1/ Going to kickstart a @threadapalooza here.

Topic: The State of Work 2020

I'm going to give you a short intro of why I care then I'll just throw out 1-opinion / 1-like style takes. I imagine this will get a little unhinged towards the end.

2/ A little background. I studied org change, complexity, systems dynamics, supply chain, leadership & other fun stuff in 10+ years working in consulting and a MS/MBA ops program at MIT.

I left my job to my job to make sense of an increasingly confusing world of work.

3/ After I went back into consulting after MBA I started to noticed that almost no one cared how organizations worked. The people that studied organizations had fancy frameworks but they were rarely predictive. They mostly made people feel good.

4/ I became obsessed with how to design an environment around fundamental principles. Build environments & cultures that:
- cultivate learning
- DON'T stifle motivation
- Don't kill emergent experimentation

I realized this was counter to all individual career incentives.

5/ Over time I realized a lot of this tinkering in consulting and initiatives in the corporate world were just part of the performance of work. no one seemed to care if any of it worked.

Most of the big "impact" was finance, M&A, and government affairs were a better ROI

6/ I got a bit exhausted because no one really cared about this and was a bit cynical but eventually realized if I was going to criticize it I had to start writing and sharing my thoughts.

So here we are. Let's dive in with some opinions

7/ Most people are tied to some sort of work belief and don't even know it. Often goes back to protestant reformation or other religious backgrounds.

Oprahs "you need to express your gifts" is the same as Calvin telling people to find their calling

8/ The ikigai chart is absolute nonsense. It takes a japanese idea of "reason for being" and maps the idea that one needs to get paid as part of their reason for being.

9/ Maslow abandoned the idea of a hierarchy of needs almost immediately after publishing it. stop referencing it. he went full hipping without becoming a hippie.

10/ MBTI can be a fun exercise but can we really trust any organization using this to organize their company (ahem Bain and Disney)

11/ Career paths are silly for 99% of people. Most people should aspire to a much more random walk. The career path is an outdated idea from simpler companies and time.

The idea that we need to progress up ranks and incomes keeps people trapped in jobs unnecessarily with.

12/ The US tying healthcare to employment by accident in the 1950s might be the sickest joke the universe has ever played on the world. If anyone thinks this setup is a good idea I don't think we can be friends.

13/ Trying to find meaningful work if you are miserable is likely a lost cause. You need to find meaningful life before you can find any joy or solid relationship with your work

14/ Frederick Taylor did not kickstart the optmization trend. It was knowledge workers who needed to prove that they deserved to stay employed and get promoted in the 70s/80s

15/ The labor market has split into a high-wage and low-wage worker economy. The US is leading the way because we have the most dynamic labor market but eventually the whole world will look like this.

Our middle class work myths are dying.

16/ Covid has unleashed more latent curiosity and creativity in the millenial generation than anyone understands. People have only begun to test the waters in new ways of working, living and where they live.

17/ It is great we have opened up labor markets for men and women in almost all fields. But this combined with the idea that everyone should work has stopped more people from thriving and having families than people think.

18/ In order for work to become fairer to women (its not right now) it would take men to stop competing and working insane hours.

If consulting firms wanted to get 50/50 partners for example, they would just need to cap work hours.

They wont.

19/ If companies really care about work-life balance, they wouldn't force you to volunteer during a workday or give you a stipend for yoga. They would give you Friday off.

20/ The four day workweek is my favorite idea that might transform the way people work and live. It seems tiny but has a major impact on people's relationship to work.

21/ Work has become more necessary and important because especially in knowledge work you move away from your family and friends to find a job. You literally need to belong to something.

People want to go back to the office because that is their church.

22/ Work provided "accidental meaning" for many years because it coincided with a single-income earner family and people locating together in suburbs with active involvement.

Jobs moved to cities + now two-income families mean default work path doesn't provide automatic meaning

23/ Yet companies know people *want* this and literally advertise it. People then think they want that and then try desperately to get it.

