Caymans Post

A world within. A state apart.
Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

The 'glossy' dream jobs that become nightmares

The 'glossy' dream jobs that become nightmares

We long to land our dream jobs, expecting excitement, fulfillment and fun. But these glamorous positions can turn out to be more drudgery than employees imagine.

What happens when you land your dream job but it turns out to be anything but?

Friends, career consultants and the media inundate us with a constant barrage of advice telling us to follow our dreams, find our bliss or pursue our passions in our professional lives. Yet this kind of advice is not always easily followed.

Even when it’s heeded, the advice can come with downsides, especially when it turns out that those aforementioned passions involve jobs with routine, day-to-day tasks that people are less than passionate about. In short, work is often hard work.

People land jobs in data science and artificial intelligence, for example, expecting to create brilliant algorithms that will solve big problems. But they often end up performing menial data collection and cleaning tasks. The excitement of working for a startup loses its lustre with difficult and boring work often outside an employee’s primary areas of interest.

And not everyone promoted to the lauded ranks of management is thrilled to be there performing management tasks, or even see the job as a step up.

People romanticise working in the media, fashion, film, fine and performing arts and other cultural industries, but the work often ends up being more drudgery than glamour. Any job, especially an entry-level position, has elements of drudgery.

'Glossy work' is lacklustre


This gap between expectations and the day-to-day reality of jobs is a phenomenon we’ve labelled as “glossy work” in a recently published study.

For the study, we interviewed magazine fact-checkers who worked for high-status organizations in a glamorous industry while performing menial tasks every day. They experienced a kind of dissonance between their work and its setting.

As one fact-checker described it: "Because you’re affiliated with the magazine, people think you’re a strange type of royalty no matter how you’re affiliated.”

We examined how this phenomenon affects them.

For employees, the glossy work dissonance can spur attempts to change the actual job, frustration and a quick exit from the position. Glossy work also creates a dilemma about how to present the work and themselves to the world. How do they balance their simultaneous needs for self-enhancement and to be fully understood and authentic?

Jobs in creative industries are among the most alluring, but even these seemingly perfect positions can come with awful tasks


Glossing over mundane work


We find they do so by differentiating their descriptions of their jobs across different audiences. When talking to complete outsiders — people at social gatherings, for example — they focus on the more glamorous aspects: working in journalism and for glossy magazines.

For the high-status writers they collaborate with, they focus on their own expertise and other status markers. And to insiders, they present a more complete view of their work.

Presenting themselves differently depending on who they’re talking to can mean that anyone who is not a true insider at the company ends up with a partial or biased view of the work. The full nature of the work is often glossed over, and that’s a problem for those considering taking one of these jobs.

When they only hear about the gloss, prospective employees end up with false expectations that tend to fuel the cycle of disappointment.

Potential employees can get around this by doing more careful research on the true nature of the jobs they’re considering taking. They should ask questions about the position’s day-to-day requirements and consult a range of people who currently have the job or who have previously held it.

What employers can do


“Glossy work” also comes at a cost to employers as they try to manage worker frustration and staff turnover. They can stop this vicious cycle by providing realistic job previews. This doesn’t mean they should only show the negative side of work, but they should provide an honest balance of the glamorous and less glamorous aspects of the job.

Employers may also want to consider alternative ways of assembling tasks so that the less pleasant tasks are spread across employees and jobs.

They may also want to be open to employee efforts to craft and tweak their jobs and create new opportunities within their organizations.

Ultimately, however, performing many mundane tasks remains a reality in all jobs despite the promise that AI will eliminate more and more rote chores.

What’s more, hiring managers should exercise caution when listing “passion” as a job requirement. In an analysis of more than 200 interviews for a project on start-up hiring, passion was a frequent subject of discussion. Hiring managers looked for it. Potential employees wanted to live their passion.

Yet none of the hiring managers who were looking for passion in their prospective employees could describe how they would assess passion in candidates, or why it was important for the specific job being filled. The risk here is that they hire people who are passionate and then provide work that either doesn’t match or douses that passion, creating a problematic situation for both employee and employer.

