the glamorization of the workplace
and why what we see isn’t always what it seems
Ever since Ford and I spoke to Dulma Altan for my other (better) newsletter, How to be a Woman on the Internet, I’ve been thinking a lot about the glamorization of becoming a founder, or a higher up at an impressive company, or of work in general. While the episode focused on so many other topics – like the good and bad of TikTok, the Girl Boss era, and finding nuanced discourse online, to name a few – our brief conversation regarding the disconnect between the romanticized image of entrepreneurship and what some people (like myself) actually experienced made me reflect on why I got caught up in it and what made me see things differently.
As I said in our interview, there was a point in my life that I wanted to be a CEO or a founder of a huge business, simply because that’s what I believed was successful based on the media I was consuming. I looked up to so many entrepreneurs like Sheryl Sandberg, Ariana Huffington, Emily Weiss. I read their books, followed their Instagrams… I ate it up. Around that time, I had worked at a couple different start-ups and had bosses who glorified their work. They bought into and perpetuated hustle culture, as did I, and made their business their personality. It was contagious.
It wasn’t until leaving those jobs that I realized that I was chasing something I didn’t really want. It took me years to see the dissonance between what my jobs looked like from the outside and what I actually experienced and felt on the inside.
My first job in 2013 seemed cool, new and exciting. No one I knew at the time was doing anything like it. I was putting together campaigns for big brands like Revolve, Ferragamo, and Levi’s. I was going to cool parties, eating at nice dinners, and hanging out with social media personalities. While it may have seemed impressive from the outside, it was a mess on the inside – the 20-something guys running the company were more interested in hanging out with the hot models we represented and trying to make it onto Forbes 30 under 30 than creating a functioning work environment.
After that, I worked at another start-up. I loved my boss, I loved my co-workers, and I loved the clients I worked with. I thought I would be there forever – I started as their first hire and dreamed of having a c-suite position one day. Working there felt like being a part of a family (which I later learned can be a red flag) and I was so emotionally invested and attached my identity so much to my role that I prioritized it over my actual needs. Despite having low pay and no benefits, I, along with my co-workers, worked for hours on end, spread ourselves thin for our many clients, and put so much energy into something that wasn’t ours. We were expected to have the same enthusiasm for the company as the founder. One time, when I had expressed that I and others needed pay raises, my boss was genuinely confused, asking, “but doesn’t everyone like each other and get along?” Sure, the job felt like a lot of fun, but unfortunately, fun and friendship couldn’t exactly pay the bills.
From there, I went on to work for a world-renowned company. While I knew deep down that my values didn’t align with theirs, my desire to move up the corporate ladder got the best of me. Everyone congratulated me on this new job and I felt so much validation from the praise. But I soon learned that where I had once been confident and creative at other companies, I was full of self-doubt and terrified to speak up and share my ideas at this one. I knew it wasn’t a right fit early on, but the fear of giving up this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity kept me hanging on as long as I could. I kept telling myself that I needed to just make it to a year – that it would look good on my resume, that it would get me where I needed to be. I didn’t last. And it was then that I realized that if this was the kind of experience I needed to undergo in order to get me to the next step in my career, maybe that wasn’t the kind of career that was right for me after all.
After 5 years of working for other companies, I went freelance. Thankfully, I had enough savings (and my parents’ home not too far away) that allowed me to take a step back rather than having to jump back into a full-time position. While I thought this era would be temporary, I soon realized that working for myself suited me a lot better. I may have not been working on brands like Ferragamo or going on road trips with my work family or having meetings with celebrities, but I was happier. And I was making more than I ever had been at any of my other jobs. As I took on more clients, my parents constantly asked when I would start my own agency. They told me that I needed to get more work and get a team and an office to operate. While they thought bigger meant better, I had finally learned that wasn’t always the case. I reminded them that I had been at a big company and that I had worked for agencies where I was overseeing a team of employees and as many as 30 projects at a time. Still, because I didn’t have a splashy company name, big office or a team, they questioned my success. And I don’t blame them for that – because for years I had done the same.
I was happy having a profitable business, even if it didn’t have a known name or notoriety. I was happy having two to six clients and being able to foster relationships with each one directly, rather than overseeing 30. I was happy being a company of one, paying myself a fair salary and not having employees I couldn’t pay enough. I was happy working at my dining table instead of having to spend thousands a month on an office.
As happy as I’ve been freelancing, it doesn’t mean it’s not without its struggles or that it works for everyone. I’ve just simply found what works best for me. I’m a one-woman show and do everything myself – from pitching to drafting contracts to executing strategy to invoicing. I have to figure out health insurance and a 401k on my own. I don’t have set hours which oftentimes means that my job bleeds into my life outside of work. When it comes to salary and a monthly paycheck, there’s no security or stability – it all depends on how much I’m willing to do or what projects come in.
For years, I got emails from young women and went on coffee dates with acquaintances – many of them asking for advice on how they can go freelance. They expressed how much fun it looks, how they want to take photos for a living, and be able to go to the gym in the middle of the day. Years prior to this, I was the one glamorizing the work of others. Now, others were doing the same to me. What they thought my job was, just wasn’t the reality. Just like what I thought working at a start-up or big business would be like, wasn’t the reality.
The reality is this: no matter how impressive a job may seem, it is not always indicative of how fulfilled or how happy you’ll be at that job. And maybe we would be a lot happier if we stopped equating our worth with our job description. That our value doesn’t come from which brand we’re working for or how our job looks on social media. Because I would know. While my career of almost 10 years in social media may look great from the outside, I often feel really at odds with it. And so do many of my peers. Many have gone from making good money managing social media accounts, to completely pivoting into an entirely different career after just a few years. Many creators express dissatisfaction with our line of work – some complaining about having to do paid partnerships, some worrying about aging out of the industry, some resorting to buying followers as a way to stay relevant. A job in social media may look glamorous – and don’t get me wrong, it often is – but at the end of the day, it’s still a job.
For me, the perfect job doesn’t exist because a job in itself can never make me happy. It’s what I do and who I am outside of my job that I need to spend more time and energy on. Who am I beyond my job title? What are my interests? My hobbies? What makes me happy? When someone asks me what I do, maybe I shouldn’t start with what I do for money, and instead share what I do that makes my life worth living. The Case Against Loving Your Job helped me realize this. It’s a podcast episode I’ve shared many times with many friends. It’s a “conversation about the dissonance between our expectations of what work can offer our lives and the reality of what our jobs and careers are capable of delivering.” It’s about how “many of us, especially Gen Zers and millennials, have grown up with the idea that work should be more than just a way to make a living; it’s a vocation, a calling, a source of meaning and fulfillment. But [it’s] a false promise. It prevents us from seeing work for what it really is: a power struggle over our time, our labor and our livelihoods.”
It’s not that we should be miserable at our jobs and find no enjoyment in it. It’s about understanding that our jobs don’t have to be what defines us, what validates us. It’s about seeing how a job can help us create the lives that we want, rather than being the major focal point in our lives. It’s about spending less time climbing the corporate ladder and more time enjoying time off of it. It’s about realizing that a job title at a fancy company may not be what finally makes us happy – that maybe happiness has got to come from someplace else.