I worked at 7-8 companies before I realized meaning comes from your life not job.

24/ The knowledge worker consciousness was totally new in the 1950s and led to a whole new way of conceiving of what life was for. Prior blue collar vs. owner conflict was the primary mode of work so it seemed silly to place too much importance on it.

25/ Knowledge workers saw themselves as eventual business owners / executives / rich people. So they identified with their own journey rather than getting tied up in a conflict.

Thus it became important to be agreeable and conform in a certain way.

26/ Most advice tells young people to follow these same norms except that the workplace is going to eat you up if you conform. You'll end up mid-thirties not knowing what the hell happened over the past 15 years

27/ The Gervais Principle is probably the best guide for navigating a career. In knowledge work what people say is often not what they do. You need to understand power, psychopaths & politics to have any idea whats happening.

28/ Our jobs and companies change us more than we ever change them. Most people don't realize how much their health, happiness and success are dependent on where they work.

29/ The best workplaces have growth and high profit margins. Good culture is always downstream of excess cash.

Also unethical culture can be downstream of excess cash. Just ask Enron.

30/ Elite Business schools will not end. These could probably raise prices 200% tomorrow and people would still come. They are a great place for children of rich people to hang out and meet other people like them.

31/ The optimism around the "creator economy" always misses the fact that for every 1 interesting creator job there are like 10 new gig/precarious jobs emerging. The "creator economy" also turns knowledge workers into total workers.

32/ The creator economy also seems to enable people to escape total work much quicker than if they were in the corporate world. The fact that work is your life makes it much more painful when things are out of balance.

33/ A full-time job kind of tricks people into thinking things are okay in their life even though when at work the person feels totally lost. Unlike the creator they stay in a low-grade burnout for years. The need to induce a crisis can be put off for years.

34/ At work we mostly pretend that everyone is energized, health, able and mentally clear every day. This is insane. Just being in good relationships, eating & sleeping okay is damn hard.

35/ That being said - I'd love to see a company design performance around optimizing for these things.

If you didn't sleep 8 hours, don't come in. No meetings before 10.

36/ The US has steadily been adding more jobs below the median wage than above it every year since 1990. Since 1990!

37/ The wages have been stagnant charts are misleading.

If they accounted for the increase in total compensation including healthcare, US wages are pretty good.

The problem is healthcare. Its too damn expensive and shouldnt be a "perk"

38/ Instead of UBI I want to see three six month paid leave sabbaticals that any american can take at any time after 25 for any reason.

39/ Corporate jobs are underrated right now especially among twitter tech types.

Working at a big company and learning how to engage in this world (even if it can suck) is super valuable to do creative stuff later. These companies teach a certain quality standard

40/ Almost the entire business world lacks good writing and thinking skills. This has done far too much damage to our capacity to think and solve broad problems. We mistake business thinking for tough human problem thinking

41/ A lot of this traces back to what we think college is for. For most people it is "to get a job"

At their best these places are to teach one to be wise. we've lost this but I think universities can rediscover it.

not as bearish on universities as most

42/ A lot of our ideas of success are based on common knowledge of what we think other people think. We all think it is money yet don't like this. It seems if we can loosen this in the next 10 years we can free up more people to work on things that matter to them

43/ As a life strategy getting a full time job and buying things that other people are buying is a great approach. Yet this is squeezing a lot of people at the margin who would likely be much happier at the margin

44/ Most diversity and inclusion programs dont achieve what they claim not because of issues with social justice but because they are just copy pasting the efforts they see other companies do. they don't have a clear vision or purpose for existence

45/ Most business leaders are not willing to say who they want to exlude from their company but are actively doing it all the time. Big companies exclude non-college students and 50-70% of colleges but dont say it.

46/ One of the biggest problems with full-time work is that the paths are too legible and understood. People know exactly what they need to do. This is why working in tech is interesting. A path will usually include a job that doesnt exist yet.

