When Who You Are Isn’t Good Enough

Published on by Brynne VanHettinga Category: Job Search

Anyone who is looking for professional employment in the current economy is probably familiar with how much information there is about the “proper” way to conduct a job search, including how much of this information can seem to be conflicting. If you have your resume reviewed by ten different people, you will get ten different opinions (people often say the same thing about economists, legal advice, and the IRS).  In my own case, it was business cards. After changing the template multiple times, I finally had to have something printed because a job fair was imminent, only to be presented with even more suggestions for changes to the printed “final” version.  In essence, no matter how many changes you make to your job search infrastructures (resume, business cards, Linked In profile, web page, etc.) you will invariably be told that you need to change something yet again.

Although these perennial suggestions for change can seem like a Sisyphean burden, they usually come from well-intentioned friends and job-search professionals who truly want to help you and are themselves inundated with perennially changing advice and information. There is, however, a much darker side to the process. The real reason you cannot seem to get these things right is that you yourself must be conformed—maybe even deformed—into something that the so-called “market” requires. This is something much more insidious than tweaking or reframing your skills and experience to fit a job description.

C. Wright Mills, in his 1951 White Collar: The American Middle Classes, argues that the white collar worker in some ways has it worse than the blue collar worker. The blue collar worker’s job may be physically more demanding, but there was (at least in the 1950s) a definite demarcation between “work time” and “non-work” time, in which the worker was free to do as he saw fit and free to be his authentic self. Conversely, the white collar worker may have enjoyed a better salary and higher status, but the white collar worker’s time and energy was not his own at the end of the day. In essence, the white collar worker was not just selling his skills and labor power over a discrete period of time, but was literally selling himself. In Mills’ own words, “The decline of the free entrepreneur and the rise of the dependent employee on the American scene has paralleled the decline of the independent individual and the rise of the little man in the American mind.”  The white collar professional has thus become a generalized “Little Man…pushed by forces beyond his control…who is acted upon but does not act…never talking back, never taking a stand.”

One book among the plethora of job search resources actually alleges that there exists an “ideal worker persona” which you must demonstrate to employers during interviews. Here is a synopsis of some of the suggested “right” answers in a job interview situation:

  • The only reason you ever leave a job (assuming you weren’t subject to a layoff) is because you are desirous of more responsibility, opportunity to grow and make a contribution. However, you may have to “tone down” this eagerness if there is a chance that the interviewer may view you as overqualified or angling for his or her job.
  • If the interviewer expresses overt concern that you may be overqualified, you can say that you are looking for things like more time with family, less travel, more structure, etc., but here again you have to be careful not to suggest that you may “prefer” a workplace that is not in constant turmoil and actually plan to have a life outside of work.
  • Never admit to any personal weakness that you cannot demonstrate how you turned it into something positive that resulted in a miraculous benefit to a previous employer.
  • You must be infinitely creative, while at the same time reassure the interviewer that you won’t be bored to tears with the tedium that the actual job may entail.
  • Use every chance you get to demonstrate how you thrive on pressure and challenge, and spend every spare minute on self-improvement (only job-related). Every personal goal must be strategized for the sole purpose of creating value for the potential employer. If you are questioned about multiple past employers (so–called “job hopping”), each and every transition was about learning new skills. In short, everything that has happened to you in your past working life is a Panglossian “best of all outcomes in the best of all possible worlds.”

Thus, the “ideal worker persona” seems to resemble a paradoxical combination of Donald Trump, Mother Teresa, and the Energizer Bunny. That is, you will spare no mercy when it comes to getting the job done and meeting the employer’s objectives, yet you will ignore your own needs (and those of your family, friends, and community) in order to be of the highest service to the organization. While a service ethic in and of itself is often a good thing, in the world of corporate work, this ethic elevates the bottom line and the dictates of cost savings and efficiencies above everything else. Woe be to the interviewee who breathes even a whiff of having alternative, humanistic, or contrarian personal values.

