One weekend in December, I was on a Zoom call with friends. At about an hour into the call, the conversation began to shift from pleasantries and life updates to the heart and soul of good conversations: courageous vulnerability. One friend admitted that she was not loving her job and felt bad about it. This pushed us into an interesting conversation on the mindset that many in our cohort of young professionals share. Even though we almost universally object to it, we feel defined by our careers.
When did careers start defining more and more people? On the Zoom call, an insight was offered: at the beginning of the century, we were in a “production economy” which then became a “service economy” which is now an “identity economy.” The framing can be credited to Esther Perel who describes it in more detail in this Culture Call podcast episode around 20:00. Culture has changed. Roughing over the details, previous generations looked to their spouses and jobs to produce things and to serve them. Our generation (or at least our cohort) has the tendency to expect our spouses and our jobs to define us entirely, including our values.
Careers
Let's look at a couple examples, one of a workplace taking responsibility for being more than just a workplace and the other of a company trying to take less responsibility and getting a mixed response:
Tech HR departments offer health and wellness programs seemingly across the board. All the places where I've worked offered some mix of monthly wellness budgets, onsite yoga, onsite massages, memberships to tele-doc services, and monthly access to coaching and therapy. These benefits went beyond what was provided through health insurance.
Many Coinbase employees and others in the industry were upset when the CEO wrote a letter asking them not to discuss certain political issues at work. From the letter: "Working at an activism focused company may be core to what [some employees] want, and we want to prompt that conversation with their manager to help them get to a better place."
I don’t have a strong opinion on whether employers should be responsible for employee well-being, or whether the Coinbase CEO should’ve written his letter. I would need more context. What I do believe is that if we had strong communities to fall back on, we wouldn’t need these things from our employers. Without strong communities, perhaps as a result of working in a hyper-competitive industry that pushes people to spend too much time at work, maybe employers do need to provide a safe space for civic discourse and programs to promote well-being.
Note that both of these examples come from tech, because I work in tech. I think the increased scope of employers may be less prevalent in other industries. But asking what someone "does for a living" or introducing someone by naming the company they work for and their job title is still a common icebreaker.
Partners
So far we've focused on careers. Let's turn our attention to partners. See if any of this sounds familiar:
Maybe in college or in your early twenties, your buddy or best friend starts dating someone. You and this friend start hanging out a lot less often. Maybe the scenario for you was flipped: you were the one that started dating someone and seeing your friends less often.
It's Friday night. You've been invited to a house party (or more likely, a Zoom call). You're tired from work and you decide to skip, choosing to watch a movie with your partner instead.
Your parents bug you about finding a partner, getting married, or settling down.
When you learn about something exciting, maybe a movie, a new art exhibit, or a travel destination, the first person that comes to mind to tell is your partner, even though you know they won't be that interested.
You've rejected a few potential partners because you didn't connect on certain viewpoints or interests or because they were unable to support you in all the ways you wanted to be supported.
My friend Logan wrote a fantastic piece for NYTimes Modern Love earlier this week. She makes the point I'm trying to make better than I could possibly make it. It's especially meaningful coming from Logan because she's a dating coach (her book on finding love How to Not Die Alone comes out in a few weeks!). Here's a snippet from “We Needed More Significant Others”:
An [Other Significant Other (OSO)] can be a friend or family member who fulfills a need that your significant other cannot: a triathlete who exercises with you because your partner doesn’t, or a sibling you call to vent about work because your significant other hates corporate politics. This web of support is not new, but for many of us it has been lost. For couples to survive and thrive, they need OSOs.
I recommend reading that article then coming back to this one
Hit the pressure release valve
My last essay was on the Three types of connection: emotional, social, and collective. Careers provide us with collective connection and partners provide us with emotional connection. The "Middle Layer" is a term I use to refer to our friends, teammates, neighbors, and extended family. This Middle Layer provides us with social connection. When it's weak, we put undue pressure on our careers and partners.
At the root, the idea that we need our careers and partners to be everything is tied to the slow degradation of our social fabric. The Middle Layer is weak because the structures that were in place to encourage social connection have atrophied. We can restore the Middle Layer but it will require collective action.
I can imagine a world where I wouldn’t need to bring politics to work because I’m actively involved in organizations outside of work. With these organizations, I’m able to discuss my viewpoints and engage in activism. These organizations get strong engagement, not just from me but from many others. They therefore exert as much or more influence on our opinions and behaviors as my employer. Similarly, I may not need my job to provide health and wellness programming if I’m part of communities that nudge me to exercise and to eat well.
I can also imagine a world where we have more significant others. This takes the pressure off of our partners to support our every whim. And we feel less pressure to find partners that are a match for us in every dimension. Our parents and friends encourage us to build and hold us accountable for building relationships that extend beyond a relationship with one other person.
It's healthy to have some separation between our identities, our careers, and our partners. Part of this is because each of us is a truly multi-faceted snowflake and no single other person or single other job can possibly fit that perfectly. Part of it is also about resiliency, enabling and encouraging us to change, grow, and adapt to a changing world.
Act now (COVID edition)
Civic engagement doesn’t require joining an official organization. It can be as low commitment as seeing if some of your friends would be interested in discussing politics without getting too heated and with an open mind toward opposing viewpoints. You could get together and register to vote or fill out your ballots over pizza (over a video call).
Start a weekly game night over Zoom or (if local regulations permit) invite someone to go for a walk outside.
Share your favorite online resources and habits in the comments.
I want to hear from you
Do you find yourself leaning on work to define who you are and your life’s purpose? In what ways? Why do you think this happens?
Did you try one of these suggestions? How did it go?
Next up
Though the Middle Layer has been weakening in our society overall, there are many pockets where communities are strong. One topic of many future essays will be on these exemplary communities and how to replicate what they do well or how to join them.
Sometimes we join communities in service of our hobbies... and sometimes we adopt hobbies in service of community. In my first essay, I focused on the former. In a future essay, I plan to explore the dynamics of the latter.
I agree that with a stronger middle layer of connection, we wouldn't put an undue burden on some of our collective relationships for things like discussing current events, politics, or even an expectation of friendship/fun.
But I'll also add that new-age tech companies have marketed themselves as serving both the middle and the collective layer -- "work here and make new friends!" So part of the issue at Coinbase might be employees' expectations of a more intimate level of connection that was promised to them, when really they should have their own middle layer for some of those needs.