My friend K is smart, vivacious, funny, driven, talented, passionate, and bubbling over with what the suits of yesteryears called “work ethic.”
And a few days ago, K and I spent at least an hour going back and forth about her horrible, shitty, no-good very bad boss — hereafter known only as “Crazypants.”
The Ballad of Crazypants
- Crazypants refuses to pay for services the business needs.
- Crazypants makes unilateral decisions without consulting the team she’s hired to execute those decisions, who know more about the day-to-day running of the business than Crazypants does.
- Crazypants likes to take rapid freak turns off the project highway, such as demanding my friend choose a new mailing list service the night before sending out a newsletter.
- Crazypants takes advantage of her employees’ desire to do good work in order to get away with chaotic management (at best!).
- Crazypants takes credit for her employees’ ideas — not only to clients and other outsiders, but even inside the company.
- Crazypants does her damnedest to control and intimidate her employees.
And more.
Now, is Crazypants a bad boss? Yes, clearly. And Crazypants is hardly special or alone in her crazy.
Crazypants is also an excellent example of why employment is such an unholy crapshoot.
The Fundamental Problem with Employment…
… is that somebody else has the power to decide how happy you can be. Make no mistake, bad bosses can ruin lives — often temporarily, but sometimes permanently.
Because:
When you’re employed, you’re no longer the captain of your own destiny. Someone else is in control of whether you are allowed to do your best work, to feel good about what you do, to have an impact, to grow professionally and personally.
Yup, I said it: Somebody else is in control. Who? Whoever has the power to make your work and your work life suck. (From here on out, I’ll call that person “your boss” but it could equally be an evil coworker or ignorant client.)
Current emo self-help trends say, “Nobody can make you feel bad without your permission.” But how many happy campers do you know who can totally laugh off the effects of 8 hours a day under a bad boss?
We humans are social creatures, we need other people, and the other people in our lives have tremendous power to affect our feelings. It’s insulting and unrealistic to imply that if hurtful people doing hurtful things hurt us, it’s our fault.
“You Could Improve the Situation”
Okay, I hear you saying, so Bad Boss is Bad. But you can try to change the situation. That’s true. You sure can try. But when your boss is immune to change, how well does that work?
Then, when your suggestion-ballot-writing and helpful hints fail to create the change you desire, you could take things into your own hands and work covertly, on the down low. Engage in a little on-the-job civil disobedience.
But then, as it turns out, your boss’s attitude is making a dishonest person out of you.
How good can you feel about yourself, your work, and your contribution when you’re forced to rely on subversion and trickery to achieve it?
So, change is out, unless you’re lucky. Then once you eliminate change, there are only two well-worn little numbers left: Denial, and quitting.
Denial comes in two forms:
- You can deny that anything’s wrong, that it’s not “that bad,” and justify your decision to stay. Or…
- You can accept defeat, pretend you don’t care about doing good work, check out entirely, talk the talk of somebody who is cynical about working for “the man” but who’s willing to fleece “the man,” if the opportunity presents itself. (Many talk this talk, but few can walk it, not truly.)
And finally, you can quit. Quitting, of course, is the act of ripping yourself away from a huge part of your life — from your work, possibly years of it, and people you’ve spent time with and thought about and maybe even loved a little, from your dreams, your original high expectations, and your trials & triumphs — shredding it to little pieces, and stomping on it. Maybe setting it on fire for good measure.
Do any of these sound healthy to you? Have you done them? How’d that feel?
Pretty Damn Bad, if You Ask Me
Hell, when you combine all the “real” jobs I’ve ever held, I’ve tried ‘em all. And they all sucked. I felt like my heart was being stomped on. I felt like my passion and joie de vivre were being sucked out of my chest through a bendy straw.
Then I’d quit, and I’d try a new job (or, finally, consulting), thinking that the next one would be different. I’d be happier; they’d appreciate me more; I wouldn’t feel the slow withering death of passion that comes from the bad marriage between an employee and her company.