Dr. Karen Kelsky is a former academic and author of both a blog and a book entitled The Professor is In. Dr. Kelsky tells the truth about the abysmal dearth of tenured professorships and the more likely scenario of an academic career spent in the wasteland and poverty of adjunct Hell. However, she sets forth a detailed program to enhance one’s chances (along with the caveat that even following her advice to the letter is no guarantee) of securing a coveted tenure track position.  There is even a chapter expressly entitled “Why ‘Yourself’ is the Last Person You Should Be.” Of course, there is the practical necessity of shedding the ways of graduate student-hood and demonstrating that you are worthy of joining the scholarship ranks. Just like in the non-academic job search literature, Dr. Kelsky admonishes the seeker to adopt a “professional persona.” This involves more than just a research and teaching agenda, but also a “steely-eyed grasp of the needs of the actual hiring departments, which ultimately revolve, in the current market, around money.”

Toward the final chapters of The Professor is In, Dr. Kelsky suggests that, out of either choice or out of necessity, many seekers of tenure-track positions will eventually decide to “declare independence” and earn a living in free-lance and entrepreneurial pursuits. Dr. Kelsky laments that her own time in academia was consumed by the “principle of external validation.” This is a condition in which one’s only value as an academic (and possibly even as a human being) is based entirely on the judgment and approval of those higher up the food chain. Dr. Kelsky is not surprised that, “the young of the profession are so servile.” Maybe it is the result of all those years as an adjunct. I’m sure there are studies about how people who are paid poverty wages and treated with disrespect at some point no longer even value themselves.

So there you have it. In order to have any kind of chance at decent employment (that is, anything that provides opportunity to fully use professional skills and education, pay that supports a middle class lifestyle, and conditions that are not unreasonably insecure and unpredictable), one must conform to the dictates of some impersonal “market.” Your own talent, skills, values, and even your own God-given mission are meaningless unless you convince some ivory tower Pooh-bah that your work will bring the department greater prestige (or funding). This market cares not whether what you actually do is compatible with your own personal values or even ultimately benefits society as a whole. We have created a world of work in which we are all fungible parts in the machinery of production, including the academics who are supposed to be the vanguards of new thinking and social change.

When Freedom and Self-Reliance are No Longer Enough

Published on by Brynne VanHettinga Category: Inequality

Why are Americans so ambivalent about inequality? 

Our country was founded on a revolution against taxation without representation. It was also founded on the concept of equality, or the proposition that everyone had the same stake in national welfare and equal rights to participate and be heard. Our founding values of freedom and equality were developed in a time period where the concepts were congruent.  That is, in an economy dominated by small farmers, tradesmen and shopkeepers, the more citizens were “free” to earn their livelihoods, the more they were able to participate as equals in civil society. While these virtues were certainly imperfect, (it would be over a century before women and former slaves would be included in the legal conception of “equal”), they allowed the new country called America to build a strong nation with a prosperous middle class.

Fast forward to the 20th century.  Now, rather than owning our own labor and small capitals, most of us must earn our livelihoods by selling our labor to organized capital. Moreover, these corporations are, for the most part, no longer the mom-and-pop small family businesses that once occupied the Main Streets of small towns, but huge global conglomerates that exert an inordinate amount of influence on both national governments and global extra-national regulatory organizations. Although more of us are now considered citizen-equals in the eyes of the law, how “equal” we really are often depends on our place in a corporate hierarchy—a place which often has as much to do with where we start out and who we are connected to as it does with our own skills and efforts.  

By now nearly everyone is aware of the reality of stagnating real wages and increasing income and wealth inequality. While most of us acknowledge that perfect equality is not likely to occur due to the natural human variations in talent, skills, and willingness to work, most of us also recognize that the huge disparities of wealth and power that seem to be increasing year after year are way outside the bounds of what most of us would consider a “normal” distribution. That is, in spite of our historical antipathy to taxes and other attempts to infringe upon freedoms and self-determination, most of us also acknowledge that something is definitely wrong with the “system.”

Although the American public tends to be against tax increases generally, more Americans support raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations in order to regain some semblance of balance and “natural” equality. A Reuters/Ipsos poll in early fall of 2017 found that 53% of Americans strongly agree, with another 23% “somewhat agreeing,” that the wealthiest should pay higher taxes.  A poll by the Pew Research Center taken about the same time also found that over twice as many Americans (52%) wanted to see higher taxes on corporations and large businesses as those who wanted to see these taxes lowered (24%).  So  it would seem that, although raising taxes are generally disfavored, in the case of correcting a case of inequality-on-steroids, the American public views such tax increases as desirable.

