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Antiwork

Imagining The Perfect Job

TLDR: Let's provide realistic examples of highly desirable jobs that could exist. Don't make them entirely unrealistic, but do design them with a worker first, profits second mindset. Assume this company is actually reputable, honorable, and respectable. That means they will treat you well and your efforts will be rewarded appropriately, not just with more work! ​ Imagine you could create this job for yourself. Unless in person is truly 100% required, you would be doing something from home related to your interests/skillset. Try to imagine more than one version of the job, and consider how much each relevant aspect is “worth” (money, time, effort, etc.) Assume USA unless otherwise stated. ​ Consider the following: WFH job?, technically full time (but you only have to do about, say, 20-25 hours of focused work per week), benefits, a logically thought out PTO system, an honestly “fair” compensation for the relative “absolute…


TLDR: Let's provide realistic examples of highly desirable jobs that could exist. Don't make them entirely unrealistic, but do design them with a worker first, profits second mindset. Assume this company is actually reputable, honorable, and respectable. That means they will treat you well and your efforts will be rewarded appropriately, not just with more work!

Imagine you could create this job for yourself. Unless in person is truly 100% required, you would be doing something from home related to your interests/skillset. Try to imagine more than one version of the job, and consider how much each relevant aspect is “worth” (money, time, effort, etc.) Assume USA unless otherwise stated.

Consider the following:

WFH job?, technically full time (but you only have to do about, say, 20-25 hours of focused work per week), benefits, a logically thought out PTO system, an honestly “fair” compensation for the relative “absolute value” you provide, compensation for OT/holiday work, and finally, anything else important to you.

Here's an example I came up with:

WFH: translation

*This is a forward thinking modern company that doesn't waste your time with nonsense. Unless you have a contract or an agreement, you will never be asked to come in or travel. If you are either required to travel, or simply asked to travel, you will be well taken care of it and would be worth the effort to accept. For example, your company asks/requires you to be part of an annual trade show. Your travel time is 100% counted as working hours, you receive generous travel compensation (more than enough to cover car, plane, hotel, whatever is needed), meals included, and more.

FT treatment with only 20-25 hours of intensive work per week (as we all know, those forced to go into an office for 40+ hours a week are productive for no where near 8 hours a day in general.) IMPORTANT: You will be assigned a fair workload and as long as you can generally complete what is asked of you within the deadlines, or explain why it took longer, you will never have any trouble. Your benefits and pay will always be guaranteed, no matter how little work you may be assigned at times.

Benefits package: Comes with a fair benefits package of health insurance (with dental, eye, possibly gym membership discount etc.)

PTO: In addition to standard US federal holidays, there might be certain local/state holidays that you either get off or can optionally work on and get a PTO day in return. I will say in addition to only having to work about 4 hours a day and getting all these days off included, that someone with no experience could be given ~2 weeks of PTO at first, increasing to, maybe 6 weeks? Keep in mind that 6 weeks or more of PTO in addition to getting all US federal holidays and even some state/local ones would be a decent amount. Also, consider a “PTO day off” in this example to mean 1 weekday that week where you do not respond to work in any way (after ideally telling them a day or more in advance that you will be taking that day off). If you would have ended up working 25 hours total that week, you would end up working 20 hours total. This is an important distinction to make for jobs where you are given assignments that last longer than a day, and where how much you work on a specific day is not regarded as too important. Finally, you will be generally allowed to take additional days off after your PTO runs out for the year, but these days will be unpaid. Remember, this fictional company has a good work environment. You set your own hours, can stop working whenever your assignments are done, etc. Barring any emergencies, medical reasons, or important things like that, you would simply be asked not to try to take massive amounts of extra days off without good reason. Unless you want to take an extreme amount of time off (not FMLA etc.), your benefits will remain in place and your job will be waiting for you whenever you are ready to return.

Compensation: For example, if you were to remotely translate documents from English to another language and from that language to English, and you know that the company you work for stands to bring in about $100 for every hour you work, how about we say your base pay is around $60-$70/hr. Remember, if you are giving yourself benefits, time off, etc. with this job, consider that before asking for like 99% of the value you create. When considering how much you are “worth” at your job, also remember that anything you do to provide value for the company counts (bringing in new business, suggesting improvements to business model, anything!) As this is a utopian company, you will be fully credited for your contributions and the company will be thrilled to share the bounty with you.

Compensation for OT/holiday work: In this imaginary scenario, let's consider OT to be any additional time above 25 hr/wk that you have to put in in order to do a good job. Perhaps your boss asks you to take on another assignment. Perhaps you actively want to be given OT in exchange for fair compensation. OT for this job will never be forced, and only occasionally requested of you during busy times. Some weeks, you may not even work 20 hours, but you will never receive pay cuts. Let's imagine any overtime done with permission will generally be paid at 1.5X your base pay rate. In theory, your boss would hire more people instead of letting you do frequent, expensive overtime, but would be happy to let your request overtime or accept their request for you to do some during important projects.

In closing, we all know that in our capitalist society, things don't always work out for the best. Morals and ethics are sometimes traded in for vacation homes, “human capital” exists as a concept, yada yada. That being said, knowing what you want and the value you provide is critical to finding the best jobs you can and will help with negotiations at any stage, so I find this exercise worthwhile. Also, your answers may change over time. A single man in his 20s will have different priorities than a married 25-30 year old woman with her first child on the way. Imagine getting decent maternity leave and even paternity leave? There are other special considerations that I have not touched on. Feel free to include them and I look forward to seeing what people come up with! If you want to also consider experience/quality of work, promotions, better benefits, and more, toss that in as well.

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