other gigs
Every week at the bottom of this newsletter, I’ve been linking to a couple of jobs that I think are pretty neat. The jobs I feature are kind of all over the place. Sometimes, I’m trying to promote a job because I know the hiring manager and I’m trying to help, but mostly I’m posting jobs that I wish I could do.
Don’t get me wrong—I love my job. Also, I’m hardly qualified to work on augmented reality or data science. That said, I do love learning about other jobs. I wonder if this is a trait that makes me uniquely suited to being a career counselor or if everyone kind of loves fantasizing about careers in a million other fields? I suspect it’s the latter. Who doesn’t love imagining what it would be like to be Head of Creation at LEGO?
At one point, I took this interest of mine a little too far and ended up with three different jobs—at the same time. It was nuts, but also kind of neat. I was a career counselor at MIT, a staff writer for The Muse, and an international student advisor for Campus Bridge. They were all tangentially related, of course, because that’s what I’m qualified to do, but I probably would have loved it even more if they were in more disparate fields.
And, I really did love it. I even wrote about it for The Muse. The article was titled Why I have 3 Jobs (and You Should, Too). I went on and on about why I thought this was a great idea. (Build your skills! Expand your network! Diversify your income!) It was such an easy article to write, because I so believed in the message. Then I sort of forgot about it. I was writing a lot back then and I had to keep it moving.
I write a lot less now. Just this and the book I’m supposed to be editing. But the thing about publishing online—or maybe publishing in general—is that your work is always out there. So, every once in awhile someone will tweet one of my old articles or The Muse will decide to re-promote an older piece. It must have been at least a couple of years ago now, but the 3 Jobs article starting getting some action again and someone responded in a way that I still haven’t forgotten—partially because I’m embarrassingly sensitive to criticism, but mostly because it rang so true even though she was disagreeing with me.
“AKA why neoliberalism makes wage slaves of us all. COOL. I just want 1 job where I'm paid enough to live and have hobbies and interests outside of work and focus on family. Is that too much to ask?”
Okay then.
My first instinct was to be defensive. Technically, I had no control over the click-bait title. Editors make those decisions. In the text I submitted, I didn’t say definitively that it’s a good idea for everyone. In fact, I was careful to point out that I’d be singing a different tune if I actually did need three jobs. It was only fun because one of them came with a living wage, health benefits, and a regular 40-hour week. I was really just writing about why side gigs are great. And they are.
But she made a fair point. Now that I’m happily back down to the one job, I can be a little more level-headed about it. The title does imply—maybe more than imply—that everyone should strive to have multiple jobs. And while it can be fun to participate in the gig economy when you don’t really need to, it’s not fun to rely on jobs that are, well, unreliable. Working three jobs without benefits, or set hours, or promise of future employment is rough. It doesn’t matter if you’re also building skills and expanding your network. For me, the hustle was almost like a game. For a lot of other people, it is not. It’s grueling, exhausting, and frequently unsustainable.
When the term “gig economy” first started making the rounds, it was such a hopeful thing. You could be your own boss, work when you wanted to, and essentially be your own little business of one. That hasn’t really panned out. While it’s worked out for some people, most others struggle. You can learn more about what it’s like to work in the gig economy here, or here, or here. If you don’t feel like reading, just know things can get pretty bleak and, unlike a salaried position, there are no safety nets.
Once upon a time, I thought it was the coolest thing to be paid for my writing, to have an extra couple hundred dollars every once in a while—the key word here being “extra.” Now, I’m also wary of how these little gigs might be destroying full-time, benefits-eligible opportunities and that makes me sad. It makes me reconsider how much I should be valuing my own work and more careful to not contribute to the eroding away of good jobs—the kind where you can have just the one.
interesting reads
“Are home offices fueling a mental health crisis?” Read here.
“When people can’t tell their co-workers of color apart, it’s a constant reminder that you’re an outsider.” Read here.
cool jobs
I would love to review products and write about them for Wirecutter. I have no idea what it’s actually like, but in my head it’s amazing. Apply here.
Here’s a Senior Writer Producer job at HBO. Someone please go secretly erase this current season of Game of Thrones the way they went back and erased that Starbucks cup from episode four.