Why Employment

At some point, we have all been an employee. Maybe in food service as a first job or maybe straight out of college when we had bills to pay and no idea what we wanted to do with our professional lives. Accepting employment is the natural course. Just like our time in school, it provides structure to our lives. We progressed from first grade to second grade to third grade, and so on, and now, as an employee, we can progress from clerk to associate to senior associate to manager to senior manager, and so on. And this structure provides security and peace of mind. As an employee, we don't have to worry about whether we'll have enough money for groceries this month. We know that every two weeks, our employer will deposit a certain sum into our bank accounts. With this certainty, we plan our lives. We buy houses with a mortgage and cars with a loan and pay for almost everything on credit. Because we know that with the certain sum deposited in a couple of weeks, we will be able to satisfy our financial obligations. And we don't have to worry about where we will be in a few years. We know that if we put in our hours and perform, just as we had to do in school, we will be promoted to the next level. This progression is satisfying because it elevates us in our hierarchy and likely other hierarchies as well (more on that here), and it frees our minds. Instead of thinking about how to obtain income now and in the future, we plan our next vehicle purchase or Hawaiian vacation.

As a stress reliever and material enricher, employment is the popular choice. It regulates our finances and schedule and provides the structure we've been conditioned to crave. The comfort provided by its structure leads us to have an abundance of free time, which we spend on Netflix series, NFL games, and Instagram. This isn't to say that being an employee is a bad thing. Being an employee is a valuable experience. It teaches us how the majority of the world spends their waking hours and provides for their families. But being an employee has its drawbacks.

For one, it costs a significant amount of our time. There are 168 hours in a week. About 40 of those hours should be spent sleeping, which leaves 128 waking hours that we have the discretion to choose how to spend. Most regular, full-time jobs require at least 40 hours a week, or about a third of a person's discretionary hours. In that context, maybe receiving a regular paycheck isn't so bad. But this context doesn't reveal the true cost of employment. As anyone who has ever been a full-time employee can attest, most of the time, you don't get to pick when you work those 40 hours a week. Instead, you are expected to work those hours on a regimented schedule that aligns with your colleagues and, for most jobs, requires work for 8 hours per day, Monday through Friday. Since sleep generally also has to occur every day, employees generally have to devote half of their discretionary hours on five out of the seven days of the week to work. And yet, that still doesn't tell the full story. Going between working hours and non-working hours doesn't happen with the flip of a switch. An employee has to wake up, shower, get dressed, and commute before time on the working clock can begin. And then there's the time it takes to satisfy our basic needs, such as eating and using the restroom, or fulfill family obligations, such as picking up food and children, which also don't count as time on the working clock. Although the percentages will vary by person and occupation, it is clear that employment requires one to surrender more than fifty percent of one's discretionary hours five days a week to someone else's direction. In the best case, one strikes a balance so that work and obligations are completed with energy and time left over to do the things one enjoys. In the worst case, five out of seven days of the week (more than 71%) are lost to employment because there either isn't enough time or energy to do the things one loves with one's discretionary hours on the majority of days.

Anyone can do this for a week or a month, or even a year. But employment requires more. Typically forty years or more, given today's typical retirement age in the mid to late sixties. Regardless of how one looks at it, employment is time-expensive. The decision to engage in something that costs upwards of seventy-one percent of your discretionary hours during the best years of your life (more on that here) is not a decision that should be taken lightly. And yet, most do take it lightly. We measure jobs in dollars and cents and not years, months, and hours.  Anyone dedicated to a life of employment should, at the very least, honestly evaluate whether the wages they receive from their employment are worth the time cost of his/her particular profession. One's twenties, thirties, and forties are usually years of health, mental sharpness, and physical capability. Everyone will value seventy-one percent of those years differently, but the value should be at least equal to one's employment wages if one is to remain employed in his/her current position.

Beyond the time costs of employment, one should also consider the you cost of employment. The you cost of employment is how much one's employment detracts from one's life purpose and growth as a person. Lots of companies talk about supporting their employees' growth and development, but that talk is a cheap recruitment ploy. Except around the margins, employers don't make more money or increase in value by supporting their employees' broad growth and development. Instead, employers sell employees on supporting their growth and development, but the practical translation of what the employers are selling is that they will support their employees' growth and development only as it relates to their businesses and only in ways that may positively affect their bottom lines.

For example, let's say that Olivia is an engineering manager at a robotics company. She loves building robots that improve people's lives, but that is only part of her purpose in life. Olivia is also deeply interested in Eastern religions and would love to embark on a journey to learn about and experience these religions. Because of her job, she can't enroll in an Eastern religions class at her local college because the classes are only held during her working hours. She could save all her vacation to travel to Asia for three weeks, but then she would miss the holidays with her family, and she knows three weeks isn't enough time to really learn or experience anything deeply. Even if Olivia's employer is among the most progressive companies in terms of supporting its employees' growth and development, it isn't going to support Olivia's personal growth objectives. It will instead offer Olivia an executive MBA education or technical refresher course because these kinds of growth translate into dollars for the employer. Olivia fulfilling her religious purpose doesn't.

