There is a big difference between ‘having a job’ and ‘working’.

People mix the two, they say they don’t want to work, but they really don’t want to have a job. A job is boring, tedious and pointless for so many reasons. Working is not. If someone else makes profit from your effort, you are jobbing, if you are the primary benefactor of your effort, you are working.

Jobs are necessary for companies to exist. Companies can only profit by paying their employees less than the amount they are worth. If a company employs computer programmers for $30,000 a year, then the average programmer must produce more than $30,000. The difference between the value the employes produce and their salary goes toward the profit of the company. (It’s difficult to measure the value of an individual employee so their efforts are averaged together. For this reason, if you have an entrepreneurial sprit, you may be better off on your own. For more on this, see the essays of Paul Graham)

Jobbing isn’t necessarily bad. If you produce less value than the average employee, having a job is the optimal strategy. If the value you produce is less than that which is necessary to support your life, then get a job. Jobs, depending on the field, can be less risky than working. Even for the highly productive, the company they work for may give them leverage. A scientist working for a research firm will have access to tools and equipment he would otherwise never get on his own. With these he can produce much more than he ever could alone.

Working is when you are the primary benefactor of your efforts. If you produce more value then you are rewarded more. I suspect that some of peoples’ frustration with jobs is from their efforts not equaling their reward. Even when extra contributions are rewarded they are usually done in a delayed and somewhat arbitrary way. If your employer thinks you will continue to produce increasing value for a constant salary, why would they increase your pay? Or, if you are in a strongly unionized field, pay raises are across the board or not at all. But this is what you trade for security.

If you open a store and you own it, there is tremendous incentive to grow the business because you are the benefactor of all that effort. I define working as when the benefit of your effort goes directly to you, and not an employer.

Jobbing is demoralizing because, deep down, you know that you either aren’t being fully rewarded for the work you do (and never can be) or you know that you’re slaking off and not living up to your potential.

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Header photograph by Todd Huffman