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Ryan Healy is a recent college graduate. He is a founder of 
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New here? Employee Evolution is a blog written by Ryan Healy. Ryan is a Co-Founder of Brazen Careerist, the webs #1 social network for young professionals. Ryan speaks with organizations on best practices for recruiting and retaining Generation Y and how to effectively use social media to reach your target market. To contact Ryan, please visit our contact page.
Safe for me is a cushy, decent job that pays well. Safe is making a steady paycheck that will cover my student loans, rent and living expenses with a small amount left over to put in the bank. Safe is having the spending money to eat out on Tuesday, go to happy hour on Thursday and buy a couple of rounds at the bar on Saturday.
Safe sounds really fun. So why do I find it so boring?
I have an intense desire to know what its like to scrounge for a month’s rent. I want to know what it’s like to say I can’t afford to eat out tonight, and really mean it. I truly do believe that living like this builds character, and everyone should probably experience it at some point.
But more importantly, I want to know that every action I take can result in my success or my failure. A safe job does not provide this dynamic. If you make a great presentation to a group of stakeholders for your company, you may receive a pat on the back and your boss might consider you for promotion. If you bomb the presentation, chances are you will still receive your paycheck every other Friday.
It sounds a hell of a lot more exciting to make a great sales pitch to a group of investors and convince them to fund your business for the next six months. Or you could bomb the pitch and be forced to get a part time bartending job just to pay rent. If that’s not motivation, I don’t know what is.
Many people my age feel the same way. They think safe is boring and they want to take a risk. The problem is, safe is comfortable and risk is scary. Not many people can handle dropping everything and starting a business with no immediate source of income. Many people don’t even want to run a business, but they still want some excitement from their jobs.
So I think there can be a compromise. Most young, single, ambitious people would probably do a little gambling with their salaries if the opportunity arose. It would be a lot of fun and incredibly motivating to wager $10,000 of my salary on whether or not I can bring the company an extra $50,000 in revenue through my actions. Systems would have to be set up to measure this sort of thing, but the increase in output could definitely cover the costs. Not to mention the massive savings from increased employee retention rates.
Maybe this option is a little too out there for most employers, but the bottom line is a safe, steady, paycheck leads to boredom for entry-level workers. Boredom leads to job hopping or uninspired work, both of which affect a company’s bottom line. If companies can figure out how to make a paycheck a little more interesting, and the job a little less “safe,” they will undoubtedly gain some more inspired, productive employees.
Cross-posted at The Brazen Careerist.
Ryan, I have to echo your distaste for the safe and cushy. As a millennial, I have a strong desire that every task I pursue is an important and essential one, and safe/cushy jobs represent mediocrity and status quo. They require very little creativity and innovation, have very little risk associated with them, and result in little to no impact to the organization. The thought of a job like that turns my stomach.
For me, the desire to work in a risk driven environment is less about risking my job or income for the possibility of monetary gain and more about having an impact on the organization. I feel more motivated when my job not only puts me at risk, but also puts the organization at risk. There is nothing more motivating and fulfilling than knowing that a group of people are depending on my performance for success. Putting everything on the line, both professionally and personally, is the opposite of safe and by no means steady, but it is rewarding on so many levels.
Ever since the beginning of organized labor (basically the guild system in Europe), workers have been fighting their employers to take the risk out of work. Employees wanted to survive first and foremost, so by leaving the risks of employment to their employers by demanding insurance, pensions, 2% annual wage increases, standard vacation time, and 9 to 5 hours, the employees left the rewards of risk to the employers.
Now we live in a time where even if you lose your job, you’re not going to starve to death - you’re probably going to be ok, especially if you are young and without a family depending on you. Employers need to adapt once again, but they are so used to removing risk from the workplace that they don’t know how to properly craft incentives that reward risk loving employees. Until companies can figure this out (very few have outside of sales jobs), we’ll keep on creating our own businesses, and finding other ways to profit from the risks we take. Moreover, the employees of the past were willing to risk everything in the forms of strikes to guarantee a contract that nearly eliminated risk. How is our generation going to force employers to give us what we want? Where is our leverage point?
“A coward is a hero with a wife, kids, and a mortgage.” ~Marvin Kitman
Amen Ryan
Mat,
Great comment, when I think safe and cushy, I think mediocrity and boredom. I also like your point about putting the organization at risk to improve your performance. It’s probably not relevant for a 23 year old to have the fate of an organization in their hands, but if I was able to work with a senior manager to accomplish a significant task like this, I would be totally motivated.
Willy,
The best way for our generation to force employers to give us what we want is to continue job hopping when we are bored and to simply ask for training, mentoring, feedback or whatever it may be. The other thing we can do, which we already are doing, is to pursue entrepreneurial ventures. Move home with mom and dad to start a business instead of taking a boring job. That’s our leverage point. not to mention, the sheer numbers are in our favor especially when (and if) the boomers begin retiring.
