You've been misled into believing that your job sucks

Bad-mouthing one's day job has been made fashionable. All of us are guilty of indulging in it at some point. When we are scrolling Instagram feeds after a long day of work, there is often this one photo that makes us stop, sigh and think, "Why can't I do that?" A backpacker taking a stroll in the mountains with a camera in hand sure does look way more cool than stroking keys all day on a keyboard. But most of us will scroll past the picture after a little moment of lusting over it and go back to our ordinary lives. We think to ourselves that we will be better off quitting and trying something else. But we never do anything else. Why?

Because we are smart. Not afraid, not lazy, not unambitious - but smart.

Yes, work is boring. You don't look your best sitting on a desk stroking keys on a keyboard. Maybe your work-life does not really qualify for a good movie story. But guess what? It does what it is meant to. And I am not just talking about putting food on table.

Let's talk about three things that your job does for you which you rarely appreciate:

Accountability without risk

Tell me about a business where you can make wrong decisions and not hurt yourselves financially. None, right? If you are an author and you wrote a book about the role of mushrooms in the financial crisis, chances are that you won't sell more than a few copies. Result? Empty pockets and heart-wrenching despair.

What happens in your workplace if you underestimated your work by a few weeks and missed all deadlines? Usually, in reasonable firms, nothing. You probably won't get a raise that year and that's it! Your firm will absorb the loss to give you a stable income. And it's such an underappreciated perk of working in a large organization!

A good organization entrusts you with an accountability. It empowers you to make decisions. If the decisions are right, you contribute. If they are wrong, you grow. You can work fearlessly at the expense of your firm and learn while you are at it.

Fungibility

It is just a fancy way to say that you're replaceable in your organization. And that's a good thing! If you create roast videos on YouTube for a job, it's a big problem if your spouse is taking you on a month-long cruise. There is no business without you. Even if you own a team of twenty, they probably won't work the same way when you're gone and business might suffer. In large firms, even the senior leaders can choose to go to such cruises multiple times a year as there is an ecosystem that will fill in for their absence.

Making big moves

In his book 21 lessons for the 21st century, Yuval Noah Harari advises everyone to join an organization, not necessarily corporate. He says this because to achieve things of magnitude, we'll always require mass collaboration. It is okay to work alone in your dorm room when you are developing a gaming app, but to solve problems like climate change, disease prevention, affordable space travel, etc., the decentralized model doesn't work.

If we are working with a large organization which does meaningful things, you don't need to rethink your place in the world after waking up every morning. Even though you are only tightening bolts in a ship, you are contributing to its journey.

By no means do I wish to discourage people from starting up and running their own things. On the contrary, I just want to remind people with jobs that they are doing meaningful work as well. While every one should definitely try to create something of their own, it does not mean that you should despise your jobs until you break free from them.

Your jobs are like those little support wheels on a kid's bicycle. You won't need them forever but their role is to not let you fall while you are learning to live without them.