47/ Our labor markets look somewhat okay (at least compared to other countries) but hide the fact that people are working older. Things are really weird because the boomers didn't start retiring 62/65. There is a lag in opportunity for gen x and millennials

48/ This will probably open up in the next ten years but there is a buildup of lack of faith in institutions and lack of faith among young people that they have shots at leading and shaping companies (at least until they turn 55)

49/ There has been a an explosion in the number of steps of career paths because of a slowing growth and a massive boomer population hanging out at the top of orgs. Alternative paths like "non-equity partner" "non client facing consulting" at firms are common

50/ It's also a great thing that people can work later as long as its work they want to be doing. A lot of people passed away after working and while the deeper causes of this are probably worth grappling with, thats the reality right now.

51/ Getting laid off or leaving work is a huge identity crises for many. Much research seems to show this is much worse for men than women. When men get laid off they volunteer LESS than working men.

52/ Gen Z is going to shape the new work myths. They are entering a precarious labor economy AND see it / know it. The millennials were mostly blind because it was just starting when they were graduating. Gen Z will be much kinder than "shut up, work hard + it will be ok"

53/ Gen Z also seems to have much less embedded fear in creation. It is shocking to me how scared very successful high paid individuals are to publish one piece of writing publicly.

54/ University is still a great path for most young people in the US. Alternative paths dont really exist yet with some exception. They are being built for richer / higher classes first then these will be more broadly available in 3-5 years

55/ It is embarassing for American that people that are having their life ruined by student debt. At minimum, bankruptcy should be an option today. An absolute tragedy

56/ The best career advice for young people:
Go work in tech, finance, or somewhere growing 10+% a year. Live simply and build savings so you can bounce out in 5 years and experiment doing your own stuff before deciding whether you want to go back to a FT job

57/ Giving people the option to freeze eggs as a benefit is crappy when offered alone. I think it should only be offered with the option to take a year of paid maternity leave too. I'd like to see what happens when both optons are available.

58/ Most Americans have no idea how rich they are and how high paying the jobs are. An "average" job makes them top 1% in most countries around the world. You could make $30kUS in Spain and be living damn well.

59/ Remote work is going to become much much more normal, especially as part of one's career when they have kids. It will be normal for parents to come in 1 day a week or even less. In consulting, they have been operating like this for decades. 1 day is plenty for in-office

60/ This will reshape where people can live. We will likely see people move to exurbs and more people move to lower cost cities where companies will have to start creating hubs. Consulting does this well too. If you are in another city you can spend your 1 day in another office

61/ There is a huge need for a future of consulting to emerge but it is still very early. The big firms have no idea how to be in the mix but they will spend a lot to try.

The future of consulting is highly targeted high-expertise interventions.

62/ If anyone can get delivery right especially if they can pair technology + staffing, they will build a company bigger than accenture or deloitte (which are massive)

63/ The future of consulting may emerge out of the VC world rather than the business world. They are prototyping a lot of hands-on expertise models because that is a way they compete for companies and they dont need to keep legacy consulting businesses afloat

64/ The current consulting companies still have an enormous impact on the thinking of global corporations. They a/b test the corporate speak which sounds like nonsense to twitter people but is still parotted by CEOs around the world

65/ Thats not to say that its not outdated. Consulting firms succeeded out of a growing large conglomerate age in which large scale optimization was the game. They still don't understand how a network age operates.

66/ I think the biggest problem is that these firms are "too big to think" because of how hard it is to work there they only get the most rule following conforming people joining anymore. Entrepreneurs rather spend 100 hours building something than practicing for interviews

67/ Stripe might be the most important company in the world right now. By lowering friction of making money online they ignite the imagination of whats possible. And most countries on earth right now dont even have access to good banking (yet)

68/ I think the future of nomad hubs / special entrepreneurial zones is going to be 100x what it is now in 2030. Until you've lived in a place like Chiang Mai or Bali you don't really understand what the potential is of these places.

69/ It will be completely normal for a young person in 2030 to take a gap year / travel / go to a nomad hub to learn stuff and start a business. In fact it will be seen as a wise thing to do compared to college.

