Tag: Career

• July 24, 2013

  On doing lots of things and doing them well

  The chief problem with thinking of work in terms of a career is that one gets in the habit of thinking that one can only do one thing well. But then at some point one gets stuck because that sort of thing is no longer desirable or because one can no longer stomach the idea…
• July 19, 2013

  Moderate risk/moderate gains model

  Yesterday, I showed that the career, an all-or-nothing model, amounts to high-stakes gambling. Either you get and secure the $100,000-200,000/year position, or you do not. If you do secure the position, you fear losing it, fear being sick, fear being unable to pay off your debts, and so work yourself/are worked to the bone, thereby…
• July 18, 2013

  The career as high-stakes gambling

  If you conceived of a career as a certain kind of game and knew how the game worked, then you’d conclude before you even began playing that the house always wins. Consider how much you’d have to ante up simply to be able to come to the table: Time: Somewhere between 4 years minimum and 15…
• October 4, 2012

  On career respectability as a cover for shame

  Perhaps the strongest reason why people speak so often, at such great length, and with such perturbations and agita about the desire to have a career is that they wish to appear respectable in the eyes of others. It is not as if they wanted their lives to be flourishing; it is rather the case…
• October 3, 2012

  Why a career has to founder: Hegel’s causality of fate

  I’d like to tease out what is desirable about careers–that they are well-paid work, that they carry a sense of continuity, and that they are regarded as respectable–but first I’d like to consider how the conception of the career founders, leading many into strife. I’m keen to tell the story. In order to have a…