The good life
A series about ways to get life out of hard mode, from changing careers to trading in the stock market, moving home, or simply getting married smartly.
Illustration: Celine Ka Wing Lau
Let's say you work in an industry where for the past year (or a decade, if we're being honest) it seems like everyone is getting laid off. For fun, we can use my beloved digital media as an example. Before I landed at Cut, I was unemployed for nine months after the website I worked for was unceremoniously shut down by a man who spent $1.4 million on one of Napoleon's hats. I spent most of my time going to the cinema in the middle of the day and wondering if it was time to sell out. The desire for a big change, which all the pop girlies have been singing about lately, is not uncommon when you're in your late 20s and experiencing a Saturn return. Suddenly, I found myself suddenly unemployed and looking for one of about four jobs in an industry that could politely be described as unstable. To make matters worse, my friend was thinking about where he wanted to study law. Obviously, I started to imagine what a pivot might look like.
In my sellout fantasies, I worked at one of the big tech companies and did something like spell-checking the terms and conditions of a piece of software that was definitely collecting data in a way that wasn't entirely ethical. I would make $300,000 and close my laptop at the end of the day without thinking about it. However, a quick review of the situation revealed that selling my soul for six figures and a subsidized Equinox membership might not be as easy as I thought. These “days in my life as [insert big-name tech company here] Employee videos have disappeared from my For You page, likely related to the wave of layoffs in the tech industry over the past year. I refuse to endure the indignities of an MBA program, but I'm also aware that I work in an industry that could fail at any moment. With this in mind, I decided to figure out what my options are for selling out in today's situation. Luckily, there are some people whose entire job is to get you a job. I spoke to some of them to learn more about my decisions.
“The cushy tech job is dead,” Farah Sharghi told me recently. Hmm, not a great start. Sharghi is a career coach in San Francisco and previously worked as an in-house recruiter for companies like Google and TikTok. She noted that the idea that there could ever be such a thing as a cushy tech job was a bit far-fetched.
“You come to work very early to have breakfast at 7 a.m. because then you have time to breathe. But you drink work coffee and work lunch as if you weren't just sitting there all day, relaxing and getting a massage. There is no such thing,” Sharghi said. “I think what people forget is: Yes, there are these perks, but these perks are designed to keep you on campus. They’re designed to keep you healthy so you can stay awake and work.”
Bleh. That sounds kind of hellish. If that's what you want from your sold-out job, more power to you. But there are other options for those of us who just want a job that won't disappear at any moment.
Eliana Goldstein, a New York-based career coach, thinks it's possible. “I would say that for someone like you in this situation, I would think about roles related to content development, like lead copywriter,” she said. “Roles where you can add a little more seniority to your title, which will probably help you get paid a little more.”
Goldstein then shared with me that she's a big believer in side hustles, an idea I think I'm slightly allergic to (perhaps the real reason I can't sell out is that I'd always rather chill). I heard her.
“You are a writer. This is again a very sought after skill. “Let’s talk about building a side business and getting yourself one or two freelance gigs a month that will, you know, make you an extra $5,000 to $8,000 a month,” she told me. “Given the great volatility we have experienced over the last few years, I strongly believe that multiple revenue streams will always be very, very important.”
If you are my boss, please stop reading this. Did you know I could make five grand more a month? That sounds incredible, but it also sounds like you have two jobs. Maybe I actually crave stability.
Last May, Gabrielle Judge coined the term “lazy girl job.” In her original TikTok, Judge describes a lazy girl job as one that offers you a “pretty comfortable” salary and the ability to work remotely, and doesn't require that much actual work from you. You could close your laptop at 5 p.m. and not think about your job. Judge, who is now a full-time content creator and describes herself as an “anti-work girl boss,” told me that she originally took a job as a lazy girl because she wanted to do other things.
“Before my job as a slacker, I had a really intense job in tech,” she said. This job “crushed” her and she realized there were other things she wanted to do. So she got a lazy job as a customer success manager that paid the bills so she could focus on building her own business. For Judge, lazy girl jobs are also a good way to take the time to figure out exactly what you want to do for a career. “There's nothing wrong with spending six months taking your foot off the gas pedal a little bit and figuring out what else you want to do,” she said. “And sometimes slowing down helps you advance faster in your career.”
When I asked Sharghi about jobs for lazy girls, she recommended looking at government agencies, universities and hospitals. She warned that it would be “super boring” if she took a lazy job in financial services.
“I wish I could just listen to someone and say, 'This is what you should do,'” Megan Hellerer told me. “The truth is that there is no such thing. And the good news is that no one can tell you the answer except you. The bad news is that it’s all on you.”
Hellerer is a career coach who rose to prominence after one of her clients made it to the big leagues. Have you heard of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? She was a bartender when she started working at Hellerer. When I told Hellerer, who has a book coming out this fall called Directional Living: A Practical Guide to a Conscious Career, about my concerns about my chosen career, she stopped me mid-sentence.
“You have to live through the question,” she said. To them, it was a waste of my energy to think about whether it was the perfect time to jump ship and do something completely different. Here is her impression of me: “I can preemptively see that this is a sinking ship and I need to jump at this time. And if I do it at exactly the right time, I'll be on the safe side and then outwit the whole system.” Admittedly, it's a pretty good impression.
“That’s just not how it works,” she informed me. “With this logic, I hope this can be a great relief for you. It's like I don't have to figure it out. And I can't figure it out with my logical, strategic brain. Instead, I'm going to continue to invest in the pursuit – you know, forget about your goal and follow your curiosity and see how that goes. And somehow you can always trust that. Just like food cravings are meant to show you where the food is, food cravings are meant to show you where the purpose is.”
So I guess I don't really want to be sold out at the end of this exercise. At least not in the way I originally imagined. I don't want to be Ben Stiller in Reality Bites; I want to be someone who finds meaning… but also money. After talking to Hellerer, I have the feeling that this is actually possible. However, I still have a question.
“There’s no one right way to do this,” Hellerer said when I asked about the least sexy social media platform on the internet. “I guarantee you there is neither “LinkedIn will always lead to meaning” nor “LinkedIn will never lead to meaning.” Is this the right tool for you and feels exciting? Impressive.” I'm going to twist that to mean I don't have to.
See everything
Keep in touch.
Receive the Cut newsletter daily
Vox Media, LLC Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy
Comments are closed.