70/ Countries who want to cultivate these ecosystems will take small amounts of equity in these companies in exchange for tax advantages, easy business formation and a generally nice environment to be in.

71/ In 2030 we will have YouTube billionaires and we will look at ourselves as silly for thinking it was "too late" to start creating content online in 2020

72/ Teaching will dramatically increase in prestige over the next 5-10 years. We will see this emerge as a highly sought after path for young people who combine teaching online & content creation with entertainment & some pedagogy

73/ Someone from outside the educational teaching world or on the fringe will help radically redesign how we think about teaching and education and the purpose of "school"

74/ By 2030 employers will still have no idea how to assess talent but will have the most sophisticated ATS systems convincing them they do

75/ Some new way of orienting the firm will emerge in the next 10 years that helps us move beyond shareholder value which has become an outdated metric to orient behavior around and mostly just about boomers on boards not knowing what else to focus on

76/ Cashier will become a job that doesnt exist. You will need to have some sort of mobile phone or device to purchase things. It seems we will replace at least half of low-wage service jobs. The ones that remain will produce high price stuff for rich people - "wealth work"

77/ A lot of the magic of being an online solo creator right now will become less fun over time as the paths to make money online become more legible and silicon valley eventually starts seeing humans as startups to invest in with ISAs (the dark side of the creator economy)

78/ Lower friction between home buying/selling, better long-term rentals, cheaper ways to build housing, homeschooling, will lead to much more seasonal living among working age population.

79/ The next 10 years are particularly bad for men in the working world. Participation rates will continue to stagnate or fall. More men will need to embrace community drive roles but not sure positive myths will emerge around this very quickly.

80/ No young people will know who Jack Welch was in 2030. Elon Musk will have his own university though.

81/ Many of the people just screwing around and shitposting on twitter now will have absurd amounts of wealth and influence in global culture in 10 years.

82/ A company will be worth $50 Trillion in market cap before the end of this decade

83/ Google will enroll more students in programs, degrees and certificates than the top 50 global universities do now by 2030.

84/ Some sort of weird hustle cult will emerge in the next 10 years where a bunch of young 20 somethings decide to move to an island and try to make billions by any means possible.

Oh wait, is this bitcoin already?

85/ Most rich nations will finally have some sort of talented visa program that is easy to navigate by 2025 (kind of like what canada has)

86/ I don't think we see UBI in the US by 2030. Though some other nation will try it and give us interesting data to look at (likely canada, australia, new zealand or somewhere in the nordics)

87/ There is no talent shortage. It's merely just something that sounds good to say. There are a lot of things like this in the corporate world. Sound good but aren't true. Meritocracy. Inclusive. etc...

88/ A new gary vee will emerge from the web in the next 5 years that will make Gary V's hustle point of view look tame

89/ Most people claim they don't want to quit their jobs because of money and uncertainty. The deeper reason is that they wont have a clear identity - which is disorienting for anyone. However, as off-default-paths become normalized many more people will take career risk

90/ Delusional optimism is why the US has been so successful economically. If we can ever export this mindset to other countries it will be fascinating to see what kind of innovation is unleashed.

91/ The most interesting people I talk to not from the WEIRD countries are always from India. We will see some mind blowing things come out of india in the next 25 years.

92/ There is no post-capitalism. Capitalism is just an emergent operating system. Shareholder value is a new idea from the 1970s. It will keep reinventing itself. Right now we are shifting to attention as the new metric of success (hyper-capitalism)

93/ There may be a psuedo "post-work" however in terms of eliminating a lot of mindless and repetitive jobs. As the middle class jobs continue to disappear (see: Autor) we will eventually have to abandon the stories associated with doing this kind of work

94/ The idea of a "calm company" will become a popular business meme in the 2020s and a way of marketing work to young people that replaces the "meaningful work" + "purpose" culture PR that companeis currently sell.

"calm company" will actually mean something though

95/ Someone asked me this morning what I'd tell my younger self in college. It wasn't really anything about careers.