The Economic Policy Institute produced a pre-Great Recession (2006) paper titled Talking Past Each Other: What Everyday Americans Really Think (and Elites Don’t Get) about the Economy.  The foundational premise was that decision-makers and policy elites were out-of-touch with how ordinary working Americans think and talk about economic issues. The objective was to find constructive ways of discussing economic issues with the public in order to foster better dialogue and inclusion in the economic policy process. The authors of the EPI study argue that conservative elites underestimate economic pessimism, ignoring or minimizing the economic anxieties of workers; while liberal elites underestimate economic optimism, and tend to address workers as helpless victims of forces outside themselves. What the EPI study found was that Americans were expressing a contradiction between an optimistic view of their own future while acknowledging concern about the economy in general.

As with many surveys, responses can be positive or negative depending on how a question is framed. For example, when international trade (i.e., globalization) was framed as being about providing a greater variety or less expensive goods, it was viewed more favorably. When it was presented in terms of outsourcing and offshoring of jobs, it was viewed more negatively. However, when discussing the economy in general, the EPI economists found that Americans were truly ambivalent, expressing an almost schizoid belief in American Dream ideology as it applied to them while at the same time acknowledging the fact of stagnating real incomes, insecure employment and growing wealth inequality—i.e., that the economy is not working for most of us— even as they report that they expect to do OK in their own situation.    

In the EPI study, many people expressed generalized anxieties which mostly  revolved around jobs, followed by concerns about family budgets keeping up with costs, household debt, and family stress from working too many hours.  Unlike earlier anxieties, which tended to revolve around getting and keeping a job, more recent anxieties were more about getting a good paying and stable job. These results imply that Americans believe that a lack of decent jobs is a bigger issue than not enough jobs. Citing an August 2006 Pew Research poll, some 62% of respondents said there was less security compared to 20 or 30 years ago, and 59% said people had to work harder to earn a decent living. And this poll was taken prior to the collapse that precipitated the Great Recession of 2007-2009.

In America we are an optimistic culture that values self-reliance. In Bright Sided, Barbara Ehrenreich argues that relentless cheerfulness has become almost a mandatory cultural attitude. On top of this, financial struggle or failure is viewed as a source of shame, which is compounded by an ideology of “equal opportunity” and meritocracy. This cultural prohibition on complaining may serve to improve affective mood and help maintain hope for the future, but it also prevents any real questioning of the system. Thus, no matter how bad a situation may be, Americans tend to avoid viewing themselves as victims or engaging in self-pity. They are reluctant to discuss their personal situation in negative terms, because to do so would invariably brand oneself as a “loser.”

Yet, when asked more indirectly, Americans are deeply insecure, and often express this in more roundabout ways. Many Americans express their anxieties in the form of sympathetic concern for others who are having a hard time. When it comes to their own situations, people will say they are doing OK and expect to do better in the future. Conversely, when asked how they think the economy is performing in general for “people like me,” the same people will be more forthcoming about doubts and challenges. The good news here is that most of us are genuinely concerned about the welfare of others, and do not necessarily subscribe to the dog-eat-dog, everyone-for-himself attitude that seems to be rampant in American society.  

In a March 2006 Economic Resilience Group survey, some 52% of respondents reported their own economic situation was excellent or good. At the same time, 61% said the economy as a whole was not improving.  In the following question set—which is framed in terms of how “most people” are doing—64% of respondents chose the first statement about increasing uncertainty as coming closer to their own views, as compared to 32% who chose the second statement:

  1. Most people today face increasing uncertainly about employment, with stagnant incomes paying more for health care, taxes, and retirement, while those at the top have booming incomes and lower taxes.
  2. Our economy faces ups and downs, but most people can expect to better themselves, see rising incomes and good jobs, and provide economic security for their families. The American dream is very much alive.

