FIRE YOUR BOSS.
STEPHEN M. POLLAN.
AND MARK LEVINE.
Part I
The Fire Your Boss Philosophy
Chapter 1.
The Job of Your Dreams.
Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.- CARL J JUNG YOU CAN TAKE charge of your work life. charge of your work life.
Are you like the office manager wishing she could spend more time at home caring for her children than at the office catering to a juvenile boss?
Are you like the regional manager worrying that the new hotshot vice president of sales will fire him two years short of his daughter"s finishing college?
You don"t have to accept your current work situation. You can be in control of your job and your stream of income so you"re never again subject to the whims, prejudices, moods, or circ.u.mstances of your so-called boss. It doesn"t matter whether you"ve been on the job for forty years or forty days; it"s never too late or too early to seize control of your work life. It doesn"t matter if you"re a stock clerk at a video store or the chief financial officer of a movie studio; everyone who"s employed can take charge of his or her own work life. I won"t lie to you: becoming boss of your own life is neither quick nor easy. The program I outline in this book will require hard work and real thought. It"s not something you can do in a weekend. But, believe me, it"s worth the time and effort.
Being master of your own work life leads to incredible changes in your life. You"ll earn more money if that"s what you wish. You"ll feel more secure if that"s your goal. You"ll be able to pursue whatever brings you the most joy and satisfaction, whether it"s having a catch with your son, puttering around in the garden, or serving meals to the needy. You"ll end up with the job of your dreams, and that will give you a leg up on living the life of your dreams. Just ask Sydney Carton.
Sydney is now sleeping well at night. For years, however, he lay awake worrying. He worried about the state of his career; whether he"d ever achieve his life"s dreams; how he"d pay for his daughter"s college education; and whether he and his wife, Lucy, would ever be able to retire. He worried about when they"d actually get to spend some quality time together as a family with all the hours he and his wife were working. But Sydney is not worried anymore. His income is fine - he"s not an NBA first-round draft pick, but he"s doing okay. His job is as secure as it can be in today"s world because his boss depends on him more than ever. And even with that security, he"s spending less time at work and more at home. He has taken up photography again. He and Lucy have rekindled their romance, thanks to being able to spend time together. And he"s being the kind of father he always wanted to be. Sydney turned his work life around...and so can you.
You can find a new job that pays an income large enough to keep pace with your family"s needs and wants.
You can find a new job with the kind of security that lets you sleep soundly and not lie awake worrying about money.
You can find a new job that lets you achieve the emotional and psychological satisfaction you"ve always sought.
And you can do all this without getting more education or training, without moving, without changing industries. You don"t need to learn a new style of resume, memorize new buzzwords to drop into your conversations, or learn the latest variations of job hunting.
In fact, you may not need to find a new job at all.
I know this sounds crazy. It flies in the face of what everyone is saying. The media are filled with stories about how the American job market has permanently turned into a cold, chaotic, and corrupt environment. The world of paternalistic companies and loyal employees is extinct, say the pundits. It"s a dog-eat-dog world today, in which every man and woman has to be out for him- or herself. We"re told we"ve become a nation of mercenaries engaged in a Darwinian struggle in which only the fittest survive and get to keep their jobs.
Setting all the overblown rhetoric aside, it"s clear that the American workplace has changed. More and more full-time jobs are being turned into part-time or contingent positions. Back-office operations are being outsourced. Instead of staff being added, temps are hired. There"s no more climbing up a company ladder. Upper-level positions are filled with outsiders stolen from compet.i.tors, and to move up at all you"ve got to first move out. To keep your job it used to be enough to show up on time, do your job for eight hours, and go home. Today you"re expected to work for as long as it takes to do your work...and the work of the two people who were laid off last month. (See the box on page 6: How Long Are You Working?) But I"m not telling you anything you don"t know already. You"ve probably seen firsthand signs of the new job market. I bet there are empty desks at work where longtime productive coworkers used to sit before they were laid off. There are probably some people in your office who have shifted over to part-time in an effort to keep their jobs. If you"re like most of us, you"re working longer and longer hours, without getting more pay, because you"ve been sent a veiled message that unless you bite the bullet you"ll be out of a job. Friends may be coming to you asking for leads because they"ve been out of work and are unable to land a new job. Maybe you"re out of work yourself, or just losing sleep, playing out worst-case scenarios in your head.