Of course, after the honeymoon period, all bets were off. Each new job sucked — in new and different ways, at least, but nevertheless equally. Each one left me disappointed and angry that the people in charge were so incompetent, that I was hamstrung, that, try as I might, it was if all my hard work — in fact my very existence — didn’t even leave a tiny mark on the institution to which I had so naïvely plead my loyalty for 8+ hours a day.
Do You Have a Good Boss?
Sadly, caring about your work plus bad boss (or even “okay boss”) equals ennui, frustration, even depression. When you care about your work, and you work for a less-than-stellar boss, it’s nigh impossible to show up every day and give your all.
Maybe your boss “isn’t all that bad.” Maybe she “means well.” But you know what? An “okay” boss is a bigger problem than you think. You care about what you do. You want to feel like you’re accomplishing something, and take pride in the results, and share in the rewards.
To do all those things, you need a lot more than a moderate, do-no-bad-or-really-any-good Switzerland of a boss. An okay boss is just as bad as a bad boss, most of the time.
Eliminating a pain isn’t the same as creating joy.
Most Jobs Violate Fundamental Human Needs
Yes, really. Most jobs violate fundamental human needs. I’m not joking and I’m not exaggerating.
We all crave meaning. And we crave meaningful work. We all want to feel like we really exist, like we can really make an impact, like we’re really and truly here. That people really and truly see us, understand us, and appreciate us.
And when our daily work denies us these fundamental needs, we wither. We justify, we deny, and we quit, and we complain, and we look for greener pastures but rarely find them.
Continually doing our best for people who don’t appreciate it hurts almost as much as being thwarted. It’s like we don’t matter. Like we don’t even exist.
And yet despite this, we feel held hostage by our financial needs.
What we need is personal sovereignty.
Personality Sovereignty: What It Is
Personal Sovereignty is the solution.
Personal Sovereignty means you are in control of your destiny. Even the little bit of your destiny that plays out during the work day. When you have personal sovereignty, you’re the one in the driver’s seat.
You’re the one who gets to choose:
- What to work on
- Whom to work with
- Whom to work for
- How to do your work
- When and where to do your work
- Whose feedback to value
You get to pick your teammates and your customers. You get to decide when something is done. You get to choose the problems to tackle. You decide what your work should look like, sound like, feel like, taste like. You choose where to invest the most resources. You choose which days to work — and when. You are free and able to fire customers if you want to or need to.
You are freed from the fear of being fired if you make a mistake, or going broke if you tell a customer or two to eff off. You no longer have to hold your tongue, or keep to the shadows, due to financial tyranny.
Personal Sovereignty means that you’ve created freedom and power for yourself — so you can do your best work and be the best person you can be.
Since 2008, I’ve been working on achieving my own Personal Sovereignty. And by jove, I’ve finally got it. In January 2010, I reached my goal of being able to quit consulting, except for one client I really liked. Now, I do no more consulting at all. I live entirely off the income from products that I chose to create & sell — to people I like.
I get to choose what to work on, what to make, when to do it. I get to see the real impact my work has on the world, right away: When I do great work, I hear about how much my customers love it — customers who use what I make, whose lives I get to touch. Customers who show their love with money.
I answer only to reality: do my customers love this? does it earn more money? make my customers happier? No more do I have to worry about educating stakeholders or arbirtrary checklists, or client budgets, or anything else getting between me and doing my best work. There’s no one I must convince… except the people who actually use & pay for what I make. I have no proposals to write or egos to soothe.
No politicking, in fact, at all.
I have the freedom to do my best work. All the time. And if I don’t do my best work, then I have nobody to blame but myself. There’s nobody in my way any more.
I can do just about anything, now that I am the one who wields the Magical Scepter of Work Decision-Making.
That is Personal Sovereignty. And, unlike all the other jobs I’ve ever held, this one gets better over time.
Personality Sovereignty: How to Get It
First step: Admit you have a problem. Clichéd, but, well, clichés exist for a reason. If you’re justifying & making excuses for your less-than-lovely job situation, or pretending you don’t care, STOP. Excuses don’t help anyone, and they certainly hurt.
