Is very good that everything is back to normal in the office now, isn’t it? If “normal” means mass layoffsempty office buildings, confusing return to office policies, AI panicand the whiplash feeling that just as employees were beginning to redraw some boundaries between work and home, an economic downturn has forced society to care even further about work. Managers are also channeling this by emphasizing “efficiency,” at least if they’re not among the many managers Mark Zuckerberg has fired in his quest for, well, efficiency.
In this sense, the new book by Simone Stolzoff could not be at a better time. The Good Enough Job: Getting Life Back From Work it postulates that we, and Americans especially, have fetishized work to the point that we have lost our identities. “For administrative professionals, jobs have become akin to a religious identity: In addition to a paycheck, they provide meaning, community, and a sense of purpose,” says Stolzoff, a designer who worked at IDEO and wrote for the atlanticquartz and WITH CABLE.
The book begins with a parable about an MBA guy urging a fisherman to turn his business into a global operation. The fisherman replies that he already has what the MBA promises he could achieve in the long run: enough success to feed himself and his family, as well as plenty of leisure time. The MBA is of course confused. It’s a tiny but significant story that goes down easy as an oyster; the book is a tasty meal of stories and anecdotes to snack on.
work good enough, which I’ve been reading this week, also includes reports on the decline of organized religion, the rise of the always-online work culture, and our willingness to use work as a means of self-fulfillment. It all adds up to a stark portrait of a truly work-obsessed society. That’s risky, Stolzoff says, especially in light of recent layoffs in the tech sector. I talked to him about our relationship with work and whether it’s possible to achieve some kind of work-life balance in the modern age. The book comes out in the United States on May 23.
WIRED: Why is office work so weird right now? Assuming you agree that it is, in fact, weird.
simon stolzoff: Yes. I remember working as a summer camp counselor growing up and during our training, the camp director would always say, “The biggest fear of kids is that no one is in control.” And I think that’s happening to office workers right now, without a clear mandate or a clear vision of what the future of the workplace looks like. It feels like everything is in flux. Managers are grappling with their own uncertainty around reassessing the role of work in their lives while also trying to lead and speak with confidence about a future no one can predict.
Just yesterday someone said to me, “I’m a manager and my employees come to me and are open about the fact that they’re updating their LinkedIn profiles and resumes.” She has been telling them that she is doing the same. Increased uncertainty has led to much more open communication about the fact that even jobs that felt stable aren’t necessarily stable. But this also speaks to the fact that no one really knows what the future of work holds and people are just making it up as they go along.
It sounds like a continuation of the pandemic, in the sense that all of this has led to some people being more vulnerable and transparent in the workplace.
It’s a combination of the pandemic and the economic climate. A YouTube employee told me how Alphabet is getting workers into the office three days a week. And he said that on the one hand, he thinks it’s bullshit and that the company is just trying to justify the capital expenditures that they’ve made on the offices. But he also admitted that it makes sense because morale is low and employee culture is non-existent and going back to the office is really one of the best ways managers have found to facilitate a more collectivist identity.