HOW LONG ARE YOU WORKING?It"s not just in your head. If you"re anything like the rest of Americans, you are indeed working longer hours than ever. According to the Economic Policy Inst.i.tute, the average middle-income married couple with children is now working 660 hours more per year than in 1979, the equivalent of more than sixteen extra weeks of full-time work. In 2000, American workers worked an average of 1,877 hours. That"s more than in any other rich industrialized nation. To see how your hours measure up, fill in this quick worksheet: What time do you arrive at work?
What time do you leave work? What time do you leave work?
How many hours does that add up to each day? How many hours does that add up to each day?
How many days a week do you go to the office? How many days a week do you go to the office?
How many hours does that add up to each week? How many hours does that add up to each week?
How many days a week do you go out for lunch? How many days a week do you go out for lunch?
How long do spend at lunch when you go out? How long do spend at lunch when you go out?
How many hours does that add up to each week? How many hours does that add up to each week?
Subtract line 8 from line 5 for total hours at the job. Subtract line 8 from line 5 for total hours at the job.
How many hours of work do you bring home weekly? How many hours of work do you bring home weekly?
How many hours do you go into the office on the weekend? How many hours do you go into the office on the weekend?
Add line 10 and line 11 for time spent working off the job. Add line 10 and line 11 for time spent working off the job.
Add line 12 to line 9 for hours worked weekly. Add line 12 to line 9 for hours worked weekly.
How many weeks of vacation do you get? How many weeks of vacation do you get?
Subtract line 14 from 52 for weeks worked yearly. Subtract line 14 from 52 for weeks worked yearly.
Multiply line 15 by line 13 for hours worked. Multiply line 15 by line 13 for hours worked.
If you want to get an even more accurate appraisal of how much of your life is devoted to work, add the number of hours you spend commuting to and from the job to the number on line 13 and go through the subsequent steps again.
Despite the rhetoric and all the doom and gloom around you, I believe you have an incredible opportunity right now to turn your work life around and create the perfect job situation.
You can achieve job security, even in a market in which everyone has become a job hopper and at a time when job tenure has been dropping.
You can maintain all the benefits and higher pay of full-time employment, even in a market in which everyone has become a contingency worker and at a time when temps seem the only permanent workers.
You can survive and thrive at work, and still have time for a personal life, even in a market that requires long hours and putting the company first.
You can create a solid, secure stream of income and use it to fuel a happy life.
What all the pundits and experts can"t see, and what you haven"t been told (until now) is that landing the job of your dreams has little to do with your company, your boss, your profession, or your location. It has nothing to do with your resume, your expanding menu of job skills, or your impressive business Rolodex. Sure, the state of the economy makes a difference, but it"s not the most important factor. Landing the job of your dreams is an inside job inside job. It"s done by adopting an entirely new att.i.tude toward work and the workplace, one that puts you in charge of your job. The trick is to "fire your boss" and replace him or her yourself. I know it works because I see it happen firsthand, day after day, in my office.
In the Belly of the Beast My name is Stephen M. Pollan. I"m an attorney and life coach. In the more than two decades I"ve been a personal consultant, I"ve helped hundreds of people land the job of their dreams. And I"ve continued to do that in the past couple of years, during what all the experts say is a horrible job climate, in what those same experts say is one of the worst job markets in America: New York City.
I have a unique practice. I take what, for lack of a better term, I call a holistic approach to my clients" money lives. I believe it"s vital to look at financial and work decisions in context. For example, I have new clients get complete medical checkups before we launch into long-term planning, since there"s no point in taking steps to financially prepare for a long life unless you"re taking care of your health as well. I ask clients about their relationship and parenting needs and wants, since I think it"s essential for job and family to mesh as smoothly as possible. When I meet with clients, we talk about investing, relationships, real estate, insurance, wishes for parents and children, personal spending, work problems and goals, hobbies, and life dreams. I believe a comprehensive, all-embracing approach to both life and work offers the greatest rewards. I don"t adhere to any particular school of investing, believe in any one philosophy of business, or preach a specific approach to real estate. All I care about is helping my clients set their goals, and then achieve them. Because my clients" success is my sole aim, and because my holistic approach requires me to deal with very personal issues, I get quite wrapped up in my clients" lives.
