271 Sarah Jaffe: "Work Won't Love You Back"

Disrupt Yourself Podcast with Whitney Johnson

When we spend 50-60 of our waking weekly hours at the office, our "work family" sometimes eclipses our actual one. Companies capitalize on this. Our jobs become our identities. Our work becomes very personal. And this can lead to emotional disaster during career changes, layoffs, and other transactions.

What if we valued work differently? What would the world look like if we stopped treating work itself as our purpose, but as a means to enjoy a more important purpose: Family, relationships, hopes, dreams, and love?

That’s just the starting point of Sarah Jaffe’s book, "Work Won’t Love You Back." Sarah is a journalist who covers labor issues and social movements, and she’s observed a major shift in the way we view our jobs.

She profiles teachers, interns, programmers, and professional athletes to identify which kind of work is valued, and which is not. And as “The Great Resignation” has hinted, many people want out — but where are they actually going?