How to be a tugboat captain
It’s a very dumb way to paint.
This week’s question comes to us from Christine Newton:
Any words of advice on trying to find a job right now?
It’s hard.
I know that isn’t advice, but before we got to any advice—which will probably be underwhelming, at best—I thought it might be good to start with some acknowledgement of facts. It is hard to find a job right now. I’ve written and rewritten this opening paragraph a few times because I end up writing about all the reasons you might have lost your job, which is not the question you asked me. And that topic is worth a whole newsletter on its own. But the body and mind have a tendency to hold onto trauma, and losing a job can be very traumatic, so in order to move forward to finding a new job, it might be worth talking about why you’re not at the last job anymore, if only to begin healing from that.
And here, of course, I’ll have to generalize, because I don’t know your particular situation. But I do know a lot of people who have lost their jobs recently, and I’m going to assume that your situation is similar to theirs. And hopefully, this will help those people as well.
It’s not your fault you lost your job.
I will repeat that:
It’s not your fault you lost your job. Furthermore, there was nothing you could’ve done to prevent losing your job.
Here I have to drop a quick note for my international readers: In the United States, which isn’t a great place, your health insurance (if you’re lucky enough to have it) is tied to your job. (I know.) So if you lose your job, your entire family might lose access to health care. In addition, if you’re in the US on an H-1B visa and you lose your job, you have a very limited amount of time to get hired by another company and have them sponsor your visa. (I know. Take a minute.)
A couple of times a day I have to wander into the bowels of LinkedIn to post about an upcoming workshop or I post a book excerpt, because those things pay my rent. It’s a weird place, man. More and more, it’s become capitalism re-enactment cosplay, like a Renaissance Faire filled with hot takes by thought-leading wizards on “AI is good, actually” and business coach knights offering their sword to help your company become more “efficient,” with young squires “open to joust” only because it might help elevate them from serfdom, or you know—get insurance for their family. Or regular folks who were laid off six months ago when their company “pivoted to AI” announcing that they’ve finally gotten a new job at… an AI company. It’s a lot.
And it’s easy to roll your eyes at all this, except then I realize that I’m on there as well. Because I’m trying to pay my rent. As are a lot of these people. Even those still employed are constantly auditioning for jobs they’ve already earned. Hoping that if they show enough allegiance to the corporate liege lord, they’ll be spared the sword. Which, of course, they won’t be.
So again I remind you, there’s nothing you can do to prevent losing your job. Cuts are happening randomly, without reason, without cause, without concern, and without a plan. So if you still have a job, stop thinking there’s anything you can do to improve your chances of not losing it. And when/if you do lose it, don’t blame yourself.
It’s not your fault you lost your job.
I say this not to make you feel bad, but to remind you that you were probably very good at what you did, and your current circumstances are absolutely not an indication of your worth. You didn’t fail anybody. Capitalism failed you. It is designed to do that.
So let’s get you a new job.
But before we do that (I know, I’m taking forever to get there), let’s talk about the difference between a job and work, because I think it’s important. Very early on in my career I discovered two very important things. One, I love to work. I love doing things. I love making things. I love solving problems. I am constitutionally disposed to working. Even if I’m watching a basketball game on a Saturday afternoon, I’ll do laundry in the morning so that I can sit on the couch folding it while I watch the game. If there is no laundry to fold, I’ll dust and vacuum. If Erika and I are having a conversation in the kitchen, I’ll start doing the dishes, or rearranging things in cabinets. I am lucky enough that she realizes this is what getting my full attention looks like. It’s kind of a problem, because to most people it looks like the opposite.
Secondly, I am not good at having “a job.” (Any of my former employers can vouch for this.) I get itchy when someone else is controlling my time, or telling me to do something that I know to be stupid. So I don’t do well in hierarchical office situations. (Flat hierarchies are always a lie.) I’ve spent most of my career figuring out a way to work, without having a job. Mostly by starting my own design shop, which is technically a job, but not really. I control my time. And I dole out portions of it as necessary. (I also live pretty simply. Except for records. I buy a lot of records.) This works for me. Or, as fans of Superchunk will undoubtedly be familiar with: I’m working, but I’m not working for you.
And honestly, I think most human beings are wired to work. We want to be helpful. We want a purpose. Which is the reason bullshit jobs are so frustrating. We are willing to sell our labor, in exchange for money, but we want that work to have purpose. Sitting in a two-hour meeting that could’ve been an email doesn’t fulfill my human need for purpose.