The past three years have been very traumatic for my clients and me. Most of my clients live and/or work in New York City. The attacks of September 11 and their lingering aftermath offer physical and psychological reminders of the impermanence of modern life. A local economy already reeling from the bursting of the Internet stock balloon suffered even more damage on September 11. Up until then most of my clients had been feeling secure at work. Sure, there were crises in individual companies or industries that led to terminations, but the economy overall was strong enough to create other job openings. And many of my clients, having spent the 1980s and 1990s turning "networking" into a lifestyle, were expert at landing new jobs. In the past three years, however, those tried and true techniques they had mastered suddenly stopped working. That"s when they came to me for help.
Confronted with clients in need, and not having any deeply held allegiance to the traditional rules for finding jobs and thriving in the workplace, I started working with my clients to develop new techniques. Since all I, and they, care about is whether the approach works, we felt free to pursue contrarian and iconoclastic ideas. The result is an admittedly radical new seven-step approach to work that flies in the face of conventional wisdom.
Fire Your Boss...and Hire Yourself The essential first step in winning the job of your dreams is to fire your boss...and hire yourself. In other words, you need to stop letting your boss, or company, or anyone else for that matter, dictate the course of your work life, and take charge of your own present and future. It"s ironic, but Americans, who are usually so obsessed with taking charge of large and small aspects of their lives, cede control of their work lives to others.
Think I"m overstating the case? Let"s go back to the beginning of your work life to see how much control you"ve given away. What did you major in when you were at college? Was it a field you found interesting or one your parents encouraged you to pursue because it fit their perception of you, the image they wanted to convey of their child, or one they believed would be lucrative? I"m not ashamed to admit I left college after two years to go directly to law school, not because I wanted to be a lawyer - I wanted to go into radio - but because my working-cla.s.s Jewish parents desperately wanted their son to become a professional.
Maybe you"re more independent-minded than I was, withstood parental pressure, and studied a field in which you were generally interested. In that case, how did you get your first job? Did you study various industries and companies and determine which best fit your needs and wants? Or did you take the first job you, or some contact of your professors or parents, found?
Having gotten your first job, how did you determine the path of your subsequent work life? Did you work up a long-term general plan for what you"d like to accomplish, or did you just get blown from job to job, company to company, industry to industry, based on decisions made by your superiors or personnel departments?
Finally, who"s in charge of your work life today? Do you have a plan for what you"ll be trying to accomplish this year, next year, and long term? Are you proactively seeking out new opportunities both at your current employer and outside the company? Or are you pinning your present and future to the decisions made by your boss and his or her boss, or to the whims of interviewers, or worse yet, resume screeners?
Wendy Rosenfeld,1 a willowy, auburn-haired forty-two-year-old, has never really been in charge of her work life. Despite her love of, and talent for, writing poetry, Wendy majored in journalism in college at her parents" insistence. As her father asked her once, "I don"t see any want ads for poets in the paper, do you?" She landed her first job at a local newspaper thanks to the intervention of a neighbor who was a major advertiser in the publication. Because the lead reporter at the newspaper hated going to evening meetings, Wendy was given the local politics beat. After three years of covering council and board meetings, she was offered a job in the district office of the area"s state senator. She took it because she wouldn"t have to work nights or weekends. For the next six years she answered phones, filed, and wrote correspondence. When the state senator ran for Congress and won, he offered Wendy an equivalent job in his district office. The manager of the office left three years later and the congressman promoted Wendy to office manager. Five years later, when a job putting together the monthly mailing opened at the congressman"s Washington, D.C., office, he offered it to Wendy, who accepted. But recently, Wendy"s boss decided to run for the U.S. Senate and asked Wendy to help set up his campaign headquarters back in New York. Having moved back in with her family temporarily, she came to me for help determining if she could afford to buy an apartment. After a few minutes I told her the first thing she needed to do was take charge of her own work life by developing and writing her own plan. By taking the time to plan her future, and by committing that plan to paper, Wendy would no longer find her work life governed by either her boss or fate. a willowy, auburn-haired forty-two-year-old, has never really been in charge of her work life. Despite her love of, and talent for, writing poetry, Wendy majored in journalism in college at her parents" insistence. As her father asked her once, "I don"t see any want ads for poets in the paper, do you?" She landed her first job at a local newspaper thanks to the intervention of a neighbor who was a major advertiser in the publication. Because the lead reporter at the newspaper hated going to evening meetings, Wendy was given the local politics beat. After three years of covering council and board meetings, she was offered a job in the district office of the area"s state senator. She took it because she wouldn"t have to work nights or weekends. For the next six years she answered phones, filed, and wrote correspondence. When the state senator ran for Congress and won, he offered Wendy an equivalent job in his district office. The manager of the office left three years later and the congressman promoted Wendy to office manager. Five years later, when a job putting together the monthly mailing opened at the congressman"s Washington, D.C., office, he offered it to Wendy, who accepted. But recently, Wendy"s boss decided to run for the U.S. Senate and asked Wendy to help set up his campaign headquarters back in New York. Having moved back in with her family temporarily, she came to me for help determining if she could afford to buy an apartment. After a few minutes I told her the first thing she needed to do was take charge of her own work life by developing and writing her own plan. By taking the time to plan her future, and by committing that plan to paper, Wendy would no longer find her work life governed by either her boss or fate.
