusive?
Check this from a recent conversation between Janine Milne and Dr Emma Parry of Cranfield School of management. Having wandered through some of the pros and cons of applying new technology, Janine concludes:
Technology does have the power to change not just the how HR professionals work, but the very fabric of what they do. It’s not just a case of automation but transformation.
Without effective change management of the people and the processes nothing will really alter. It’s time for HR to ditch the silo mentality and think more broadly about the business requirements.
It's also time for management to rethink what they mean by the future of work because change management that exists outside of a framework of valuing people will always fail. In that, the notion of a career is central to what passes for stability. If not then management should not be surprised to find itself surrounded by stupid people.
In the meantime, Euan might reflect upon the fact that he had a long career in the area in which he holds considerable expertise. You cannot buy that experience. It requires a career to acquire it in much the same way any level of acknowledged expertise requires the pursuit of career. It's what Betty had all those years ago and which those of us with long memories fondly recall as providing deep and lasting value.
Image credits: both via Fotolia. Story image: Business, Opportunity,© Olivier LeMoal. Featured image: Personal development career,© Jakub Jirsák