You deserve to feel valued, like your work makes a difference, like you are a whole, adult human being. That is not a luxury, that is a fundamental need. End of story.
Next up, the Big Fix… and I can’t tell you what it is for you. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to the problem of personal sovereignty. What’s right is what makes you happy.
Maybe you have to be employed (or rely on the kindness of others) to have what truly makes you happy. But then again, maybe you don’t.
Me, I quit. I quit my job, then I quit another job, and then I quit one more and became a consultant. Then I quit consulting, for the precise reason that it was so very much like having a job.
Now I make & sell products, along with my husband and a team of smart & funny freelancers. We make software together, we teach programming workshops together, we wrote an ebook together, and I teach a class on creating & selling your first paying product.
I get to decide what to work on, when, and how; who to sell to, who to hire. I get to do the cost-benefit analysis for everything I do; I get to buy the things I need, hire the people I need and want. Fire them, too, if I need to.
We have many customers and each one pays a little, so no single customer is too important to lose. No one customer can hold us hostage and force us to do things that don’t fit our vision & our needs. We can simply refund their money and point them in the direction of somebody who fits them better.
I highly recommend making & selling your own products, if you’re a maker by trade or spirit, and love doing a wide variety of things, and like to interact directly with people who use the things you make.
That’s What Made ME Happy.
And if you think it’ll make you happy, too, and you’re really ready for a change — like my friend — and you ache to feel satisfied in your work, to serve the people who pay for and value the end result of your work (not your boss, but your customers), then you should seriously consider taking my summer class on how to make your very first profitable product.
It’s called 30×500 Launch Class and tickets are on sale now.
30×500 teaches you how to make a product that earns you money from the get-go. You’ll learn how to ensure you have buyers for your product before you even make it. You’ll learn how I went from $0 of product income in 2008 to over $300,000 in 2010… and the system I created that’ll help you do it, too.
This is the third time I’ve given this course, and it gets better and better every time. But you don’t have to take my word for it — just look at some of the products my students have launched or are launching:
- UserMood
- The Business Part
- FreelanceFunnel
- Refactoring Redmine
- FluxTracker
- AndBang
- a live, in-person Rails workshop (no link available)
- … and more in the works!
It’s clear: 30×500 works. It’s solid, it’s well-researched, it’s systematic, and it’s action-oriented — no vague, handwavy “get rich quick” fluff here. And 30×500 is made from what I’ve learned selling software for small business, a technical ebook, and JavaScript training.
Check it out, if you’re ready to make a change.
And sign up for my free super special email list for free samples & a $100 off coupon:
Whatever you do… DON’T SIT ON YOUR ASS
Nobody will ever care as much about your happiness in your work as you will. Nobody will fight harder for your passion than you will.
A lot of us fall into the trap of waiting — waiting for an opportunity to present itself, waiting for a new job offer to land in our laps, waiting for A Sign™ we should quit and move on, waiting for somebody to talk us into it, waiting for our situation to get better, waiting for somebody to swoop in and save us.
Stop waiting.
If you’re unhappy, stop underrating and undermining your own need to do great work.
Get serious about creating your own happiness — and get off your ass.
Take the wheel.
Tweet
wow… thats exactly the reason why I quit. Because my boss is an asshole, freaking out once every day. And because I think I’m not born to be employed. So, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you for showing me that it was right.
You’re welcome. Congrats on making your big move!
Gotta say you lost me at quitting = bad. The day, more like the moment you hand your boss that wonderful “I’m leaving” paper, the tides changes. You are now calling the shots and there is not a thing a pointy hair boss can say or do. As for losing your friends I prefer to call it a filtering. When I leave I make sure to hand my personal email to “everyone”. Those who stay in touch continue as friends, the rest were just “hanging around” b/c you happened to be working in the same place. Not mention there is FB, twitter, email, skype, phone etc etc. Like I said, true friends will remain and the rest….wellll. You get the idea. Plus maybe, just maybe if enough people quite from the boss’ group it will raise a few flags upper up and something will get done. Heck I got called back to a part time (during college) job after my boss got fired b/c we all quit. So I’d put that quitting thing back into play.
