Some years ago, I worked on a project that required me to interview dozens of women who had left what seemed to be terrific jobs. What struck me was that, over and over, these women described their jobs as “just not worth it.” The women in question were extremely well-paid and held prestigious positions. Yet they did not place sufficient value on what their companies offered them to stay engaged, either because they found the actual work uninspiring, or because they concluded that they couldn’t lead full and satisfying lives given the relentless demands on their energy.
Given that how we define “worth” is ultimately an expression of our values, the consistent language used by the women I spoke with suggested that a slightly different set of values was at play. This should hardly be surprising. Work has traditionally been structured to reward and reflect the presumed values of the all-male workforce that had been the norm until the last few decades– especially in senior positions.
While the structure of work has evolved recently to reflect the needs of a more diverse workforce, workplace values have been slower to change. Companies mostly still assume the same basic tradeoff: they give you money in exchange for your time, your commitment, and whatever skills you have that they perceive to be of use them. If your contribution is strong enough, you may be rewarded with more money and greater prestige. In turn, you will likely be asked to give them even more of your time, and greater commitment.
The logic here is irrefutable. But it wasn’t working for the talented women I was interviewing. So I dug deeper in an effort to discover what precisely they meant by their jobs being “not worth it.”
As it turned out, they basically felt that the quality of their daily experience was not sufficiently rewarding. They lacked opportunities to cultivate strong relationships on the job. They were unable to control their pace in a way that made sense to them. They lacked the energy and time to pursue activities or invest in people outside of work that they cared about. And they didn’t see these things changing so long as they remained in their job.
In other words, the texture of their everyday experience mattered more to these women than simply whether the job paid well, or served as a stepping-stone to greater prestige and higher financial rewards. None of them expected work to be inspiring and rewarding every day. But a consistently poor daily experience was not worth the tradeoff . This contrasted sharply with an intensely overworked and lonely male executive whom I’d once asked if he were happy. “Of course I’m,” he responded indignantly. “I am the president of the biggest hospital system in this state!”
Fast-forward to the closing months of 2023. Nearly four years after the start of the pandemic, employers are still struggling to persuade people to return to the office, endure long commutes for in-person meetings, and continually adapt their schedules to accommodate last-minute workplace demands.
Although the media has finally stopped running earnest articles about the great resignation, the spirit that motivated it remains. People are more likely to define satisfaction for themselves rather than simply accede to employer expectations about what constitutes a worthwhile tradeoff.
And so what might once have been viewed as women’s values have become workplace values. I’d say the trend is moving in the right direction.
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