Is work dying?

An empty office floor. Work should be something that is meaningful to us and something we love. For this realization to dawn, we do not have to wait for 2061. (Representational image: Nastuh Abootalebi via Unsplash)

Recently, I read ‘The Last Question’, a short story by Isaac Asimov, and I cannot help but draw a parallel with what is currently happening in the world of work.

I get it. I sound vague.

Let me explain.

The story opens with the sentence, “The last question was asked for the first time, half in jest, on May 21, 2061, at a time when humanity first stepped into the light…” Now, I am not going to tell you what the last question is—for that you must read the short story—but let me tell you what the uniform response to the last question is: “Insufficient data for a meaningful answer,” and that neatly summarises the present situation in the world of work. Why do I say that?

I am sure some of these headlines/ articles have caught your attention lately:

- All of Those Quitters? They’re at Work.

- Majority of India’s 900 million workforce stop looking for jobs

- The new brain drain: Indian Web3 startups flock to Dubai amid regulatory uncertainty, stiff taxes

- Wave Of Layoffs At Startups Foretell A Slow Summer For Venture Investing

- Gen Z does not dream of labour

Read in isolation, these headlines perhaps are eyebrow-raising, but not enough. Read collectively, and after having spoken to people on the ground, a pattern starts emerging. Some bare threads of the pattern being

1) people/experts not wanting to join full-time roles

2) massive layoffs and uncertainty

3) employees quitting en masse when asked to return to office

4) GenZs preferring to either start their own businesses or work in Web 3.0, but not full-time in companies.

The larger forces being a looming recession, the labour force dilemma and brain drain (if interested, do catch up on the links to understand these phenomena better).  Slowly, you see what I am saying? I almost feel like someone has already asked the last question, ‘Is work dying?’, and events unfolding are giving us a uniform response: “Insufficient data for a meaningful answer.”

Only this time, we don’t rely on data alone. You see, data only tells us the story of what has happened, not what is happening.

Let us explore.

“We are entering a recession worse than 2008 and things are different this time. There will be more mass layoffs and those who have jobs will hold them with trepidation. More people will go solo, start up or shift across countries—only, that is not going to be easy,” opines a global affairs expert.

Recently Nathan Baschez, the writer of the Divinations newsletter, put out this thread:

Shit is hitting the fan

I’ve worked in tech since 2010, and the whole time people have been publishing articles warning that there was a tech bubble just about to burst.

Now, the long-awaited tech correction might actually be happening.

— Nathan Baschez (@nbashaw) May 6, 2022

Followed by this piece (short preview, long piece is behind paywalls) that explains the downturn in 3,804 words. While it is all not doom and gloom, as he goes on to point out, caution would be a good quality to exercise.

Opportunity paradox

Think of Maslow’s need hierarchy of motivation. As a humanist, Abraham Maslow believed that people have an in-born desire to be self-actualised; that is, to be all they can be. To achieve this ultimate goal, however, a number of more basic needs must be met. This includes the need for food, safety, love and self-esteem.

Now, think of this hierarchy upturned. What do I mean by that? I call it the ‘opportunity paradox’. Here is my theory (only, this is not about needs but opportunities we have received as humans over various life cycles and economic patterns). I came up with this theory after a conversation with Sidu Ponnappa, angel investor and ex-managing director of Gojek India.

- Baby boomers: Few opportunities—cautious, laser focus on stable income. The “government job” generation in the Indian context.

- Millennials: Increasing opportunities—a mix of being adventurous, but generally with a focus on pursuing opportunities that increase income. The “doctor/engineer” generation in the Indian context.

- GenZ: Most opportunities—highest relative risk appetite. No first-hand experience of recessions. The “startup” generation in the Indian context.

Says Ponnappa, “In my experience, this is a good time to be realistic with our career choices. As the global economy tightens, so will the need for financial security and, hence, we might all have to measure our choices wisely.”