“there is not a thing a pointy hair boss can say or do. ” thats not exactly true. Sure, he cant demand that you stay, but he can make your life that it feels like hell. Luckily im in the position that he needs me, so he will never ever dare to upset me in the next two weeks. I’m the last TYPO3 developer here, and most of the knowledge I gathered will be gone.
I didn’t say that quitting is bad. You’re bringing your own bias to the table here… and I guess you stopped reading there, huh?
Yeah, you clearly stopped reading… (He must be one of those bad bosses in some serious delusion
Excellent write up! I’m looking to get out on my own within the next couple of years — first up, finish learning about rails. I’ll definitely look in to that class, though. Thank you!
Keep rockin’, Sean
I’m going to be a bit pushy here because I’ve seen this before and I want to help out the other 90% of the people who haven’t commented.
Wanting to learn before you start is a great way to keep yourself from actually starting and is one of the top forms of procrastination. It’s easy to think that you still don’t “know Rails” and want to learn just one more thing before you start. (I speak from experience here, I’ve been using Rails since 2005 and still don’t know many parts of it).
If I could make a suggestion: Pick a technology and try to build a product in it. Not only will you have a product but you’ll also learn more about the tech since you’re actually invested in keeping it running. This will also help you focus on learning only the parts about the tech that will actually help you.
So instead of using 2 years to learn Rails, why not use the 2 years to build a product with Rails?
You’re 100% right, Eric.
You always have the best blog posts! Such a great writer!
Aw, thanks, TJ!
I’m in that same soul sucking spot. I LOVE working, I love designing sites and writing and connecting with people and while I’m employed as a web designer it’s mind-numblingly boring. Friends and family send me job listings, but I don’t want to be glued to another desk with another boss. And so I’m doing everything I can to put myself on a path toward freedom. Thanks for the pep talk
Rock on, Sarah! Remember that it took me about 1.5 years w/ the products to truly break free from consulting work so you gotta be in it for the long haul. But if you do it right, it DOES pay off.
“Someone else is in control of whether you are allowed to do your best work…” — that’s so true
Beautifully put. I really feel like this, and a couple of godin’s recent posts, are part of an overarching narrative for me. ‘A lot of us fall into the trap of waiting’ I fell into that trap for years. And then thought i had won because something new fell into my lap. But now…
The best stuff never falls into your lap, Chris! Have you read Linchpin? I think you’ll find it illuminating. (Godin and I are of the same mind on a lot of stuff
Of course i’ve read linchpin! Its great, hey? I’ve got his latest one on its way too. Anyway, thanks a lot for poking me in the right direction. I’m thinking you may be right… anyway i’ve got a couple of irons in the fire so to speak, hopefully one will show promise and free me, as you seem to have achieved. Please write more often! Blogs like yours and godins are far and few…
Lets not generalise here. If you are a software programmer and all you need is a laoptop to make products, sure you can show the finger to the world and quit. But all the factories that churn out products, even the laptop used to write the blog, need people to work and report to crappy bosses. You cant quit and go out and say I will build my own laptop, my own car, will build my own plane and fly to that training class I need to give in SFO. It aint so easy for most of the people out there expect for the software developers like us whose factory is just a laptop and a wifi connection. Go try and setup a real factory manufacturing your favorite physical product and see what it takes than typing on a laptop in the comfort of the living room.
Pankaj, this blog is not for factory workers, it is for designers & developers. I see a lot of people going “ZOMG THIS WON’T WORK FOR EVERYONE IN THE WHOLE WORLD” — which is ludicrous. Nothing will work for everyone in the whole world, least of all anything that requires dedication and action. What does your skepticism get you? Does it help you in any way, does it make your life better? These are the questions you should ask yourself before wasting your time venting it.
Again this advice, as good as it is, doesn’t even work for most software developers.
You’re right, Jason, because most people won’t lift a finger to help themselves. Ergo this advice will not work for most people, including most software developers.
