{"id":131,"date":"2011-08-25T23:11:17","date_gmt":"2011-08-26T06:11:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ryotakahashi.com\/blog\/?p=131"},"modified":"2011-08-28T20:11:08","modified_gmt":"2011-08-29T03:11:08","slug":"just-quit-your-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ryotakahashi.com\/blog\/archives\/131","title":{"rendered":"Just Quit Your Job"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Articles like <a href=\"http:\/\/lifehacker.com\/5834025\/if-you-wouldnt-do-your-job-for-free-then-quit\">this<\/a> really upset me. The &#8220;advice&#8221; is captured in the title: &#8220;If You Wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t Do Your Job For Free, Then Quit.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The problem I have with articles like these is that they follow this pattern:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Offer advice in a one-size-fits-all manner, with a this-is-the-one-and-only-way tone.<\/li>\n<li>Ignore obvious impracticalities of said advice.<\/li>\n<li>Write a few paragraphs that boil down to &#8220;I follow this advice, and I&#8217;m happy\/rich\/successful, so it will work for everyone.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>I have no problem with people offering advice. I&#8217;ve read quite a few tips online about personal finance, baking, poker, etc. that I&#8217;ve found useful. But I cannot stand it when the advice presented is far too idealistic and unrealistic, and it&#8217;s also presented in such a way that makes it seem that it&#8217;s the only right way to go about things.<\/p>\n<p>This particular article seems to imply that everyone would be keen to follow his advice of &#8220;if you wouldn&#8217;t do your job for free, then quit.&#8221; The author is being far too idealistic. It&#8217;s an ideal situation that I think we would all like to be in: do something you really enjoy, and get paid for it. But the truth is, very few of us achieve that. There&#8217;s a litany of reasons people don&#8217;t have a job they&#8217;d do for free:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It&#8217;s impractical\/difficult\/impossible to find a job doing the things they enjoy.<\/li>\n<li>Their current job, even though they wouldn&#8217;t do it for free, pays them too much for them to just walk away.<\/li>\n<li>They have obligations (family, mortgage, etc.) that wouldn&#8217;t allow them to take a job doing what they enjoy (because it doesn&#8217;t pay enough, it&#8217;s too dangerous, etc.).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The article is dripping with the &#8220;it worked for me, it&#8217;ll work for you&#8221; attitude. The author describes how he found that growing tech companies is what he really enjoys doing. Just from the title, I had a feeling that it was written by someone in the tech industry. This attitude seems particularly prevalent in the tech industry. I think it&#8217;s because people in tech are usually paid well, so it&#8217;s easy for those people who do enjoy their jobs to have this attitude of &#8220;I&#8217;m working at a job I enjoy, so should everyone.&#8221; Would they be singing the same tune if they made, say, $20,000 a year? I don&#8217;t think so. At least not as much. It&#8217;s much easier to say that everyone should work at a job they&#8217;d do for free when that particular job for you pays you a six-figure salary.<\/p>\n<p>Also, quitting your job is a dramatic step to take. But that&#8217;s what the author is saying that you should do, if you wouldn&#8217;t do your job for free. One of the commenters, who is one of the lucky ones who loves their job, sums up my feelings:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nExcept he&#8217;s not saying that. You&#8217;re inferring that, but he&#8217;s not saying it. He&#8217;s not saying, &#8220;you should consider a change in jobs\/careers.&#8221; He&#8217;s saying &#8220;quit.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Quit.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Walk away from your job. Not just consider a change in careers, and work towards that change. Quit. The theme of do what you love is all la-di-da, but most people don&#8217;t have a go to hell fund to make that a reality if they&#8217;re working to pay the rent.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Personally, I thought the author sounded arrogant in this article. It was basically, &#8220;Look at me, I&#8217;m in an ideal situation. I would do my job for free. Never mind that I get paid a buttload of money, I&#8217;d still do it for free. If you&#8217;re not in as ideal a situation as me, you should just quit your job.&#8221; Right, because that&#8217;s going to work for everyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Articles like this really upset me. The &#8220;advice&#8221; is captured in the title: &#8220;If You Wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t Do Your Job For Free, Then Quit.&#8221; The problem I have with articles like these is that they follow this pattern: Offer advice in &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ryotakahashi.com\/blog\/archives\/131\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[17,218],"class_list":["post-131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants","tag-arrogance","tag-jobs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ryotakahashi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ryotakahashi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ryotakahashi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ryotakahashi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ryotakahashi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.ryotakahashi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ryotakahashi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ryotakahashi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ryotakahashi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}