Channeling Hope in Career Dystopia
Dear Readers,
The same question loops in my mind — What will work look like in five years? It’s not just about steering myself to that future, but also how to craft it.
I lived the Great Recession as a new grad, so I’m no stranger to finicky job markets and employer power.
I know all too well the scramble for relevance, perfection, and busyness during a time of economic upheaval. Those behaviors lead to a contagion of anxiety in organizations.
Each day can feel like a bad sitcom or episode of Black Mirror — you’re not sure whether to laugh or scream.
But just as comedy comes from darkness, you can craft something meaningful in this dark time. Whether it’s a new role, pursuing an unconventional career, or getting promoted — take time to reflect on your origin story. And don’t skip over the dark part; that’s where the story is.
My entire career started out of spite — I wanted to do HR better.
That little bit of rage from my early experience with HR fueled me. Most folks don’t revel in their villain era; they inherit and optimize a playbook.
Instead ask yourself: Why you started this career?, What broke you apart?, and What chapter is your story in?
As bleak as this job market feels, it’s also a time for redefinition of work and life for the collective and for you. Over the next few years, I expect technology to outpace ethics, human creation to be novel, and a retreat from the grind into fractional, part-time, or even off-the-grid existences.
A new world will emerge — one that’s cooperative, connected, and shows reverence for the interdependence of humanity, including in the workplace. Along with it comes reimagining roles and an opportunity for Gen X and Millennials to claim the influence they were promised.
To shape a collective workplace where everyone gets agency, space to contribute their talents, and true livable pay for hard work — It’s going to take some creativity.
We need to imagine not only what could exist, but what should exist and if it has purpose. Which means it’s time for my regular plug on the value of reading fiction. I even keep a stack of weird books to inspire me — the ones with plots and characters that couldn’t be pattern-matched.
The same patterns aren’t going to craft a different future. We’re all in a broken system and most of us are not benefitting from it.
But the most rebellious thing you can do in dystopia is hope.
So, my bits and bobs this month are future of work trends and hopes.
Job descriptions are relics
Picture a team of anthropologists in the distance future slogging through JDs trying to understand what accelerate corporate synergy with transformative strategy means.
The opportunity for you is two-fold…
If you’re searching for a role:
Tell your story in terms of the problems you solve. Companies need pain pills, so your career story needs to talk about the pains you solve and for who.
If you’re staying in a role:
Craft your role around your Zone of Genius — the things you love, are excellent at, and energize you. Job-hugging is a chance to customize.
Reimagining Leadership
With the opening of Devil Wears Prada 2, I'm reminded of my post last year on the rise of the gentle leader. In 2006, the original asked us to consider whether hustling for status and power was worth the life and soul it cost us.
What I’ve noticed in my fellow millennials is that many of us hustled to get into leadership, but we aren’t passing it down.
We’re absorbing from the top to create kinder realms below us. We’d be the enemy if we did it any other way.
But that burden has made “management” not aspirational; it just looks exhausting. The lack of pipeline to management compounded by endless reorganizations, means flat structure is replacing hierarchy.
So, we need our Millennial leaders, who haven’t lost sight of their origin story and have empathy, experience, and remnants of the Great Recession to usher us through this moment into a new model of work.
Meet the Intention Economy
Humanity is the only currency that AI can’t replicate. So originality, connection, and weirdness — the things that technology cannot or will not produce will continue to grow in popularity.
A non-exhaustive list of “what’s hot” in the intention economy:
Local everything — Bartering and swapping, IRL events, markets with upcycled or curated collections bring an unplugged, tactile, immersed aura to the day.
Long form content — It’s niche. Not everyone will read it, but it’s an expertise-based, nuanced skill that not everyone and certainty not AI has. Sending it via snail mail even better.
Slow-made creation and fashion — Fast fashion parallels the onslaught of layoffs. Companies willing to compromise craft to save money, do not have any fans besides their investors.
Behind the scenes content showing the process of creating slow. People want to be connected to the items they consume, so this social trend’s stock is up.
Personalization, such as free alterations at point of purchase, harken back to a romanticized era before everything was subscription-based.
Mystical trades that forge connection (even if synthetic) with others — tarot, psychics, Etsy witches — serve as premium options for their human interaction.
Coaches or trainers emerge to help individuals ease out of AI usage, so they can channel their intelligence, trust their own thoughts, and communicate kindly. Right now, the way folks talk to or instruct AI tools doesn’t translate to real conversation, and they are unlikely to receive placation back.
The most practical magic thing you can do is craft the life you want based on the community, work, and society you actually believe in.
xoxo, Courtney
p.s. What's your villain origin story?
Originally written for EverMore. These vignettes are my way to share past experiences and future predictions for tech culture and work.
