The end of work as we know it

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The New Year is a traditional time for predictions. So here are mine, for the workplace. I predict an end of work as we know it, of course. But don’t get jumpy – it’s not going to be here in 2008. It’s going to come sooner than later, as the next generation infiltrates the ranks of workers. The best way to be ready is to start adapting your thinking today, because the way we think about work now is going to become obsolete.

The end of gender disparity
Pay is equal for men and women until there are kids. This inequality will change when Generation Y starts having kids because the men are committed to being equal partners in child rearing. We see already that among Generation X men and women are willing to give up pay and prestige in order to get time with their families. Generation Y’s demographic power will provide critical mass for big change.

The end of the stay-at-home parent
Women have already widely rejected the idea of sacrificing their time with children to a relentless, high-powered, long-houred job, and men are following suit. Women have also found that staying at home with kids all day is boring. Institutions are responding — finally — to these trends. Parents will choose some form of shared care. Each parent will work part-time and take care of kids part time.

The end of the grind
People will choose to work as a way to keep the job of raising children from being dull and alienating. The Washington Post reported that given the choice, most women with kids would rather work part-time than either be with kids full-time or work in an office full-time. People will choose to work because they love what they do. Generation Y is more community oriented and team oriented than any preceding generation. These people will want to work to be part of something larger than themselves. Also, this generation sees work as a path to personal growth – something to look forward to.

The end of “work friends”
Peoples’ networks will be filled with close friends who do not distinguish between work/family/play. As people create more integrated lives, their friendships will also be more integrated. Peoples’ work habits and work connections will make daily life look more like a salon than an office.

The end of office life
People will work from home, from their friends’ homes, from the beach, all the time. The need to have a home office will decrease because Generation Y will never really learn how to work 9 to 5 in an office anyway. They grew up blending homework and friends while they multi-tasked in their bedroom, and once they enter the workforce, they extend this behavior to everywhere — work life and home life will be blended in a way that makes each more rewarding.

The end of consulting
Everyone will be a consultant so the term will be useless. Employers will decrease costs by making almost everyone a consultant. Employees will push for this to get more flexible hours. People already feel no long-term loyalty, and people are already project-focused instead of job-focused. On top of that, everyone wants to be a consultant “if they could just build up a clientele.” One of the best harbingers of this trend is Web Worker Daily – a blog aimed ostensibly at people who do not have cubicle jobs, but appears to apply to every worker in some way or another.

The end of hierarchy
Pecking order really only matters if you are hanging out at the office all day, reinforcing ranks. So the less time people spend at their desk, the less they will care about rank. And the more people are on their own, the more they will focus on their own skill set. There is little point in climbing ladders when you know they won’t be around at one place long enough to hit every rung. The question people will ask managers is not, “When can I get a promotion?” but rather, “What can you do to help me expand my skills set?”

So what does this mean for you? Don’t be constrained by old ways of thinking. And don’t be scared of big change. If you are honest with yourself about what you’d really like for your life, you’ll probably find that you fit in just fine with the future of the workplace. For most of us, it can’t come too soon.

The changes that are coming to the workplace reward people who have strong relationships, entrepreneurial spirit, and a talent to leverage. People who don’t love their work won’t get any. People who don’t have strong personal ties will have no idea what the point of work is. I think this is all good news, even for those who hate change.

But I wonder, what do you guys think of these predictions? Do they seem right to you? Am I missing something? Have some things already happened? Are some things so far off we shouldn’t even be talking about them? Tell me what you think.

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What to consider when considering a workplace hook-up

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The number-one rule, of course, is you should not be flagrant. A new handbook for workplace dating, Office Mate, is full of practical precautions like asking the person out in the parking lot rather than their cube, and trying happy hours for truly fair playing ground.

Why the caution? According to a Gallup poll, people say they are more offended by someone kissing a co-worker than they are by someone stealing from the office or drinking on the job. And Barnes & Noble is so offended that they won’t even carry Office Mate in stores, even though it is likely that about fifty percent of Barnes & Noble employees have hooked up with a co-worker, and surely they could all use a handbook.

Attitudes toward office mating get more lax as you go down the corporate ladder. Younger people expect to hook-up with coworkers. After all, they are working most of their waking hours, so it’s a natural spot to search for romantic opportunities.

It used to be that women had to preserve what little power they had at the office and couldn’t squander power with bedroom antics. Today, though, women are equals for the most part, and in major cities women earn more than men. This parity leaves a lot of room for negotiating in and out of bed.

