Good Job, Bad Job, Medium Job?
We think of the Good Place vs the Bad Place in careers, but how about my old pal The Medium Place?
Preamble/Soft intro
Welcome to the first edition of my actionpiece (the anti-thinkpiece), do-while-thinking.
Today we discuss the billion-dollar payout quagmire, the industry-you-love lemons problem, and other delightful things.
Let’s dive right in.
The Good Place
“I wasn’t a failed DJ. I was pre-successful.”
- Jason Mendoza (from The Good Place)
Here’s a mostly tongue-in-cheek scaffold around which I’m going to construct something mildly interesting:
People want to do what they love, and they want a billion dollars for it. The market, who is the arbiter of all things, says ‘uh I don’t think so. This is what you’re truly worth. Take it or leave it,’ and those people break down, have an existential crisis then get married and have two kids.
Other people insist that they want a billion dollars for doing what they love, and the market resists, forcing those people to become more opinionated. By this I mean that they become more individualistic - they become brands in themselves, having their style, voice and value proposition on a mostly-generic offering. After all, what are brands but a way to markup the pricing of essentially the same commodity? The market sees this, rolls its eyes, says ‘ugh, fine!’ and gives them a million (not a billion!) dollars. They promptly take that money, snort some coke and do a press run.
Some other people hear the market roar once and meekly accept that they’ll never make a billion dollars, so they work a simple, less confusing job (with no markets yelling in their faces daily), and work hard at it for 40-odd years. Somewhere in-between, they get married, have five kids and become increasingly invested in watching the news. They also never make a billion dollars.
A final set of people say they want to do what they love and earn a billion dollars for it, the market says ‘newps’, and they say ‘Oh. Alright. Either way I’m doing it, with or without a billion dollars, because I’d die if I did anything else.’ They go on to do what they love, and may or may not make a billion dollars.
(There are more permutations of people that can be extracted from this framework, but these are the only ones I find useful for this purpose.)
There are certain industries in Nigeria (like publishing) that attract smart, opinionated people who could significantly upgrade the way consumers/readers think. That’s valuable, and because of that, that’s quite literally - value. These people, however, rarely ever stay long enough in those industries (like publishing). They leap across industries and land in something boring (like finance), where the money is significantly better.
Why?
Oh, there are a lot of strings to tug on. People do not pay a premium for smarter writing (market peculiarities and the lemons problem, which I’ll explain in a bit), which makes it impossible for truly smart, promising people to remain in publishing for very long. Anyone who chooses to stay in publishing will essentially be making daily arguments for their continued existence (and why they need to be paid). Soon enough they realize they could be getting more for doing less excruciating work, and that’s a sweeter deal. One may argue that people would pay a premium for smarter writing the older/more experienced/more useful the smart publisher’s writing gets, but the smart publisher will get a higher paying job in the cesspits of finance long before they’re old enough for people to decide they’re now worth paying.
Also - who knows what people really want, eh?
You could replace ‘publishing’ with any industry of your choice (comics? film? music?) and you’ll find this framework largely uncompromised (it may take some hits, but it will survive).
Making of The Bad Place
“They’re never going to call a train to the Bad Place. They can’t, because we’re already here. This is the Bad Place.”
- Eleanor Shellstrop (The Good Place)
The industry you love, but cannot work in, has a bit of a lemons problem, that works like this:
Smart, promising people enter these industries, bright-eyed and ready to, pardon my french, ‘do a madness’.
Dumb(er), less ambitious people enter these industries as well. They outnumber smart ambitious people 100 to 1.
Both sets of people begin producing content. Math kicks in and people are more likely to consume dumb, unambitious content at a 100:1 ratio.
Because all content looks dumb and ambitious, people (the market!) set a uniform price for what is obtainable in this industry.
Dumb, less ambitious people are - as defined! - dumb, and less ambitious. So they take the market’s price.
Smart people reluctantly accept but begin looking for the exit.
Smart people exit.
The ratio is now 150:1.
And the cycle goes again.
The casual Capri Sonne-sipping observer sees this and comments ‘why are more people not innovating here?’
It’s because the innovators are now in finance!
This behavior is consistent with humans: people do more of what brings them pleasure, and less of what brings them pain. For smart people, working for peanuts in an increasingly dumb industry is painful. For dumb people, the freedom to do work that comes easy is its reward.
The Medium Place
‘Our fates are sealed. But I think we have one move left: We can try.’
– Eleanor Shellstrop
Perhaps I have it all backward. Perhaps the people who jettison their publishin’ dreams to work in finance are the dumb ones. Maybe the people who stay in their beloved, non-ideal industry to fix the problems and prime the pump for people to finally start paying publishers what they’re worth are the truly brilliant people in here.
Perhaps it doesn’t even matter and all that matters in life is getting married and having two kids.
Perhaps. It is very compelling. I like it. It may even be true.
In the meantime, let’s talk about human hybrids who straddle two industries that resemble publishing and finance in different ways. If Publishing is The Good Place and Finance is The Bad Place, they have found a way to hole up in the Medium Place.
The Medium Place:
Pays you almost as good as The Bad Place
Has echoes of some of the more enjoyable elements of The Good Place
Allows you to move from The Good Place to The Bad Place as you please.
Gives you a vantage point from which you can make bets on the future of The Good Place and plan your re-entry if conditions improve.
Everybody, I believe, has a Medium Place. The Medium Place allows you to create for The Good Place without being too tainted by the bad survival practises the other players have had to adopt to survive. It also gives you a broader context and a better utility kit in the long run. In a nutshell, it broadens your scope in the long-term but keeps you solvent in the short.
You pay for these luxuries with your time, but if you’re in the Middle Place, the true tell is you have more Good Place time than, say, someone in The Bad Place.
Some version of this comparative hedging has informed my career choices so far (I have a field I try not to stray too far away from), and it’s a lazy bet on the future.
What’s your Medium Place?