Work Is Absolutely, Positively NOT Your "Family"

One of the oldest (and oddest) lies in the white-collar book.

You may have seen this article getting some attention recently, which is entitled “After working at Google, I’ll never let myself love another job again.” It’s easy to fit this article into the box of “impressionable young people eventually need to come to grips with the realities of existence,” and there’s even an A-HA! moment in there where she realizes that HR doesn’t truly protect employees. Here is potentially the best section:

“After I quit, I promised myself to never love a job again. Not in the way I loved Google. Not with the devotion businesses wish to inspire when they provide for employees’ most basic needs like food and health care and belonging. No publicly traded company is a family. I fell for the fantasy that it could be.

Indeed. I’ve felt this way for years. Over a decade, potentially. Let’s break it down a smidge.