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Dreaming Work

Interesting set of perspectives on this story about fading worker ambition. I agree with the idea that the said workers have just become smarter thanks to the easier access and flow of information about what it is to be a worker across the full spectrum of employers. It used to be you had a dream company and you were lucky enough to get an offer. Chances are you took it without much awareness of what you were stepping into. 

Then you worked as long and as hard as it took to bring parity between your dream about what this job and company was about and the reality that you faced. That created for long-term commitment to the cause and a strong desire to move up because that was the only reasonable thing to do if you were doing to tough it out and give it your best shot. Today, none of that holds true. There are any number of sources to get insight into the company, culture and the reality of working the job that you are being offered. 

My experience with recruiters has been that they are happy to set you up for success in negotiation by hinting at the maximum budget for the role. This is driven by the the incentives for that recruiter - if you win they win, even if they did not play entirely fair. With all of that people are coming to understand that no job is a dream come true, they could be worth more than they are making right now and loyalty can't be a one way street. This is even more the epiphanies people had when they first got a chance to work fully remote. 

Marriages and relationships were mended, parents bonded with their teenaged kids, some decided to have babies at a time when both parents could be home and helping raise them. All of those gains helped put the value of ambition at work in perspective. Would a person who had just achieved the degree of closeness and communication with her college-bound son that she had always longed for, trade that for yet another promotion? Maybe she would wait until he left to college and it did not matter if that promotion was no longer on the table by then. She would still be better off forming that connection with her kid - that is a lifetime value. 

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