Work-life convergence

In case you missed it earlier this month, this New York Times piece was spot-on in assessing what's happening in the law and medical professions. What caught my attention is that it illustrated well a larger change in the way we perceive and engage in career work: My generation's impatience with traditional conventions of working your way up rung by rung, and our willingness (indeed, eagerness) to roll work, friends, family and socializing into one melded "life" where we're always on, always connected, always networking, always "ourselves."

This is particularly true in the creative industries (such as journalism), where young people are less and less interested in separating their work and family/friend lives, opting instead for an integrated "workstyle" where they can plug in and out of their various roles on demand, maintaining a constant sense of connectivity. Even older workers, I believe, are increasingly willing to accept the encroachment of work into our after-hours free time, if the flip side means they have more autonomy and flexibility in doing their creative work. Mark Deuze has written much about this "liquefaction" of work life in the media industries.

Below is a telling passage from the NYT article.

“The older professions are great, they’re wonderful,” said Richard Florida, the author of “The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life” (Basic Books, 2003). “But they’ve lost their allure, their status. And it isn’t about money.”

OR at least, it is not all about money. The pay is still good (sometimes very good), and the in-laws aren’t exactly complaining. Still, something is missing, say many doctors, lawyers and career experts: the old sense of purpose, of respect, of living at the center of American society and embodying its definition of “success.”

In a culture that prizes risk and outsize reward — where professional heroes are college dropouts with billion-dollar Web sites — some doctors and lawyers feel they have slipped a notch in social status, drifting toward the safe-and-staid realm of dentists and accountants. It’s not just because the professions have changed, but also because the standards of what makes a prestigious career have changed.

This decline, Mr. Florida argued, is rooted in a broader shift in definitions of success, essentially, a realignment of the pillars. Especially among young people, professional status is now inextricably linked to ideas of flexibility and creativity, concepts alien to seemingly everyone but art students even a generation ago.

“There used to be this idea of having a separate work self and home self,” he said. “Now they just want to be themselves. It’s almost as if they’re interviewing places to see if they fit them.”