1. The names and some of the details of my clients" stories throughout this book have been changed to protect their privacy.
Kill Your Career...and Get a Job For most of American history people didn"t look to derive emotional satisfaction from their jobs. Work was to put "bread on the table." Emotional and spiritual satisfaction came from family, home, church, community, and hobbies. In the 1960s and 1970s, baby boomers rebelled against this approach. They perceived this division between financial and emotional motivations as dehumanizing. They criticized their "organization man" fathers as leading hollow lives in which they did meaningless work. In response, baby boomers created a new work concept: the career. This was a work path offering not just financial, but also emotional and spiritual, satisfaction. Boomers looked for work meaningful to them so they could lead more satisfying lives. The result, however, has been anything but.
The search for work that offers both financial and psychological satisfaction has left most people with neither. Having made such a strong commitment to their work, people today are working longer and longer hours. Meanwhile, they are spending less and less time at home, with their family, in church, in their community, or pursuing their hobbies. And despite this incredible time commitment, their income isn"t secure. The pursuit of a "meaningful" career has backfired, leading baby boomers to envy the lifestyle of those gray-flannel-wearing fathers they used to criticize.
The second step in my program to win the job of your dreams is to kill your career. It may sound counterintuitive, but the best route to emotional satisfaction is stop looking for it at work. Instead, look for a job that provides as large and secure an income as possible. Look for emotional satisfaction in your personal life. If at some point in your life your need for income is reduced, you can make concessions to achieve some kind of unified "career." Until then, abandon the unhealthy notion of career and return to the far healthier concept of job.
Sean Shanahan is a forty - five - year - old graphic designer who bears a striking resemblance to the English film star Ronald Colman and who likes dressing as if he"s off to a shooting weekend in the English countryside. Born and raised in Brooklyn, Sean studied at the Rhode Island School of Design. After graduating, Sean looked for work. He eschewed the advertising and publishing industries and instead looked for work with design firms. In the past two decades Sean has worked for four different design firms. He has continued to place a priority on pursuing interesting projects, despite frequently being offered "corporate" work that was better paying. Recently, Sean jumped to a start-up firm that specialized in Web design projects. But after a year the firm is still struggling. Sean is working nearly sixty hours a week. He lives alone and has little or no social life. Promised bonuses are yet to appear. Sean came in to see me to discuss rumors he has heard that one of the firm"s three main clients is about to go under. Meanwhile, he received a call about a job opening at a cable television network for someone to create logos for special news and entertainment programs. It would offer him a much higher income and he wouldn"t need to work as many hours. Still, he"s uncertain. "I don"t know if I want to be someone who creates graphics like "Homicide in the Heartland," " he said to me. I told him I thought homicide made sense, and it was his career he should kill.
There"s No I in Job Most Americans have spent their lives believing there"s justice in the workplace. We"ve been led to believe that people who show up on time and do their jobs will be safe, as long as the company can afford to keep them on. We were taught that if you show up early, stay late, and do your job well, you"ll be rewarded for it, either through promotion or with pay increases. It"s an accepted belief that everyone, management and staff, has the company"s interests at heart, and, as a result, open and honest debate about how things should be done is encouraged and viewed positively. I"m sorry to be the one to break the news, but none of this is true.
Following the rules is no guarantee of job security. Team players get terminated as quickly as lone wolves. And excellence isn"t a sure path to advancement. In fact, many bosses, threatened by excellence, will do their best to sabotage kick-a.s.s employees. Management and coworkers usually act in their own self-interest, not in the company"s interest. As a result, disagreements with your boss, however honest and well intended, lead to trouble. Most people in the workplace want to get the most reward for the least effort, want to look good more than do good, and care more about their personal success and security than the company"s success and security.