Sure there are exceptions for some - those employed in service of a religion or the Red Cross, perhaps. But the exception isn't the rule. The rule is that most individuals have broad and varied purposes in their lives, and their employers will only support those purposes to the extent the employer may obtain a tangible benefit from them. Olivia's employer doesn't want the best Olivia; it wants the most profitable Olivia. And the difference between the best you and the most profitable you is the you cost of employment. It is that part of you that you're dissuaded from nurturing because the benefit isn't monetarily quantifiable.

Another employment negative is that if forces obedience. Most people wouldn't recognize this as a cost of employment because obedience comes so naturally to them, and this is again because we are conditioned to obedience through an education system that values conformity and acceptance of the status quo. Yet, despite our conditioning, humans are not made for obedience. We aren't made to take direction from someone else. We are made to think! We are all capable of it. The ability to think isn't summed up in an IQ test or a certain level of educational attainment. Instead, it is inherent to all of us. Those tests reveal only certain cognitive abilities relative to societal norms. We must recognize that the ability to achieve toward societal norms differs from the ability to achieve one's own ends. Humans have varying abilities to achieve towards societal norms, but all humans can think. And with that ability, humans have the power and capability to pursue their own ends and achieve their own goals.

Regardless of talent or ability, we can all problem solve, and we can all do, with varying degrees of achievement capacity, depending on the activity. Yet, so many resign themselves to a life of employment where the ability to think is impeded by the confines of the company operating manual, which usually boxes one in with a "sorry, but no." Want to work at 3 am because that is when you can do your best thinking? Sorry, we need you online during standard working hours. Want to launch a new product? Sorry, you'll have to wait because we need to have twenty-seven meetings to talk about it first, and then if we decide to proceed, you will have to fight to prove it was your idea to get any credit. Want to actually do the work? Sorry, you need to watch a few presentations and do some trainings on the latest human resources/corporate responsibility agenda item.

If we want to keep employment, we must accept these responses as wise and for the best. In other words, we must accept that our judgment is inferior to someone else's. Sometimes, this may be true, and we must carefully differentiate a learning opportunity from a misguided command. Too often, though, employment is a misguided command. A command to obey. To obey another human. Not a god, but a mortal, just like ourselves, serving a vast mission that we don't influence or control, and often serving themselves as well. For some, this may be acceptable, but we must suspect that for many more, it is not.

Once we accept living the majority of our time under another's direction, we will likely find that we have been tamed. Like the animals in a zoo, most of us will find that our instincts don't fit with our current situation, and our bodies and minds have softened. Whether the lions or the pandas, animals in a zoo don't look as excited for life as those we see in the wild. And this is despite having regular meals, constant shelter, and healthcare - essentially all the benefits of a human having a full-time job. If these offerings don't make the zoo animals' lives better or longer, or more enjoyable, then what is their purpose? At the risk of stating the terribly obvious, these offerings serve the zoo keepers and the zoo patrons. They ensure the animal's most basic needs are satisfied so they will be in shape to be seen, so patrons continue to pay the price of admission, and the zoo keepers can continue to maintain their lifestyles which rely on the animals remaining in picture-worthy condition. To put it more simply, regular meals, constant shelter, and healthcare keep the animals alive at the expense of living. They solve problems created by captivity.

No animal needs help to find food, shelter, or care for itself. They already instinctually know how to do this. And so do we. Yet so many of us choose captivity because we don't trust our instincts, which leads to internal discontent. After all, it takes effort to ignore prompts deeply ingrained in us. Eventually, we grow tired from our efforts to suppress, and because they are instincts ingrained in our genetic material, suppression is ultimately futile. Instincts are always there, and suppressing them will only lead one to wonder what could have been if he or she had lived an authentic life, one that indulged instincts and faced fears rather than hiding in safety. Spending one's vigorous years tamed and tied is the kind of regret that breeds bitterness in old age.

For most Americans and others living in the West, these arguments probably reek of an idealistic worldview with no practical application. And for many people making that assessment, they are probably right. They are right because adhering to these arguments is expensive, especially in the short term. So expensive that giving up employment sounds like getting on a rocket to Mars – sure, it would be cool, but they have no actual interest in making the required sacrifices, which are many. So many people build their lives around the credit employment enables, for houses, cars, furniture, etc., that giving this up not only denies one a great many possessions one has become accustomed to, but it also alienates one from one's friends and family because they too have built their lives on credit and repudiating that life will likely be perceived as an affront to them. In this regard, the young and poor have a distinct advantage over everyone else in transitioning their lives away from employment. The poor because they don't have much to lose and lots to gain, and the young because they have a longer time horizon to make the shift, succeed on their own, and establish new friendships that support their missions.

Even though the young and poor have the advantage when it comes to freeing themselves from employment, they aren't the only ones capable of achieving such freedom. As Epicurus points out, "To live under constraint is a misfortune, but there is no constraint to live under constraint." We all have the power to choose. The difference between those that choose and those that don't is fear. Even the affluent and the advanced aged could choose to rid themselves of their employment constraints. But they are less likely, because they fear living without, or at least living with less. And this is where one must decide what one values in life - possessions and prestige or the ability to control one's time and one's mind. Far too many fail to adequately consider this decision point, which often guides one's life more than any other decision. Think in decades, not days, and then build your life around the values you have chosen. At the outset, this may result in fear-induced nausea, but we must persist. If we've considered and then decided what we value, why work toward anything else?