The Good Enough Job

March 20, 2023
“Our livelihoods have become our lives,” warns business consultant Stolzoff in his solid debut. Profiling eight white-collar workers (they’re “the most likely to work for meaning and identity”)—including an investment banker, a librarian, and a software engineer—Stolzoff uses their stories to examine how Americans have come to rely on their jobs to give their lives meaning. He cautions readers against tying one’s identity to one’s employment and illustrates the danger of doing so by telling of a young chef’s devastation after her mentor pushed her out of the dairy-free alternatives company she founded under his tutelage and had devoted her life to. Discussing how a marketing consultant overworked himself to the point of burnout only to lose out on an anticipated promotion, the author observes that working more doesn’t always pay off. To decenter work, Stolzoff supports universal basic income (which decouples “our human needs from our employment status”), encourages companies to implement mandatory paid time off, and recommends that readers view work as only a means to earn enough money to live on. Though the author’s personal anecdotes sometimes drag on and distract from the profiles, his straight-shooting style makes for a blistering takedown of American corporate culture. Workaholics would do well to check this out.