Picking up where we left off yesterday with Part 2 of my Simone Stolzoff interview:

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Tom: Which myths about work are most damaging to employee well-being and why?

Simone: I think they're all damaging to some extent. One of the primary myths I highlighted in my book The Good Enough Job is this idea that your work can be like your family. It's an idea that was peddled particularly in the early 2000s by some of the bigger tech companies, and I think the pandemic really laid bare that at the end of the day, a professional relationship is an economic contract.

Certainly you can make friends and certainly you can find community at work, but it's not the same as the unconditional bonds and love of family. Workplaces fire employees when they come on hard economic times, which isn't necessarily the same for families. Also, I don't know whether families should be this sort of paradigm that we're aspiring to. Most of the families I know are pretty dysfunctional!

Tom: Your book challenges the “if/then” mentality of hustle culture which says "if I work 80 hours a week now, I’ll have freedom later." You argue the bargain rarely pays off. What would you say to ambitious young people who feel like they need to sacrifice now to succeed later?

Simone: Well, I think that model isn't necessarily untrue for everyone. It could work for some people. For example, my sister is a doctor. For many years she put in the time to go through education and residency in order to get this job that required all of this training. Most lines of work do have some level of sacrifice or paying their dues to get more autonomy and freedom.

But I think the problem is this idea of something called the "arrival fallacy" and that if you just get this promotion or once you get married or you're able to buy your house, then you'll finally be happy. And I think the problem with this mentality is twofold.

First, it discounts the process of getting there. If you're really miserable in the process and you're just holding out for some future payoff, that payoff might not actually deliver what you expected it to deliver. You can waste a lot of time.

The second reason is that once you achieve whatever it is that you're targeting, you'll likely push the goal post further out. So once you've made it to VP, you want to make it to the C-Suite. Once you buy the house, you want to buy a bigger house.

So rather than delayed gratification or just thinking that "if I get this then I'll be happy," focus also on the process of what it might take to get there.

Tom: What advice would you give to a young person entering the job market obsessed with the hustle mentality?

Simone: The biggest piece of advice I'd give them is to diversify their identity. There isn't anything inherently wrong with being ambitious or hustling to achieve something that you want to achieve, but I would push them to make sure that they're also investing in other sources of meaning and purpose and community.

I think a lot of people found this out the hard way during the pandemic. They put all of their energy into a particular job or a particular employer only to be unceremoniously let go or furloughed. And it just shows that when we have a more broad sense of meaning or purpose, it's a more stable foundation to build upon as opposed to looking to get everything from one facet of who you are.

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That's a wrap for Part 2.

Tomorrow we're back with Simone’s thoughts on the traits needed to navigate an unconventional career path.