I told them I would have told myself two things
1. travel abroad
2. stop drinking + partying sooner

96/ I went to a top-tier MBA but since I went the costs for two years have almost doubled. I don't think its a good idea for most people to do a top-tier MBA unless they definitely want to work full-time in big corporations, consulting firms or in finance for at least 10 yrs

97/ What do I wish I knew at the beginning of self-employment?
I think I wish I had started engaging with others online sooner on twitter.
I wish I had known about digital nomad costs & moved to a nomad hub immediately like Bali.
I wish I had left earlier (2-3 years)

98/ Self-employment, if you are comfortable on living on less and hanging out & sharing ideas in public is a cheat mode for work right now. Screwing around will almost inevitable set you up to teach you things and give you more freedom for future opportunities & life

99/ Teal / holocracy / reinventing org stuff falls apart because it depends on a visionary leader (Laloux admits this in RO). Career incentives are counter to this.

It also starts with flawed premise ("work is broken") - work is not broken - its working well and always changing

100/ Right now following the default path with work for the average person is leading people to life paths which are slightly disappointing. Most people that want to thrive need to actively design at least 20% of their life. This is HARD This is what I write about. Join me!

Follow along for more nuanced takes - http://boundless.substack.com 

101/ Going to keep this going a little bit inspired by latest US cargo cult nonsense.

We have a track record of silly handouts because its easier for politicians than fixing hard problems. Stimulus checks & cash for clunkers instead of addressing labor & healthcare issues.

102/ Politicially, the average worker really has no home anymore. Andrew Yang was the person in the US that showed interest in building a labor economy that enables people to thrive. The 78-year olds were talking about coal, labor unions & illegal immigrants

103/ Americans are obsessed with the "job" - less than a third of americans have full-time jobs. Bill Clinton's welfare reform bill turned unemployed mothers into low wage mothers and unemployed people into people on disability that cant look for work.

104/ Few people know that one of the reasons obama backed off single payor healthcare was that he didn't want to get rid of middle class jobs in the insurance industry. all to protect a dumpster fire healthcare system

105/ Leadership in most places is still judge by matching against stereotypes of what we think a leader should be and not looking at simply who has followership. I worked in executive search and we still opted for prototypical aggressive confident males even when clearly wrong

106/ The problem with most research on work is that few people ever have the option to answer "all of these answers feel like a trap" - therefore if you ask people if they have meaning at work, some people will always say yes.

107/ The research seems to show at least in the US that most people are somewhat content and happy with their work. Even the high-wage knowledge workers who are super stressed typically like their current circumstances

108/ However, we have increased our attention on the idea that one should be happy at work and bringing attention to this often finds looking at the flaws. Work has gotten a lot better in the past 25 years but we forget how much.

109/ Our blue collar workers are typically the wisest about how to live life because constant career progression is not a necessary aim of life. Data shows blue-collar work hours down while highly educated work up.

All of this extra hours in knowledge work is self-driven.

110/ I worked at prestigious firms and used to just go home after 8 hours. No one seemed to care whatsoever. Yet no one ever wanted to test this themselves.

"you can't just leave."

"yes, you can actually...watch me"

111/ Bullshit jobs is probably going to be remembered as Protestant Ethic of our time but it probably wont make all that much sense for another 50 years. RIP Graeber

112/ the future of work is not a thing. It’s a collection of five storylines
1. media & academia stats about automation
2. Organizational culture & PR
3. Gig economy good & bad
4. Personal ownership (nomads, creators)
5. Philosophical (we are not workers)

113/ The unpairing of job from place may be great for highly skilled knowledge workers but continues a long trend of atomization. Places enormous pressure on people to design their own meaning, communities and life.

114/ digital nomads have a good view on this. Most people tend to settle into one or two places over time or for long stretches. The ones that like it seem to be slightly more introverted anyway

115/ A lot of knowledge workers came of age in cities with a lot of amenities and experiences and services. A lot of the work relocation is going to be moving to less expensive cities not small communities.