Giving 110 percent and working hard for the company don"t help you succeed. The secret instead is to stop focusing on your own success and worry about your boss"s success instead. To paraphrase the old coaching cliche: there"s no I in job. Concentrate your efforts on helping your immediate superior meet his or her goals. The more you do for your boss, the more secure your job will be, and the more you"ll be rewarded. The better you make your boss look, the better you will look to him or her.
Janet Crosetti is used to dealing with double takes when people first meet her. The five-foot two-inch Korean American always responds by saying, "I know - I don"t look Italian." The thirty-seven-year-old schoolteacher is married and has a six-year-old daughter named Molly. Janet worked in an urban school district when she first graduated college. Janet temporarily left the workforce to stay at home with her daughter. During that time, her husband Paul"s family business boomed, enabling them to afford a home in the suburbs. When Molly started school last year, Janet decided she"d go back. An enthusiastic junior high school English teacher br.i.m.m.i.n.g with ideas and energy, Janet was able to land a position in a district not far from her home. While her building princ.i.p.al has continued to be supportive, Janet"s department chairman has been giving her a hard time.Janet and Paul came to me for some financial advice, and we then moved on to discuss her job situation. Janet told me about how she is trying to energize a department that is getting a little long in the tooth. She is constantly making suggestions, developing new and innovative lesson plans, trying to bring more multimedia into the department"s offerings. But despite all her efforts, her relationship with her department chairman is getting worse. She received the first mixed evaluation of her life and was starting to worry she wouldn"t get tenure in the district. I told Janet it was time for her to focus on her department chairman"s needs.
Stop Job Hunting and Go Job Fishing Instead Believing job security would come simply from doing a good job, most people used to view job hunting as something they"d need to do only a handful of times in their lives. Everyone expected to go on a job hunt after college, but from then on it was supposed to be limited to times when there were economic or personnel upheavals beyond your control at the company. A new boss might come in and clean house to bring in his own people. Or maybe your route to promotion was permanently blocked by a peer who was promoted just above you. In any case, the job search was viewed as a reaction to circ.u.mstances.
In today"s job market being terminated isn"t the exception, it"s the rule. Employees now are like baseball managers: they"re hired to be fired. We"ve all become contingency workers. The constant turmoil in the job market, along with a down economy, has meant job searches are taking longer than ever. The old rule of thumb was a job search would last one month for every $10,000 you earned. Now job searches are taking two months for every $10,000. Today most people lower their expectations in order to get reemployed quicker. Since we"re all now destined to be fired, and job searches take so long, it makes sense to turn job hunting into a proactive, ongoing part of your work life.
And rather than looking for the one perfect new job, you should be broadening your efforts to cultivate as many "offers" of employment as you can, which you can then either accept or reject. Instead of acting like a big-game hunter setting out on special occasions to bag a specific target, you need to act like a commercial fisherman who goes out every day and casts lots of lines in the water, checking his hooks whenever there are bites, and then deciding whether each catch is a keeper.
Jared Edwards has never had a problem making sales. Whether it was peddling photocopiers when he first graduated college, hawking woodworking equipment at state fairs, or selling music-room fixtures to schools, he was successful. But after a board shake-up led to the termination of the entire sales force at the music-fixture company, Jared had a hard time finding another sales position. His wife"s salary kept the family afloat while Jared pounded the pavement, worked his network, and trolled the Internet. After six months he began taking part-time weekend and evening work as a cabinetmaker to help make ends meet. Finally, after eighteen months he landed a job selling a computerized reading-education system to school districts. When Jared and his wife came to see me it was for help cleaning up their credit, which had taken a battering during the time he was out of work. When we got around to discussing employment, Jared told me of his recent odyssey and explained how happy he was finally having a steady job. I told him not to put his job-search tools away, because he needed to start fishing for his next job right now.
No One Hires a Stranger In the 1980s it became conventional wisdom that "networking" was the way to get on the "inside track" to the better jobs. Networking involved making indirect approaches to individuals and asking for "advice" and "guidance." The idea was to use business contacts to get to know people who might have job openings, or who might know of job openings, which hadn"t yet been advertised, and do so while avoiding the human resources department. Rather than scanning the want ads, you perused your Rolodex and schmoozed at industry gatherings to make appointments for "informational interviews." These were thinly veiled job interviews in which you did your best to impress and solicit a job offer. If none was forthcoming, you asked the person you were meeting for the name of someone else to talk to about "opportunities." Your grew your network and, inevitably, landed a new job.