Besides optimism, another American cultural trait is that of self-reliance—the “pull-yourself up by your own bootstraps” ethos.  As the EPI economists state: “Just as people’s insecurity puts them at odds with the conservative elites, their self-reliance puts them at odds with liberal elites.”  That is, most people say that the only reason they are optimistic about their own situation is because they know they can rely on themselves. The Economic Resilience Group survey indeed found that people had little confidence in institutions such as corporations, government programs, or labor unions. The attitude seemed to be that their own situation was OK and expected to get better solely due to their own personal efforts and sacrifices. Thus, any expressed optimism was not due to a growing economy, or that jobs offered opportunity for advancement, or because anybody would help them. There seemed to be a simultaneous recognition that the system is broken, but the only thing you can rely on is rugged individualism.

However, some people acknowledged a sense of “we’re all in this together,” expressing a desire for some level of social safety net that would allow people to realize their potential and build wealth. Indeed, many of the most popular social programs—the earned income tax credit, unemployment compensation, workers compensation, minimum wage, and social security—are those that reward work. The Economic Resiliency Group poll found that respondents were nearly equally divided between the below two statements (i.e., which statement was most true of their own views):

  1. In today’s economy, average Americans are on their own. Jobs and benefits are less secure, and you can’t really count on anyone but yourself and your family to get ahead.
  2. In today’s economy, we all face some common challenges. Jobs and benefits are less secure, so we all need to work together to make it easier for average Americans to get ahead.

Another surprise that arose in the EPI study was self-identification as working class. While the majority of Americans—both in the EPI study and generally—describe themselves as “middle class,” 31% described themselves as “working class,” a term that is hardly ever used by opinion leaders and policy elites. This suggests that people are acutely aware that they “work for [someone other than themselves], live from paycheck to paycheck, are economically vulnerable, and do not…enjoy the same status and security as others.” In another two-question set, respondents were again almost evenly divided between whether they believed the middle class was declining or whether the “middle class dream is very much alive” in America. This question again represents the dichotomy of hope in one’s own efforts along with recognition of obvious challenges.

According to the EPI economists, “Americans are working longer and harder just to stay even….With most people, the intensity, the insecurity, and the arduousness of their economic struggles are woven into the fabric of their lives—and are central to their identity….Thus, they can identify with the working poor and hardworking entrepreneurs [while at the same time] are scornful of [both] the dependent poor and the idle rich.”  The EPI economists also suggest that Americans are “ideologically conservative but operationally liberal,” in that they support both the concept of free enterprise and government social support programs such as unemployment, student loans, and Social Security.

The idea of a social safety net as promoting freedom is counterintuitive in American society, although it has been around in European countries for nearly a century. As Franklin Delano Roosevelt once said, “Necessitous men are not free men.”  People must be free to not only pursue meaningful and sustainable work, but to participate in civic and social life. No one is truly free when they spend all their time and energy in a struggle to survive, and their voices aren’t heard by those who rule society. In essence, some level of basic security may be necessary before individual effort has a chance to produce the desired results.

The EPI economists suggest that one way to discuss inequality is to frame problems around bread-and-butter issues that are either “good” or “bad” for workers while avoiding the socio-cultural biases. For example, rather than discussing stagnating incomes (which produce feelings of shame and failure), discuss the squeeze caused by the rising cost of living. They also suggest that rather than talking about “more government regulation,” or “programs,” discuss these in terms of either empowering or protecting people. As for inequality, perhaps the best way to frame the issue is around an effort-to-reward outcome, or even a matter of simple fairness. At the lower end, an honest day’s work should provide a worker enough to live on in reasonable, basic comfort.  At the upper end, there is a point at which huge concentrations of wealth and power pose a threat to the freedoms of everyone else, either by dominance of the policy process, the ability to frame and steer public discourse, or simply by circumscribing mobility and opportunity.

Perhaps one could propose that extreme inequality is a form of “opportunity hoarding.” That is, the problem is not so much that the rich are accumulating more than they could ever consume in multiple lifetimes, but that the existence of such accumulations operates to limit mobility for everyone else. When the “system” denies opportunity and access to the majority, the resulting infringements on our freedoms are collectively more egregious than any corresponding infringements by rules or regulations required to insure a fairer and more equitable outcome. But before we can do anything to fix the problem, we have to find a way to talk about it—a way to talk about it that makes sense to working people. It is studies such as this one that will help take us there.