And women don’t have time to waste. Most want to get married by the time they are 30 so they probably want to have the right relationship in place by the time they are 28. This means they will probably have to date men they work with in order to meet their timetables. (And if you think playing beat-the-clock is unnatural, think again: Scientists surmise that women are so optimized for the game of beat-the-clock that a first kiss is a woman’s biologically attuned tool for quickly weeding out bad mating material.)

Also consider this: We do best when we have limited choices, which makes the workplace is more appealing than say, Match.com. Karim Kassam studies how we deal with choices, and he found that we are much more satisfied with outcomes when we are picking from four or five things than from many more.

Kassam says we have a “psychological immune system” that helps us to see outcomes as positive. He is at Harvard, so it’s not surprising that he uses the Ivy League as an example: If you get into Harvard but not Princeton, you can say to yourself that Princeton is too much of a country club anyway. But if you get into Harvard but not Princeton, and not Stanford then you can’t say Princeton was too pretentious for me because Stanford is less pretentious than Harvard.

“The more alternatives there are,” says Kassam, “the more psychological maneuvering you have to do to tell yourself that your outcome is the best.”

Apply this to dating. You are much better off choosing from the five people you spend your days with than from the 6000 people available to you online. You might think that you will find someone better online, but in fact, you will have a harder time convincing yourself that it is someone good.

The problem is, workplace romance is a slippery slope, especially because not every hook-up is about establishing a lasting marriage. And some are about disrupting a marriage.

A one-night stand, for example, might improve your health, and, timed right, even make you a better public speaker. But be careful about letting things get too intense, because the human brain in love is like the human brain on cocaine: Totally obsessed.

Helen Fisher is an anthropologist who studies love, and she found that the same part of our mind that looks for more cocaine is the part of the brain that thinks about the person we are in love with. We all know how effective the coke addict is at work; the same can be said of the romantically obsessed.

And, bad news for people who think they will have a quick affair that won’t get messy: the human brain is capable of feeling attached in a long-term way to one person while at the same time in love with another person.

If you are feeling like you want to have a one-time fling, think about forgoing the orgasm. Because Fisher says that, just like the addict who is hooked the first time, you can fall in love from just one orgasm. (Here’s a fun and interesting video of Fisher talking about this topic at TED.)

It’s a different ball game if you travel a lot for work – different ball game as in people play more often.

A Yahoo poll found that most extramarital flings happen while someone is on the road. So it surprised me that only 10% of people on the road take their wedding rings off. But then I was sitting next to a guy on a plane who was wearing a wedding ring, and I told him about that research. He said he thought that women were more likely to hook up with a guy who was wearing a ring, because married men are safer. Then, when the plane landed, he asked me out.

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Make training a priority

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Don’t jump so fast for that promotion or raise you’re about to win. Today’s workplace is largely unstable — people get laid off and job hop constantly, and in general, staying anywhere more than five years is a career liability. Your learning curve flattens out so much that you’re not gaining skills fast enough to stay competitive in the field.

In this environment, training is worth more than a promotion or a raise, and in fact, you’d do well to make a trade if someone offers you either. Training is the new currency of the workplace. Here are four reasons why:

1. Promotions are stressful.
When you get offered a promotion, it’s supposed to be a reward for good work. But in fact, most promotions derail you.

Think about it: You’re creating a career path that’s customized to your skills, strengths, and personal goals. How could anyone else create a path that’s right for you? Unfortunately, most companies structure a single corporate ladder and promote people upward whether it’s good for them or not.

In fact, most people do good work and then get promoted into a position they’ve shown no aptitude for. This is most pronounced when, say, a creative person or technical person gets promoted into management. In fact, most promotions are so misguided they’re more stressful than divorce.

2. Raises are negligible.
What do you get in exchange for taking the huge risk of leaving something you’re good at to do something you’re unproven at? What do you get in exchange for derailing your personal plans to follow someone else’s path? A 3 percent raise (on average), or 10 percent if you’re lucky.

Let’s say you get a 10 percent raise. If you’re earning $50,000, that’s $5,000. After taxes it’s around $3,500 — if you even stay in the job for another year. That amount of money won’t change your life, and even if you think it will, consider all the extra hours you’ll be working because you got promoted.

3. Mentors make a real difference.

What will change your life? Mentoring. People who have a mentor are more successful than people who don’t, across the board. For example, people with two mentors are 50 percent more likely to reach their next career goal than people who don’t have mentors.

So one thing you could do is spend less time gunning for that promotion and more time focusing on what you need to do to get a mentor. For example, ask good questions of the people you admire, and spend extra time getting to know people outside of your core group of coworkers.

It would be great if you could take your money from a promotion and buy a mentor, but life doesn’t work like that. (Although you could take the money and hire a career coach.)

