Why You (Probably) Hate Your Job: Richard Sennett Explains All

Richard Sennett is without a doubt one of my absolute, all-time favorite modern social critic-observers (in the pantheon with Neil Postman, Christopher Lasch, and Jane Jacobs). Sennett, who trained as a concert violinist at Julliard but gave up professional music after a hand injury, is a sociologist and philosopher at NYU and the London School of Economics whose interests range through labor relations, urban studies, and the culture of work and craft. I chanced upon him first in the bargain basement of the Brookline Booksmith, where I picked up a used copy of Authority, an examination of social, emotional, and psychological interactions interwoven in the modern concept and practice of authority, which is more than a simple power relation. It is, as are all of his books I've read, incredibly well-written and insightful.

Since this first read, I've picked up his books whenever I've had the opportunity. The Conscience of the Eye: The Design and Social Life of Cities is an engaging extended essay about the growth and structure of the Western cityscape and its implications for public and private life. The Craftsman is a terrific examination of the "the desire to do a job well for its own sake" and its loss, rediscovery(?), and value in modern society. Both books were excellent; my only complaint about Sennett's essays is that at the end of the exploratory ambulations on which the reader accompanies him, he seems too reticent to draw prescriptive conclusions. With so much to think about, though, it does seem reasonable to take the time to ponder before asserting what is to be done.

Most recently I read his short essay from the late 1990s, The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism. The book is as good a read as all the others. His own blurb:

Drawing on interviews with dismissed IBM executives in Westchester, New York, bakers in a high-tech Boston bakery, a barmaid turned advertising executive, and many others, Sennett explores the disorienting effects of the new capitalism. He reveals the vivid and illuminating contrast between two worlds of work: the vanished world of rigid, hierarchical organizations, where what mattered was a sense of personal character, and the brave new world of corporate re-engineering, risk, flexibility, networking, and short-term teamwork, where what matters is being able to reinvent yourself on a dime.

In some ways the changes characterizing the new capitalism are positive; they make for a dynamic economy. But they can also be destructive, eroding the sense of sustained purpose, integrity of self, and trust in others that an earlier generation understood as essential to personal character. The Corrosion of Character enables us to understand the social and political context for our contemporary confusions and Sennett suggests how we need to re-imagine both community and individual character in order to confront an economy based on the principle of “no long term.”

The question is what effect do the changes in the structure of work and the work environment (flat, networked institutions, everyone a consultant, team-orientation, outsourcing, etc.) -- and their subsidiary effects on the bonds of trust that tie together any community, even a soulless corporation -- have on the development and maintenance of character:

"Character particularly focuses upon the long-term aspect of our emotional experience. Character is expressed by loyalty and mutual commitment, or through the pursuit of long=term goals, or by the practice of delayed gratification for the sake of a future end. Out of the confusion of sentiments in which we all dwell at any particular moment, we seek to save and sustain some; these sustainable sentiments will serve our characters. Character concerns the personal traits which we value in ourselves and for which we seek to be valued by others.

How do we decide what is of lasting value in ourselves in a society which is impatient, which focuses on the immediate moment? How can long-term goals be pursued in an economy devoted to the short term? How can mutual loyalties and commitments be sustained in institutions which are constantly breaking apart or continually being redesigned? These are the questions about character posed by the new, flexible capitalism."

Why is our work a source of stress, resentment and apprehension rather than self-definition and meaning, stolid and tragic though it may have once been? The diagnosis is grim. The promises of freedom and empowerment promulgated by the new capitalism are largely illusory. It is clear that the people who succeed most in this new kind of world are not those who are most useful and productive, in the traditional, ethical sense, but those who, when called account for failure, ensure that they emerge unblemished and that someone else, or no one at all, bears any blame. Hardly progress.

I won't say more. Read the book.