It’s also worth noting that you don’t need a job. You need money. For most people, jobs are the easiest semi-assured way of getting money, but they’re far from the only one. And when jobs are scarce we might need to get a little creative about how we get that money. Consulting, freelancing, making a thing to sell, heists, starting your own thing, etc. As I mentioned above, jobs aren’t easy for me. I’m not delusional enough to believe that I’m in any way unique. There are other people for whom this is true. You may be one of them. If you experience constant irritation at your job, a job may not be right for you.
When you ask about getting a job, you may be asking the wrong question. Instead, ask yourself how you can get some money. You may end up in the same place, deciding that getting a job is the best option for you, which is totally fair, but you may also discover some possibilities that you hadn’t thought of before. And that’s a trip worth taking.
I’d also encourage you to expand your search to fields you might not have thought about. For our purposes today, I’m making the assumption that you’re in a tech-adjacent field. (I say this because most of my readers tend to be.) And I’d encourage you to decouple your skills from the field in which you’re searching. You may have tech skills, but you don’t need to work in tech. Tech is in everything now. Your city might need your skills. Your public library might need your skills. Your local hardware store might need your skills. The local school district might need your skills. Might these jobs pay less? They might. But we might find that’s only true when we compare them to a historical memory of what tech jobs used to pay, and to be fair—in some cases still do. But as many of my job-seeking friends are sadly finding out, the majority of jobs in the tech sector that are still paying those salaries aren’t necessarily things you might want to expose your heart to.
I told you right away that my advice would be underwhelming. Part of that is because I haven’t had a “job” in some time now. I earn what I need by cribbing together various pieces of work both as they’re available, and as I’m interested in doing them. I do workshops. I write and sell my own books. I do the occasional talk. And sometimes the occasional client job. Some folks will no doubt point out the privilege necessary to do something like this, and I’d agree. And… along with the privileges that come from being a white man in America (this is not debatable) my biggest privilege may be that I’m old. I was born at a time when going to college wasn’t a lifetime debt. I graduated with $7,000 and some change in student loan debt. And while at the time it actually felt insurmountable, I wouldn’t blame you if you saw that number and wanted to kick my ass.
I also graduated when the web was a curiosity. Something interesting to maybe fuck around with for a while. Not something that I’d gotten into massive debt to get a degree in. (They simply didn’t exist at the time.) I slid in the side door, as many other designers my age, because it was new and fun, and it semi-accidentally turned into a career. I say this not with a shrug, but with a “holy fuck, did I luck out!”
Many people reading this right now went into massive debt to work in this field only to have the rug pulled out underneath them. And that is fucked. If America were a proper country that debt would not only be forgiven, but never accrued to begin with. Education should be free. Curiosity should be celebrated, not saddled with crippling debt. Student debt is violence.
I’ll finish with this: lately, I’ve been asking people “If not for tech, what would you be doing right now?” Most people have an immediate answer for me. And sure, sometimes they’re silly, but more so they’re very revealing. Baker. Ceramicist. Architect. Astronaut (child, if Katy Perry can do it…). Woodworker. Tailor. Pet walker. Therapist. Goat farmer. Weed farmer. Tugboat captain. Firefighter. And what amazes me the most isn’t so much their answers, although they are great, but the joy on their face when they reveal their answer. Like they are revealing their true selves. Like they’re going back to a time when they believed themselves capable of anything. Back to a time when everyone saw not a dark tunnel ahead of them, but a thousand possible paths.
And look, I’m not on some pollyanna kick. We have bills to pay. We are buried under crippling debt. We need health insurance. We have no functioning safety net. That is all very real. We are all doing what we can to survive. But as long as you’re looking for a job… it might be worth asking yourself the question before wandering back onto the killing floor.
If not for tech, what would you be doing right now?
This is not a practice life.
🙋 Got a question for me? Ask it! I might answer it.
📣 Speaking of getting jobs, I’ve got a couple seats left in next week’s Presenting w/Confidence workshop. And yes, we talk a lot about doing well at job interviews now.
💔 RIP Jill Sobule
🔍 Also related, this is a very good article by my friend Bobbie Johnson, about AI, jobs, and [checks notes] SPYCRAFT!
📚 One of the many ways I earn my rent money is by selling you our books directly. Please consider buying one (or four).
🍉 Please consider donating to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund.
🥛 As always, if you enjoyed this newsletter, I love hearing from you.