I don’t worry about my advice applying to everyone in the world. I only worry about getting the message out to those people who need to hear it, who want to hear it, who are tired of the shit and ready to make change happen.
Tell me, why a factory? Expecting to build a factory is like expecting to build the next Google. The thought is so unreasonable that it’s actually a bit amusing.
Amy’s advice is about the Start, not what you sell in particular. So maybe you don’t build a laptop factory…But, could you sell a single laptop at a higher price than you bought it? What about another? Could you do that for 10 or 100?
The point isn’t whether you control the Means of Production or whether you were born Rich…The point is whether you are ready to Start. And that’s a lesson you can understand from the factory floors of Mumbai to the grey passionless cubicles of Corporate life.
Would like to add: This ain’t work for most of the software developing world. That’s because most Software besides little Websites and Smartphone-Apps nowadays needs big teams to develop. “Personality Sovereignty” can only go so far in this context.
Hans, you couldn’t be further from the truth. There are gobs of people out there, 1-3 man shops, doing great software, great training products, etc. Including us.
@JasonK: Why doesn’t it?
It was spot on for me, when I made my change 8 years ago. I worked for a boss just like Crazypants. The entire company sat under a cloud of anxiety and low morale because of the tyrant at the top. He was the CEO. And 100 people under him suffered. There was high turnover. And the ones who were the most averse to risk and change just sat there, with their souls rotting. They just accepted it, complained about it, but made excuses for not making any moves out.
Some are still there, getting up to 15 years of employment in that company.
Jason, while I agree that going solo is not for everybody, or starting a company with a few others, QUITTING a job and finding new work is always a possibility. Finding a better boss, or a job that entails more autonomy and more interesting work is.
The problem is that the majority of people out there are afraid to take a risk, prefer not to take a course or read a book on a new technology, and purposely tell them things that keep them in denial mode. I know people who do uninteresting work, aren’t fond of it, refer to it as “a job that pays the bills” and they manage to be at peace with that decision. Often they are married to a spouse who is also risk averse.
I quit a job once and went to another company making $20k more. I was at a party and I heard the wife of an ex-coworker say to mine, “Oh… I’m not letting him quit his job at that company.” WTF.
Anyway, the advice that’s presented here doesn’t even work for most software developers who for whatever reasons are terrified to actually pursue their own dreams and are too scared of change. Which really represents a huge subset of the worlds software developers. But the advice does work for people who have dreams and are willing to pursue them and make stuff happen instead of doing work for other people who are willing to take the reigns.
PS: Watch “Joe vs the Volcano” with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.
A bit silly at times, not an Academy Award nominee, but… the message it contains is an important one for anybody who’s in a job that gets them down.
I usually don’t post comments on blog entries I read because the simple action of reading and processing the message keeps me entertained enough for lots and lots of time, but I got to say that this post pretty much defines what I’m currently living.
For the past 10 months I’m working in a big eletronic company here in Brazil and, well, it couldn’t be worse. It could actually, but it’s just pretty darn hard for me. I was just talking to a friend of mine when he told me about this post and I said earlier to him: “My joy, my passion for work, has pretty much faded away”.
What I really love about all you have said is happiness. I can note each and everyday how stressed out and miserable I’m becoming, how every single day feels like a nightmare. And yet, from time to time, I have the feeling that kept me happy when I entered collegue: I can make people happy from what I do, I can make a difference with my life to other people. This feeling keeps me going, it motivates me to really change all this situation and improve my life.
I’d like to say that your post is really inspiring. I found that my happiness is pretty much making other people happy from what I do, enabling them to improve their own lives in ways that they thought it couldn’t happen. And to know that even thought every now and then we’ll find ourselves in some pretty bad situations, we can make a change with our own strength and with those we love. To that I really must say thank you, you really gave me the strength to reach for my happiness.
Cheers from Brazil
You nailed a process I endured for years. It took a lot of reading, praying, denying haters, and other stuff to finally make the leap.
But the leap is worth it.