Why you were not born to have a job

This text is not a criticism to those who work in companies.

Neither it is one of those texts that describe how amazing is the life of an entrepreneur.

This is just my opinion and how I see things.

So, why weren’t you born to have a job?

Answer: Because nobody was born to be an employee.

Maybe you’ve heard from your parents, your uncles, your teachers or your friends, that no work can be fun. That working is boring and tough and this is how things work.

This is how things work for whom?! Who created this model?

I’ve thought a lot about this. My whole life. As long as I can remember I’ve been thinking about how life in a broader sense should be. How is it possible for us to accept living in a system that demands 8 hours of your day in a place you don’t like, with people you don’t like, performing activities you don’t like, for people you don’t know, to earn a few bucks to survive? And in most of the cases, these few bucks are not enough for your basic needs.

Where did it all come from?

We’ve disconnected ourselves. We’ve grown apart from each other. We’ve given up dreaming. We’ve surrendered. We’ve accepted that things are like this. That this is life.

But then Gustavo, you want everybody to give up on their jobs and become entrepreneurs?

Not really. To become an entrepreneur nowadays is as absurd as it is to have a job. It is surreal. Almost inhumane.

I’ve been on both sides.

I’ve been an employee within the corporate world. I was young, hard working, I was ambitious, wanted to achieve my goals, I was a young talent, a so called ‘high potential’ of a multinational company. And I even liked it. But for 2 months, if so. 2 months how long my motivation when something new happened in my work would linger. Whenever I got promoted, whenever I changed departments, whenever I was assigned a different task. By the third month, I was already wanting to leave everything behind and do something else.

And since 2008 I’ve been in the entrepreneurial world. I’ve had different businesses. I started a company that was pure fun, I had a serious 7 digit business, I left my own company and started a new one and lost all my money and dove into serious debts.

I bring it up to show you that I know that it is so hard to become an entrepreneur. It is overwhelming to go alone on a journey against everything and against everybody. It is an overwhelming even with one or two partners.

You have to be almost an all-around human being to be an outstanding entrepreneur. You gotta go along multitasking, be a good sales person, strategist, planner executor, good at fixing computers and air conditioning apparels, real estate specialist, focused, productive, resilient.

It is not for normal human beings.

So, what is the solution? If we were not born to be employees and it is overwhelming to become an entrepreneur, what do we have left?

Create a new model. A model to endeavor as a group, as a collective, as a network. Connecting people that can do what you cannot. While you are dying to finish a task that will be kind of shitty, there is someone out there that loves to do it, and will do incredibly well. These people need to connect.

People must come together to do what they are good at. And simply start doing it.

With no distrust. Without thinking that the other will be dishonest with you. Without defining that my share worths x% more than yours.

While we still distrust people, we will still be living in these old and inhumane models.

I got excited writing, so I’ll make this post a little longer and answer the question in the title. Why weren’t you born to be an employee?

Because it makes no sense to work 8 hours a day on a single activity.

You feel like doing many things. Not only this task you were assigned to. We must create a model that stimulates that. A model that allows people to do more than one thing at the same time. You can be a publicist, a photographer and an event organizer at the same time. You can be a tech guy and also teach yoga. You can be a business man, a writer and a musician as well. Who invented this rule that you can only be one thing?

Because it makes no sense to report yourself to another person.

You need to explain yourself to someone else. Why? What has he or she done to deserve that? Started earlier? Has been there for a longer time? Spent more money with studying? Is he or she smarter than you? No one should need to report to anyone. Everything should be done with common sense and everybody should have a voice to give an opinion.

Because it makes no sense one person earn more than the other.

What is meritocracy? Who deserves more? And those who deserve more, deserve how much more?

I don’t need even to go deeper into this subject because I know it already makes you feel uncomfortable. And indeed it is what happens when it comes to calculating different wages. There is no reasonable logic to allow me to get to the perfect equation of fairness that provides me the rights to earn 18% more than you do.

Because it makes no sense to be one person at home and with your friends and a different one at work

You are one, not two different people. We should create a model where people can be who they truly are. As simple as that.

Because even if you dedicate your whole life to a company, if the crisis come, of if you can be replaced, you will be.

This is a self-explanatory.

I’ll stop stop here because it is already a long text. But I know I can go on bringing more bullet points to prove that this employment system makes no sense.

If you are one of those that love your job, excellent. I don’t want to convince you of anything. But I believe 95% of your friends don’t feel the same.

Everybody wants a better life.And that is what we need to look for. That is what we need to build.

My friends and I are building in Brazil a “free company”, 100% horizontal, where each one is free to choose what to do, when to do it, from any location and for any amount of time. We are just getting started, but in the next post I’ll share our concept, so that you can be inspired by it, maybe replicate it, or even work with us (why not?).

We can’t expect help to come from the government or from the people that rule the world. We are the privileged ones that have the chance to choose. And we should get together to create these new ideas. It is already happening. It is not utopic.

And it is beautiful to see.

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Special thanks to my friend @gabrielgalo that helped me with the translation.