Early in my career, I had a rough transition from the world of school to the world of work — especially office work.
My struggle had a lot to do with my own immaturity and arrogance: After a couple decades of school, I'd become pretty good at it, and I mistook that for a measure of my value to the world.
I didn't like the veneer of office work — the suits, the politics, the face-time, the cubicles, or the days spent cooped up in fluorescent, Habitrail-like skyscrapers.
But mostly, I didn't like the work. It seemed boring — beneath me. It felt like an insult to my intelligence and abilities, especially compared to the "important topics" I had devoted my school time to.
My attitude, and the "lack of professional savvy" that resulted from it, made work tough for me for a while. I got fired from one job and then almost fired from another.
Thankfully, after the near-sacking, I began to realize that the problem might not be my employers and bosses, as I had thought — how dare they give me these mindless, meaningless tasks — but me.
And that set off a process, during which, over the course of a couple years, I finally got my professional act together.
When I think back now, I cringe at my cluelessness. In the decades since, I've been lucky that, as a boss, I haven't had to deal with too many employees who were as out-to-lunch professionally as I was. And, thankfully, none at Insider!
But I do encounter them occasionally.
People also ask for career advice from time to time, especially those who have recently graduated or are still in school.
So, in the hopes of saving those who ask for advice from their own self-inflicted career sabotage, I sometimes ask them this:
"What's the key difference between school and work?"
Here's my answer:
"The money is going the other way."
In school, you're the customer.
You're paying an institution to provide you with a service — an education — and then, ultimately, a credential — a degree. You're buying something from the school. And that gives you the right to evaluate the quality, worth, suitability, and relevance of what you're buying, as well as the environment and manner in which the institution provides the product. It also gives you the right, if you wish, to take your money and business elsewhere.
At work, however, you're the service provider.
When you take a job, it is your employer — or your client — who is paying you to provide a service or a product. And it is your employer or client, not you, who has the right to decide what service or product you provide, its quality and timeliness, and, ultimately, whether they want to keep buying it from you.
In my early years in the workforce, I didn't appreciate that difference, and that's why I got fired. My employer decided that the service I was giving them wasn't worth the money, so they paid someone else to provide it instead.
In life, of course, you can and should choose which products or services you want to provide and which employers or clients you want to provide them to.
And you can and should learn as fast as possible which products or services you enjoy providing and are unusually talented at providing — two more keys to success in our highly competitive world.
And, if you're lucky enough to have a choice, you can and should choose to provide a product or service that pays you enough — or at least provides enough other worthy benefits such as personal satisfaction, time, flexibility, location, etc. — to help you build a life and lifestyle you enjoy.
But as you transition from school to work, remember which way the money is going.