This backdoor approach became inst.i.tutionalized and has now become outdated and ineffective. No one falls for the "informational interview" anymore - that"s why they"re now so hard to come by.2 Executives know they"re simply job hunts in disguise. Human resources departments, tired of being bypa.s.sed and seeing upper-level jobs filled through networking, turned to headhunters to fill those spots. Employed executives now scrupulously avoid professional a.s.sociation meetings and industry gatherings because they know they"ll be accosted by job hunters and overwhelmed with resumes and business cards. Of course, when these recalcitrant executives are terminated, they suddenly become regular attendees. Executives know they"re simply job hunts in disguise. Human resources departments, tired of being bypa.s.sed and seeing upper-level jobs filled through networking, turned to headhunters to fill those spots. Employed executives now scrupulously avoid professional a.s.sociation meetings and industry gatherings because they know they"ll be accosted by job hunters and overwhelmed with resumes and business cards. Of course, when these recalcitrant executives are terminated, they suddenly become regular attendees.
2. I used to give one or two informational interviews a week to people sent to me by clients or a.s.sociates. Now I just tell them I don"t know of any jobs, but they should feel free to send a copy of their resume for my file.
Instead of networking, people today need to perpetually follow a long-term track to which they add a second, short-term track if unemployed. The best long-term track today is to turn to your personal life to develop business opportunities. That"s because, in my experience, no one hires a stranger anymore. With so few openings and so many candidates, people look within their own circles for candidates. It really is who you know, not what you know, that counts today. Become active in your church. Pursue your hobbies. Join the choir. Chat with neighbors. Attend lectures, reading groups, and city council meetings. Have as much social interaction as you can. While the odds of directly connecting with someone who has an immediate job opening isn"t high in the short term, the chances of social contacts yielding job opportunities are high over the long term.
If you"re unemployed you can"t rely solely on long-term social activism. You also need to go back to those old-fashioned job-search options once deemed too downscale: help wanted ads and employment agencies. While these avenues may not yield the richest offerings, they do have one great advantage: they provide ready access to a stream of income. For many people who are unemployed, that"s what is most needed: money coming in. Get a job...any job...and then keep looking for another job. Someone employed is always a more attractive candidate than someone unemployed.
Fred Peters is one of the most affable people you"ll ever meet. A tall, distinguished-looking man, he has a wonderful sense of humor and the ability to charm most everyone he meets. An avid golfer, he"s always being asked to play with new acquaintances. His wife jokes that he needs a social secretary just for his golf game. Fred"s joviality has stood him in good stead in his job as director of publications for a major Ivy League university. Having to deal simultaneously with prima donna professors; penny-pinching administrators; and temperamental writers, photographers, and designers requires a great deal of patience and good humor. A recently launched round of university-wide staff cuts and consolidations has taken some of the spring out of Fred"s step. He has been trying to navigate a transition of his department to a different division while keeping as much staff as possible. The unsettled nature of his situation led him to start updating his network, just in case. But he found it a daunting task. The only people who seemed to show up at the regular meetings of his professional a.s.sociation were out - of - work managers. His calls to business contacts and a.s.sociates have rarely been returned. To top it off, the university has brought in a new president who seems intent on making another round of cuts and reorganizations. With his good humor rapidly melting, Fred called me for some advice. I told him to stop going to his professional a.s.sociation meetings and to play more golf instead.
It"s the Money That Counts For the past couple of decades corporations have been greatly concerned with the "quality" of their employees" work lives. In an effort to cushion the demand for more and more time spent on the job, psychic and lifestyle rewards have become a common form of "compensation." Employers have realized that if they provide a pleasant workplace, and do things to make it easy for workers to spend more time there, they"ll get less resistance to expecting fifty - hour work-weeks. Provide a health club and people will show up early to work out, and will end up at their desks earlier than they otherwise would. Have a company cafeteria and people will eat in the building and either discuss work over lunch or be back at their desks sooner. Provide concierge services, like picking up prescriptions or dry cleaning, and people will work later.
All these efforts have reinforced a mistaken att.i.tude about why we work. People have been brainwashed into thinking it"s sensible to value "corporate culture" and a "supportive environment" as much as, or even more than, financial compensation. Clients often say to me: "If I have to be at work for such a large portion of my week, it really should be a place I find appealing." Nonsense. Your focus on the job should be to increase and solidify your stream of income. Ego boosts, like a corner office, and nonfinancial rewards, like a supportive environment, are meaningless. The job of your dreams is the one that pays the most money. Today you need to accept that when it comes to a job, it"s the money that counts.