4. Training creates stability.

You can trade money for training, though, and that’s what you should do. Your career trajectory and your ability to create a stable income are dependent on your skill set. There’s no job stability in the workplace today, so you have to count on yourself by being very desirable to employers. You do this by getting lots of training, and mentors to guide you on how to use that training.

There’s a huge range of training available today — you can get trained in how to deal with your email, how to connect better to people you speak to, and how to transition from college to adulthood. Have your company pay for this sort of training — it’s the kind that changes your life.

While a promotion actually makes your life more unstable, training creates more stability in your life. And that, rather than more money or a promotion, should be the real reward for performing well in your job.

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Twentysomething: Why I regret getting straight A’s in college

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This is a guest post from Jon Morrow, who is 25 years old. His blog is On Moneymaking.

By Jon Morrow – I nearly killed myself in college to get straight A’s. Well, almost straight A’s. I graduated with 37 A’s and 3 B’s for a GPA of 3.921. At the time, I thought I was hot stuff. Now I wonder if it wasn’t a waste of time. Let me explain:

1. No one has ever asked about my GPA.
I was told that having a high GPA would open all kinds of doors for me. But you know what? I interviewed with lots of companies, received a total of 14 job offers after graduation, and none of the companies asked about it. They were much more impressed with stuff like serving as Chief of Staff for the student government and starting a radio station run by 200 volunteers.

I suppose a college recruiter from a Fortune 500 company might ask, but honestly, I can’t see any employer hiring a straight-A student over someone with five years of relevant work experience. It might tip the scale in a competitive situation, but in most cases, I haven’t seen that grades are really that important to employers.

2. I didn’t sleep.
Unless you’re a super genius, getting 37 A’s is hard work. For me, it was an obsession. Anything less than an A+ on any assignment was unacceptable. I’d study for 60-80 hours a week, and if I didn’t get the highest grade in class, I’d put in 100 hours the next week.

Translation: I didn’t sleep much. From my freshman to junior year, I averaged about six hours a night. By my senior year though, I was only getting 3-5 per night, even on weekends. I was drinking a 2 liter bottle of Mountain Dew and 2-3 energy drinks per day just to stay awake. Not only is that unhealthy, but it’s not particularly fun either.

3. I’ve forgotten 95% of it.
I majored in English Literature and minored in Communication Theory. The main reason I chose those subjects was I thought they would teach me how to write and speak, two skills that would serve me well for the rest of my life.

Boy, was I stupid. Instead, I spent all my time reading classic literature and memorizing vague, pseudoscientific communication theories. Neither are useful at all, and I’ve forgotten at least 95% of it.

I’d guess the same is true for most college graduates. Tell me, what’s the point of spending 60-80 hours a week learning things that you immediately forget?

4. I didn’t have time for people.
Being in the student government and running a radio station, I had lots of opportunities to build a huge network. But I didn’t have time. Between studying and doing my job, I had to prioritize the people I wanted to develop relationships with and narrow it down to the handful who could help me the most.

That’s no way to go through school. College isn’t so much a training ground for entering the work place as a sandbox for figuring out who you are and how you relate to other people. You develop your social skills and forge relationships with people that might be colleagues for the rest of your life.

If I could do it all over again, I would spend less time in the library and more time at parties. I would have 50 friends, not 3. I would be known for “the guy that knows everyone,” not “the smartest guy in class.” Not only because it would’ve been more fun, but because I would still be friends with most of those people now and would have access to the networks they’ve developed over the last four years.

5. Work experience is more valuable.
In retrospect, I could’ve probably spent 20-30 hours a week on my studies and gotten B’s. That would’ve freed up 30-70 hours a week, depending on the course load. When I think of all of the things that I could’ve done with those hours, I just shake my head.

If there’s one thing graduates lack, it’s relevant work experience. If you want to be a freelance writer, you’re much better off writing articles for magazines and interning with a publishing company than working your tail off to get straight A’s. The experience makes you more valuable to future employers and usually results in a paycheck with a few more digits on it.

What about Graduate School?
If you’re getting your masters, going to law school, or becoming a doctor, then you’ll need all 37 of those A’s to get into the best school possible, and you can safely disregard this entire post. Just be sure that you follow through. I thought I would go to law school, and then I found out what a miserable career it is and how little it actually pays. All of those good grades are now going to waste.

It also comes down to the question, “What’s the most effective use of your time?” If you can’t imagine living without an advanced degree from an Ivy League school, then reading until your eyes fall out and sleeping on a table in the library is a perfectly defensible lifestyle.

On the other hand, if you want to get a job and make as much money as possible, then good grades aren’t going to help you as your teachers and parents might have you believe. You’re better making powerful friends, building a killer resume and generally having the time of your life on your parent’s dime.

