Identity Theft I: Work & Worry (6.4.25)
What is work worth?
Florence (a.k.a. Mrs. Deeply Boring) recently showed me an article in the South China Morning Post. It described how laid-off workers and unemployed fresh grads in China are renting office space where they can pretend to work, so as to avoid the humiliation of telling their families that they have either lost their jobs or could not find employment. Contextualization: in China, parents sometimes take on 2nd and 3rd jobs and sell homes to send their kids to college in the hopes of a generational leap in socio-economic status. The pressures are immense. Though I am not a mainland Chinese, my own journey is rooted in similar sacrifices. And I suspect many of my readers of Asian and non-Asian descent can relate, at least to some degree.
It’s rough out there, folks. In April and May, the Wall Street Journal reported that “College Graduates Confront a Tougher Job Market” and explored how “The Class of 2025 Tries to Crack a Chilly Job Market”. If you’re looking for work, I suggest you follow the advice in these, and similar articles: use your network, make sure you know how generative AI can help your application stand out, consider roles adjacent to your dream jobs, and be persistent. But even if you do all that, it’s still an uphill climb, and I do not take your circumstances lightly. The frustration, the sense of unfairness, the endless waiting, the self-doubt, and the one-sidedness of it all. Nobody told you this was how it was going to be when you were a bright-eyed freshman just a few short years ago.
Where are all the sunshine blowers now?
It reminds me of my experience looking for a job in the aftermath of the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the early 2000s. I had gone to great schools and had top grades. But even with enviable work experience, I simply couldn’t catch a break. Countless resumes sent into the void, interviews that went nowhere, lots of conversations ending with “we really like you, but…”.
The story is the same if you’ve recently been let go or are looking to escape a job you dislike. The financial markets reflect a general state of uncertainty: resurgent geopolitical rivalries, structural changes to the economy and a more complex global trading system are making it harder for experienced workers to line their skills up with what employers need. In fact, employers might not themselves know what their needs really are: agentic AI (see Harvard Business Review) is rapidly transforming the human-task contact surface, dividing some parts of the workforce into those who can configure, instruct and train AI on tasks, those who can use AI to increase their task productivity, and those who can do neither. Employers are reconfiguring organizational planning around these realities. This makes it harder for job seekers to decipher what firms may actually be looking for.
This is all anxiety-inducing. I have a good job with a good company, and even I’m anxious, just writing this.
But isn’t it natural to feel this way? After all, we rely on our jobs to put food on the table, to pay for bills, rent and gas. And other people – parents, siblings, spouses, children – may be relying on us. Even if we hate our jobs, work gives us a sense of purpose. If we like our jobs, that sense of purpose is amplified. When we are successful in our work, it shapes our identities: we are “dependable”; we are “part of a team”; we “help the mission”; we “lead others to accomplish things”; we “deliver outcomes”; we “change the world”.
In one sense, to work is to live.
But in another sense, it’s not. An identity rooted in work suffers from logical fallacy. If I do not work – if I choose to work less, or if given work does not choose me, does all the above become untrue? Am I now unreliable, a failure to those who need me, purposeless, useless? Under certain circumstances, maybe that’s true (e.g. if you freeload, abuse the charity of others, or reject your responsibilities). But if you’re trying to put it together, and it’s just not coming together, please – please – do not let yourself fall into the mental death spiral of convincing yourself that without work, you are nothing.
I am here to tell you that is not true.
It. Is. Not. True.
You are worth something. In fact, you are worth a great deal. Right here, just as you are. Work or no work.
On some days, that may be a very hard thing to accept, but I believe I’ve found a good way to think about it. Every time you are tempted to feel down on yourself, think about someone you know who is struggling to find work, or imagine someone you respect in that position, and tell yourself: that person is absolutely worthless and I won’t have anything to do with them. You won’t be able to do it. Something in your heart, and in your mind, violently rejects that idea. Regardless of our religion, political leaning, or life experience, there is an explosive force inside each of us that fights to recognize and assert the dignity of others. It dwells deep in the very kernel of our being. It is not an evolutionary instinct, but a transcendent one. Understanding this, you might find it easier to accept what I have to say: that all that imposter syndrome, all that social anxiety, all that bottled up shame and humiliation, is a force of evil trying to drag you down. Whoever it is you imagined: He is worth something. She is worth something. They are worth something. And therefore, so are you.
We should be wary of rooting our identity – of giving power – to things that can terrify us (more on this idea here). I say this with some irony, as someone who sometimes (but hopefully decreasingly) behaves as if I need to re-earn the right to turn up at work every day. It is an existential struggle – not just to believe that your own worth is not defined by what you produce or what you earn, but also to behave that way: that is to say, to believe that others are not defined by what they produce or what they earn. That is not to say jobs are not important, and that they do not give dignity. But it is to say that they are not absolute or exclusive in that regard.
It is vital to discover, and to give power, to something that is above work.
Please hold this thought for the next couple of weeks.
We’re not done discussing identity yet.
I wish you grace, and peace.
J
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Great words, Justin. True words. Thank you.