Once upon a time, when you scored a job at Audi, the CEO would greet you and your fellow new hires with the following words on day one: “Welcome to 40 years of working life at Audi.” I wonder: When did the last person join who heard this guarantee and could expect it to last? Was it in the 90s? The early 2000s? At least the last decade feels like a stretch.
The American labor market has always moved according to the whims of Wall Street. Therefore, even if it was a first, Big Tech conducting mass layoffs solely to please investors—the salaries of those affected are a drop in the bucket compared to their annual profits—was only a matter of time. But when the German epitome of stability, Volkswagen (which owns Audi), scraps 30-year-old job guarantees, it really makes you think: Is the era of work loyalty finally, officially, unequivocally over? It sure seems that way.
Ten years ago, my mentor at BMW showed me that, even back then, tides were shifting. He left his role in marketing when my internship ended and became a pricing specialist. Before, he had done sales. Now, he’s a product manager. Unlike his bosses, who had followed a more traditional ascent from working in construction to cushy desk jobs in a related unit, leadership expected him to move across all kinds of functions in the organization—and master them all, of course. There were no cookies for doing your job well anymore. The cookies were always in some other team, and unless you moved, your career would stall and whither.
This trend is alive and well, and when it comes to switching jobs between companies, it is stronger and more obvious than ever: “Your job is not your job; your job is to get a better job,” like Adam Scott says. Why settle for a 2% pay bump, if that, when a competitor will offer you 20%, 30% more? Why deal with micromanagement and budget cuts and not getting promoted for silly reasons when someone else will throw in more holidays and extra equity on top? In tech as elsewhere, “always be switching” must be the motto of the employee who’s looking out for herself, even if she’s not trying to maximize profit. After all, the alternative to moving is waiting until you—or your salary, your privileges, your autonomy—get cut.
By and large, work is mercenary. That’s a sad state of affairs, but it is a state we must accept nonetheless. You know what doesn’t reward you for being a mercenary? Art. Art is forever. There’s no cheating mastery. You can put in the decades, or you can quit any time, but unlike the job market, the people with good taste won’t hand you a pay raise for the latter. The beauty of art, should you do it for the right reasons, is that the money is secondary to the practice. Show up every day, and you can claim your prize: the feeling of having shipped. Toiled. Wrought another fragment of creativity from the muses in another dimension. And on most days, that will be enough. It might have to be on all of them.
Will you be one of the lucky ones? The ones who find a firm that recognizes and repays their contributions in full? I sincerely hope you will be, but great employer or not, I can only recommend carving out a small space in your life that holds room for art—for art will always offer the type of home most workplaces can’t: the kind where practicing with intent is plenty to fill your heart.