Jon Morrow’s blog is On Moneymaking.

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Once you’re done with college, what should you focus on next? It’s clear your grades don’t matter, but what does matter? The most important thing after you graduate college is to treat your 20s like they matter. This is not practice. This is your life. And here: How to Make Your 20s Count. 

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Five things people say about Christmas that drive me nuts

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Christmas does not belong in the workplace because it undermines diversity at work. And businesses that promote diversity have more profits in the long run than companies that do not have a diverse workforce.

A big problem with Christmas is that those of us who have no reason to celebrate it have to spend a month between Thanksgiving and New Year’s dealing with Christmas at work. Christmas is the only religious holiday that everyone has to stop working for. It’s the only religious event that offices have parties to celebrate. These practices alienate non-Christians.

Businesses that curtail practices that alienate minorities will see growth to their bottom line as a direct result of this action. And besides, promoting acceptance of diverse backgrounds at work enriches our lives, independent of the bottom line.

But encouraging diversity doesn’t mean diverse ways to celebrate Christmas. Diversity is giving people space to ignore Christmas. Forcing people to take the day off requires everyone to run their work life around this holiday in a way they might not have chosen for themselves. Yet still, Christmas continues to permeate workplaces across the United States.

Do you want to make a difference? Start with yourself. When it comes to discussing Christmas in the workplace, here are five offensive things people say to someone who doesn’t celebrate Christmas. Don’t say them.

1. “Christmas is not a religious holiday.”
The only people who think Christmas is not religious are the Christians. Everyone else thinks, “This is not my holiday.” In fact, only a Christian would feel enough authority over the holiday to declare that it is not Christian.

To think that Christmas is for everyone is tantamount to Americans who think that everyone says bathing suit for the thing you wear to go swimming. In fact, the British say “swimming costume” but you’d never know that if you only hang around Americans. The smaller your frame of reference the more convinced you are that the way you do things is the way everyone does things.

2. “Stop complaining! You get an extra day off from work.”
I don’t want a day off on Christmas. It’s a great day to work. No one calls. No one interrupts me. And in many workplaces there’s great camaraderie in the office on Christmas because only a few people are there, and they all have something in common: They don’t celebrate Christmas.

I want a day off for Yom Kippur, which I usually have to take a personal day for. Why do I have to take a personal day for Yom Kippur but no one has to take a personal day for Christmas? This is not equal treatment for religious groups.

3. “Christmas is about good cheer. Focus on that and lose your bad attitude.”
I know I have a bad attitude. But consider that the fact that good cheer is mandated in December is also a Christian trope. For example, Thanksgiving is the holiday that makes a lot of sense to surround with good cheer. It’s about gratitude. Makes sense that we’d focus on Thanksgiving.

And the idea that we add Hanukkah to the mix is ridiculous. Hanukkah is about a war victory. The good cheer mandates are not coming from the Jews except in a sort of peer pressure way to cope with the Christian insistence that we all be happy because the Christians are happy.

4. “You can also take a day off for Hanukkah.”
First of all, Hanukkah is eight days. Second of all, the holiday isn’t a big deal to us, except that it’s a way for Jewish kids to not feel outgunned in the gift category. Jacob Sullum wrote in Reason magazine last year, “It is inappropriate…to make such a fuss over Chanukah, a minor Jewish holiday whose importance has been inflated in the popular imagination by its accidental proximity to Christmas.”

So look, we don’t want a day off for Hanukkah. Or any other Jewish holiday. We want floating holidays that everyone uses, for whatever they want. It doesn’t have to be religious, or it can be. But we don’t need our work telling us when to take time off. It’s insulting and totally impractical.

5. “We get Christmas off at work because this is a Christian country.”
People actually say this to me. Every year. I’m not kidding. People tell me that I should move to Israel if I don’t want to celebrate Christmas. Really.

I tell you this so that you understand what it’s like to be a minority. The majority of the country is not New York and Los Angeles, and the majority of the country thinks Christmas is actually sanctioned by the government. For example, my son’s public school in Madison, Wisconsin has the kids make a December calendar that includes the birthdays of four saints. Surely this is illegal mixing of church and state, but I don’t hear any complaining from parents.

People want tolerance and diversity but they are not sure how to encourage it. There is a history of tolerance starting first in business, where the change makes economic sense: Think policies against discrimination toward women, and health insurance that includes gay partners. Tolerance and awareness in the workplace reliably trickle down to other areas of society.

So do what you can at work, where you can argue that tolerance and diversity improve the bottom line, and you will affect change in society, where tolerance and diversity give deeper meaning to our lives.

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