Thanks for the comments.
-Ryan
Ryan, I am similar to you in this and I’ve found that my best fit is in sales. I also hope to start my own business and I’ve found that I have gained some of the skills I will need to accomplish that. You can make a poor salary or extensive commission depending on your performance (and your company). Of course, once you get really good at it, you start to want more of the returns. If you have enough risk tolerance (and I know you do) that should be a good time to take what you’ve earned and look into your own ventures. The biggest downside I have found is that it is hard to find a product I believe in, or to feel like what I’m doing makes a difference. Do you think that sales is a good alternative to the “safe” job?
Not many people can handle dropping everything and starting a business with no immediate source of income.
I don’t think many people should feel comfortable doing that, it’s not a wise move. Last year I picked up and moved to a city I knew no one in, had no job prospects, and had no real ties to. It was great. But I did this because I had saved up a cushion which allowed for it. Had I no source of income, no way to pay the rent, could I have just walked down to Best Buy and grabbed a job in the meantime? Sure, but I don’t think that’s character building…that’s just poor planning.
But I agree completely with what you do say about risking it. The entrepreneurial spirit is just something that some have, some don’t. I’d love to start a business, and I full intend to. However, to rush into things seems foolhardy. It wouldn’t be a calculated risk, it’d be unjustified. The problem as I see it is maintaining the eye on the prize, and continuing the “safe� route while you adopt plans to risk it in the future. Short term I’d like to obviously put myself in the best position to succeed, and the only way I’ve figured out to do that thus far is to suck it up and live in the cube for awhile.
@Jessica - I have a huge problem with sales, and I’ll tell you why. I work extremely closely with sales partners and I honestly would not be able to stand working in their shoes. It isn’t the demand, the skills, or the product knowledge. I think I would excel in each of those areas despite having a lack of sales experience. I’ve been pulled along on quite a few client calls, and frequently am pulled in when completing the sale because they know the warm handoff and my ability to succeed and cross sell is much higher than expected in my role, and there are only a few of us who have this secondary duty. It isn’t the pressure that I couldn’t deal with, it’s the ridiculous demands, and the fact that if you’re working in sales for a top tier Fortune 100 company, you’re not free to control the process. We had a huge “think like the client� push earlier in the year, and most of my criticism was the way sales handled interaction, bugging the client, and generally just being too overbearing. When all you can think about is revenue in the door, you cannot help but lose a certain amount of quality on your delivery/product. The fact that I’d always be the one running down leads and bothering clients who have businesses to run is a line I’m not willing to cross. More often than not, they’re forced to be a personified form of corporate junk mail. But throw me in the room and I’ll sell the product, I’m just not willing to buzz in the ear of 10 people to pitch it to 1.
Believe me–living hand to mouth is way overrated. Do it for a few months, and you’ll see it’s hugely stressful and not nearly as romantic as it seems.
However, I do believe in taking risks to get what you want–and in moving instead of settling for less than your full potential. When I started my own business, I left with less than six months’ worth of savings–and all the entrepreneurial advice I got insisted that I should have enough to support me for at least a year. But I had also moonlighted for years as a freelancer, and I did have some contacts and experience already. I weighed my options and decided I just couldn’t stand to wait any longer.
We should do these things when we’re young, before we have mortgages and kids to worry about. But we should do it smart, save enough money so that we can eat and pursue our dreams at the same time, and try not to get ourselves into financial situations we can’t get out of.
wow. hang on to your job. i had that for three years and my job was exciting and innovative… and stressful. i went from a vibrant 22-year-old to a tired, overworked, over-stressed 25-year-old with puffy, circle-lined eyes. and i was part of a massive layoff.
what you call safe, i call the security to work in order to live, not the other way around. i’m grateful that the important parts of my life take place outside of the office, and not vice versa. most people our age won’t feel this way until later in life; i’m lucky enough to have been in a bad enough scrape to know what counts most in my life.
i will always choose less time in the office, more pay, and less stress. be grateful for what you have, and look for fulfillment from other parts of your life.
Ryan - you’re right. In most cases it’s not realistic for a young person to hold the fate of the company solely in his hands, but it’s very motivating to feel that what you do plays a vital role in the organization. My first job after I graduated was in sales with a small ($20 million a year) software development consulting firm. Just about everyone there shared a sense of urgency and risk that energized the entire company. While I didn’t personally control the direction of the organization, I was encouraged to think that everything I did supported the team and was vital to success.
So, feeling at risk and laying it all on the line can sometimes be more about the culture of your organization and your personal attitude than it is about the job you have.
The safe route sounds good to me..after living almost the 1st 2 years of my marriage living hand to mouth..dont get me wrong it builds character and sometimes you have to think of inventive ways to pay next month’s mortgage but I would not mind going for the safe route..anybody want to switch let me know???