December 27, 2020

Paul Millerd on the State of Work in 2020

I enjoyed this Twitter thread by Paul Millerd:

1/ Going to kickstart a @threadapalooza here.

Topic: The State of Work 2020

I'm going to give you a short intro of why I care then I'll just throw out 1-opinion / 1-like style takes. I imagine this will get a little unhinged towards the end.

— Paul Millerd (@p_millerd) December 16, 2020

This particularly resonated with me:

11/ Career paths are silly for 99% of people. Most people should aspire to a much more random walk. The career path is an outdated idea from simpler companies and time.

The idea that we need to progress up ranks and incomes keeps people trapped in jobs unnecessarily with.

— Paul Millerd (@p_millerd) December 16, 2020

Over the last few years I’ve realized how much I value novelty: I love learning new things, trying new experiences, moving from project to project. It’s why I’ve stopped trying to be a specialist. When I first encountered 80,000 Hours, one of the pieces of advice that most resonated with me was the idea of treating your career as a series of experiments to work out what you do and don’t enjoy, what does and doesn’t fulfill you. Similarly, the idea of a random walk is very appealing - it’s liberating to not have everything mapped out, and instead be open to the journey.

This one also struck a chord:

12/ The US tying healthcare to employment by accident in the 1950s might be the sickest joke the universe has ever played on the world. If anyone thinks this setup is a good idea I don't think we can be friends.

— Paul Millerd (@p_millerd) December 16, 2020

As someone who grew up in the UK, this has been one of the most jarring things about moving to the US. Thanks to the NHS, healthcare was never a factor in my employment decisions. Yet it’s something I hear regularly from my American friends; it limits their ability to take entrepreneurial risks or leave jobs that are making them miserable. It breaks my heart to think of all the wasted talent and innovation we are missing out on for no good reason. It’s ironic, too, that a country famous for the American Dream has inadvertently hampered the ability of many to pursue their own path to prosperity.

There are many more interesting observations and ideas in the thread.