Disclaimer: This edition was written by our community member, Varun Choraria.
Dear Reader,
Trust that you’re doing well. At the outset, I personally want to thank all readers of this newsletter for being so encouraging. However, I’d like to let you all know that this will be the last edition that I will be writing.
Additionally, I won’t be too active in the community anymore either. If you’d like to stay in touch, I’m reachable on Twitter or LinkedIn and you can find my website here.
If anyone would like to take over the newsletter, be sure to write to Paras: paras@paraschopra.com
Now, onto business.
The coronavirus pandemic has without a doubt disrupted a lot of industries. With much effort, the business-side disruptions are now percolating to the lowest strata of the modern workplace and job roles.
There’s a working hypothesis around more roles across the board becoming extreme generalists. Another term could be honing ‘T-shaped’ skills: giving generalist or soft skills like communication, upskilling, ownership more weightage than core technical skills. The modern workplace requires one to not just deliver, but to lead.
Let’s explore that a little deeply in our featured story section.
Week in Review: Highlights of our community
In #philosophical, Sunil shared an interesting video on how perspective is indeed everything. I personally feel it’s more relevant than ever to watch that right now, when we’re all directly or indirectly employing mental tools like contrasting and perspective to navigate the crisis.
In #videos-and-podcasts, Sunil has also shared a TEDx video on ‘The more we create knowledge, the less we know about our future’. Maybe not knowing everything is the key!
Want to feel like you’re in a bookstore of the world? Check-out shepherd, which has some great curated lists which recommends great books on almost every unimaginable subject.
The phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs and finding meaning in yours
Okay, what does a bullshit job even mean?
Before we get down to defining that, let’s first take a look at job descriptions.
A paradigmatic example of job descriptions would include variants such as personal details, years of experience, expectations from the role, and some possible perks. Other than being static adverts, what directional guidance does it really offer to prospective candidates?
Anthropologist David Graeber’s essay ‘On the phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: A work rant’ is indeed a detailed account of why the jobs and job descriptions of today are failing. Here’s a thought-provoking quote:
“Over the course of the last century, the number of workers employed as domestic servants, in industry, and in the farm sector has collapsed dramatically. At the same time, “professional, managerial, clerical, sales, and service workers” tripled, growing “from one-quarter to three-quarters of total employment.” In other words, productive jobs have, just as predicted, been largely automated away. (Even if you count industrial workers globally, including the toiling masses in India and China, such workers are still not nearly so large a percentage of the world population as they used to be.) “
So, here’s what a bullshit job means: a bullshit job is a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case.
Employers need to lead the way to reinvent the wheel with scouting talent. Reinventing is necessary, thanks to the tectonic shift in the nature of job in itself. To stress upon this fact, Mckinsey’s model projects that by 2030, 30-40% of today’s workers either need to move to new occupations, or need to upskill exponentially at the least:
Some organizations are pioneering change at the very bedrock of the conceptual idea of job descriptions. Stanford University asserts that employees or prospective candidates need to be involved in designing their own jobs, and therefore mertiable descriptions of it too:
Employers are now seeking greater engagement and meaning from every role that they hire for. ‘Job Crafting’ is an interesting three-part framework that could help achieve this-
‘Task Crafting’ is reconfiguring the deliverables aspect of your job. By extension, we are guessing this could be increasing efficacy, which could potentially be a product of effort vs. impact. Vs. cost (CTC).
‘Relational Crafting’ is working out the nuances of cross-functional and peer-level interactions, which bring the possibility of collaborative work to the forefront. In cases of Individual Contributors, relational crafting could point out the lines in sand with respect to direct responsibilities/ ownership, shared ownership.
‘Cognitive Crafting’ is a bird’s eye view of developing empathy around roles and interaction. We feel this is more manager-oriented, but even so the process of reframing everything as a growth and learning opportunity is something every worker needs to pick up.
Remember, if the environment and relationship with your manager is conducive enough, the you may not need job crafting. You could just point out the specific changes and accommodations and arrive at the midpoint. But in less supporting environments and for most general cases, having a 1:1 or group-level job crafting exercise can benefit competencies a lot, and offer a much clearer roadmap for growth.
In another example, Intercom’s design team have taken another approach to reframe what a job description could look like, across levels. Essentially, the focus of drawing a charter like this is to design role-level impact across the organizational ladder.
I’d encourage you to view their detailed document here.
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