So, is work dying?

Steering back to our last question, ‘Is work really dying?’, let’s see what the possible scenarios might be:

Utopia—we don’t work at all and still have resources: This can happen in two scenarios. If crypto (decentralised currency) takes off or we reach a stage where universal basic income* (UBI) can become a reality. If recent reports are anything to go by, you will see two contrasting things happening.

- People are preferring working in DAOs (decentralised autonomous organisations)  or starting up in Web 3.0

- Crypto is crashing

Like it or not, crypto is becoming mainstream and will continue to do so. Experts in the know believe the crash is a mirror to the larger economic situation and not really the end. Investors in Web 3.0 startups are still bullish and while caution will be the key, this decentralised currency will not crash anytime soon. If anything, economic affairs could give it further impetus.

If you go deeper and understand the vision of the likes of Jack Dorsey or Sam Altman, a crypto-enabled UBI world is not impossible. Only, one cannot predict when this is likely to happen. Dorsey believes a Bitcoin-powered UBI experiment will make the operations transparent “as the code is transparent, the policy is transparent”.

Says Pareen Lathia, co-founder, Buidlers Tribe, an incubator for crypto startups across the world, “Look at the metaverse as a Utopian lab. We are one step ahead in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and people are no longer fighting for survival. In the metaverse, people will seek purpose and join DAOs where they find meaning. Example: a DAO for gender equality, yoga or for educating people. It will be the testbed for economic and political experiments, and the ones that work can be ported to the real world. The purpose will be to collectively make the world better as people shift from survival goals to actualized goals. This means work will no longer feel like work.”

The next 20 years are a period of transition and decision making. Will we decide between the highest paying job and doing something that is our life’s purpose?

- Pareen Lathia, co-founder, Buidlers Tribe

What Lathia says is already happening IRL. Creator Cabins is a decentralised city by creators, for creators. By owning a couple of coins, one can join the community and vote for the future of the city. This movement started in a Discord group and has progressed to having a ‘cabin’ in Texas Hill County that is owned by the DAO members. Maybe, we aren’t that far from Utopia.

The middle path—a better form of work is emerging and we continue to work: Let us get real. We have learnt that work does not have to be done from the office. “Whether in the Valley or in Bangalore, people do not want to return to cubicles. It has taken two years to acclimatize to working from home—shaking up rituals again does not bode well. A new form of work has to emerge that is piecemeal, distributed and convenient and location-independent,” says entrepreneur Karma Bhutia.

Let’s say we call it a mission and dedicate about 8 hours of flexible time to earning our living. The world gets more skills-oriented and so does the education system. Artificial intelligence (AI) takes over menial tasks and the human mind reaches its full potential and does high brain power creative activities (like writing this story). Humans have more time for creative pursuits and must take up one hobby at least. After all, what is life without time for pursuing creativity instead of meaningless work?

Says Lathia, “The next 20 years are a period of transition and decision-making. Will we decide between the highest paying job and doing something that is our life’s purpose?” Only time will tell (though I can already see what most people are choosing).

The dark ages—work, as we know it, really dies and so do resources: Imagine if robots/AI (the ones that were to help us) take over and humans have nothing to do and there are no jobs left for humans. We do not even have creative pursuits to follow as UBI and robots have made us lazy. Dystopia prevails and robots rule. Even the government is run by them and the tables are turned. Maybe humans are doing the menial tasks, then? We slowly lose our intelligence to AI and indeed go to the dark ages, this time without our minds. Scary thought, but if one expects utopia, one must never disregard dystopia. Anything is possible!

My hunch is we are living these three scenarios in different pockets of the world and sometimes within ourselves—simultaneously. Even if work does not die, the message is that the pursuit of creativity never should. Work should be something that is meaningful to us and something we love. For this realization to dawn, we do not have to wait for 2061—taking from Asimov’s ‘The Last Question’ again, LET THERE BE LIGHT.