Newsletter

Related Articles

Caymans Post
0:00
0:00
Close
Paper straws found to contain long-lasting and potentially toxic chemicals - study
FTX's Bankman-Fried headed for jail after judge revokes bail
Blackrock gets half a trillion dollar deal to rebuild Ukraine
Israel: Unprecedented Civil Disobedience Looms as IDF Reservists Protest Judiciary Reform
America's First New Nuclear Reactor in Nearly Seven Years Begins Operations
Southeast Asia moves closer to economic unity with new regional payments system
Today Hunter Biden’s best friend and business associate, Devon Archer, testified that Joe Biden met in Georgetown with Russian Moscow Mayor's Wife Yelena Baturina who later paid Hunter Biden $3.5 million in so called “consulting fees”
Singapore Carries Out First Execution of a Woman in Two Decades Amid Capital Punishment Debate
Google testing journalism AI. We are doing it already 2 years, and without Google biased propoganda and manipulated censorship
Unlike illegal imigrants coming by boats - US Citizens Will Need Visa To Travel To Europe in 2024
Musk announces Twitter name and logo change to X.com
The politician and the journalist lost control and started fighting on live broadcast.
The future of sports
Unveiling the Black Hole: The Mysterious Fate of EU's Aid to Ukraine
Farewell to a Music Titan: Tony Bennett, Renowned Jazz and Pop Vocalist, Passes Away at 96
Alarming Behavior Among Florida's Sharks Raises Concerns Over Possible Cocaine Exposure
Transgender Exclusion in Miss Italy Stirs Controversy Amidst Changing Global Beauty Pageant Landscape
Joe Biden admitted, in his own words, that he delivered what he promised in exchange for the $10 million bribe he received from the Ukraine Oil Company.
TikTok Takes On Spotify And Apple, Launches Own Music Service
Global Trend: Using Anti-Fake News Laws as Censorship Tools - A Deep Dive into Tunisia's Scenario
Arresting Putin During South African Visit Would Equate to War Declaration, Asserts President Ramaphosa
Hacktivist Collective Anonymous Launches 'Project Disclosure' to Unearth Information on UFOs and ETIs
Typo sends millions of US military emails to Russian ally Mali
Server Arrested For Theft After Refusing To Pay A Table's $100 Restaurant Bill When They Dined & Dashed
The Changing Face of Europe: How Mass Migration is Reshaping the Political Landscape
China Urges EU to Clarify Strategic Partnership Amid Trade Tensions
Europe is boiling: Extreme Weather Conditions Prevail Across the Continent
The Last Pour: Anchor Brewing, America's Pioneer Craft Brewer, Closes After 127 Years
Democracy not: EU's Digital Commissioner Considers Shutting Down Social Media Platforms Amid Social Unrest
Sarah Silverman and Renowned Authors Lodge Copyright Infringement Case Against OpenAI and Meta
Italian Court's Controversial Ruling on Sexual Harassment Ignites Uproar
Why Do Tech Executives Support Kennedy Jr.?
The New York Times Announces Closure of its Sports Section in Favor of The Athletic
BBC Anchor Huw Edwards Hospitalized Amid Child Sex Abuse Allegations, Family Confirms
Florida Attorney General requests Meta CEO's testimony on company's platforms' alleged facilitation of illicit activities
The Distorted Mirror of actual approval ratings: Examining the True Threat to Democracy Beyond the Persona of Putin
40,000 child slaves in Congo are forced to work in cobalt mines so we can drive electric cars.
BBC Personalities Rebuke Accusations Amidst Scandal Involving Teen Exploitation
A Swift Disappointment: Why Is Taylor Swift Bypassing Canada on Her Global Tour?
Historic Moment: Edgars Rinkevics, EU's First Openly Gay Head of State, Takes Office as Latvia's President
Bye bye democracy, human rights, freedom: French Cops Can Now Secretly Activate Phone Cameras, Microphones And GPS To Spy On Citizens
The Poor Man With Money, Mark Zuckerberg, Unveils Twitter Replica with Heavy-Handed Censorship: A New Low in Innovation?
Unilever Plummets in a $2.5 Billion Free Fall, to begin with: A Reckoning for Misuse of Corporate Power Against National Interest
Beyond the Blame Game: The Need for Nuanced Perspectives on America's Complex Reality
Twitter Targets Meta: A Tangle of Trade Secrets and Copycat Culture
The Double-Edged Sword of AI: AI is linked to layoffs in industry that created it
US Sanctions on China's Chip Industry Backfire, Prompting Self-Inflicted Blowback
Meta Copy Twitter with New App, Threads
The New French Revolution
BlackRock Bitcoin ETF Application Refiled, Naming Coinbase as ‘Surveillance-Sharing’ Partner
×