 

 

What Makes People “Exceptional”?

Published on by Brynne VanHettinga Category: Exceptionalism, Meritocracy

I had heard about Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers long before I actually decided to read it.  My reluctance was due to the emphasis of reviewers—who tended to focus solely on the so-called 10,000 hour rule.  That is, one does not have to be a born genius to master a particular activity (the example in the book was a concert violinist), but merely dedicate a total of 10,000 hours to concentrated practice.  Because my impression was that Outliers was yet another exhortation from the establishment urging all of us to work harder and keep our noses to the grindstone in order to get anywhere in life, I avoided reading it until recently.  However, the book is much more nuanced and complex than most reviewers give it credit for.  Indeed, some of them seem to have missed the primary message entirely.

human-potential

Gladwell’s premise actually debunks the notion of the self-made genius who through talent, grit and determination accomplishes great things and enjoys worldly success. Although successful people can usually make rightful claim to a certain amount of smarts and hard work, what is often left out of these stories is what Gladwell describes as non-obvious advantages and opportunities.  In other words, the difference between a smart person who works hard and enjoys worldly success and a smart person who works hard and struggles is a matter of being at the right place at the right time.

Gladwell describes a number of scenarios in which a few individuals rise to the top, ranging from Canadian hockey stars to high tech entrepreneurs. He calls this process the “Matthew Effect.”  The Matthew Effect is based on the Book of Matthew in the Bible, in which those who are successful are given more and “from those who hath not…all that they hath will be taken away.”  For now, I will not delve into the theological implications of this verse, but it describes a phenomenon that sociologists term “cumulative advantage.”  Cumulative advantage occurs in a manner similar to that which economists describe as winner-take-all markets, in which a small, early advantage is compounded by further advantages.  In the case of an individual, when parents, teachers and schools identify early talent in a particular student, attention and resources are marshalled to further develop and enhance this talent.  In the economic context, an early advantage allows a business to capture markets, supply chains, and even public consciousness.

While there is nothing harmful in cumulative advantage in and of itself, it can become a problem in the individual context when it draws attention and resources away from the development of other individuals and/or different talents. Similarly, in the business world the winner-take-all phenomenon often leads to monopoly markets, operating to crowd out innovation and diversity. Individuals may make poor career choices because a potential (if statistically improbable) payoff may be huge compared to other options.  Yet, the individual may end up losing sight of his or her own talents and unique path in the world.

In one chapter, Gladwell tells the story of a man who was known to have a high IQ and much intellectual potential, but because he grew up in a dysfunctional home and lived in a remote rural area, he spent his youth bored with school and learned mainly to distrust authority. As an adult, this fellow is working on what Gladwell describes as “a project of enormous sophistication” while eking out a living on a remote farm.  The tragedy is that it is unlikely this man’s work will ever see the light of peer review or even a curious news story because he has no institutional support and no skill for making his voice heard in the world.  Although Gladwell’s main point in this story is that there is a lot of wasted talent out there because it has not been recognized and nurtured, he also suggests that alienation of unrecognized genius will further reduce the talent and knowledge that could be put to beneficial use.

Gladwell’s ultimate message is that the self-made genius or billionaire is a myth because no one “makes it” alone.  He concludes with the observation:

          “[Geniuses] are products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy.  Their success is not exceptional or mysterious.  It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain luck—but all critical to making them who they are.  The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all.”

Outliers is a first step in disabusing ourselves of the exceptionality of individuals and completely “deserved” worldly success. We need not begrudge such individuals the legitimate fruits of their efforts, but we can also rightfully ask for a little less hubris and a little more humility.  However, popular myths surrounding success do more than simply bolster the egos of the successful—they serve to legitimize a system in which a few are over-rewarded while others who are equally talented and hard-working are under-rewarded.  Perhaps Gladwell’s message is that we either need to broaden our idea of what constitutes talent or genius or even dispense with the notion of genius altogether.  Gladwell speaks of a “culture of possibility,” describing how his great-great-great-grandmother was sold into slavery yet managed to found a family legacy based on education and self-betterment.  We can only imagine what the world would be like if every human being was able to reach her or his full potential—and no one had to go it alone.