“Most of the time, all that passion will get you is permission to be paid very little,”
writes in her book Can’t Even. I think about this line all the time.In a world that urges workers to follow their passions, the privilege of doing what you love is often seen as a form of compensation in itself. This is all well and good until love and passion become stand-ins for job security, workplace protections, and fair pay.
Put simply, framing work as a passion obscures the fact that our jobs are, first and foremost, economic contracts. I had the honor to write about this topic in a New York Times op-ed (my first!), and I’m excited to share it with y’all.
Here’s the piece: Please don’t call my job my calling
Book updates:
Last week, I also wrote an op-ed for The LA Times about layoffs and appeared on Brian Lehrer, KQED Forum, and The Chase Jarvis Show.
I’ve got two tour stops left on the book tour—6/7 in SF with Arielle Pardes and 6/12 in Denver with Ted McCombs.
Last week, The Good Enough Job was #15 on the business bestseller chart! Thank you all for the support 😊.
Warmly,
Simo
P.S. I took a break from the tour over the weekend to go to a bachelor party—how restful! We saw LCD Soundsystem on Saturday, so the song of the week is my favorite song of theirs. The full songs of the week playlist is here.