The Entitled Precariat and the Code-geois

As I transition out of the Middlebury community, I will be joining a cohort of young people who face career uncertainty that I will refer to as “The Entitled Precariat.” Despite its allusion to Marxism, the Entitled Precariat has nothing to do with ideology. Rather, it is a group of young professionals in precarious work situations that arise from a Catch-22 that would make Joseph Heller chortle: in order to get a secure, fulfilling, well-paying job you need to be able to offer value in the form of professional skills, but to get those skills you have to be employed. The primary recourse is temporary work, low-skill entry-level positions, and perhaps most insidious of all, unpaid internships. That, or going back to school and accumulating crippling debt. Many simply cannot afford the opportunity costs of the unpaid internships or pursuing advanced degrees, institutionalizing class bias in the workforce.  Hard work is not enough. I will discuss three challenges that may well define the first few years of experience in the labor force.

1. Transitioning from an empowering intellectual atmosphere to subordinate roles

Entitlement has become central to the narrative around “Gen-Y”ers in the workforce. Widely exploited as cheap labor who are unconditioned to demanding equitable treatment, what is referred to as “entitlement” can also be considered a survival mechanism. The widespread expectation that workers owe the employer “appreciation for the opportunity,” serves to bolster the unequal terms of labor: the employer is seen as doing a favor by employing workers, rather than agreeing to mutually beneficial agreement.

To an educated student taught to question assumptions, deconstruct phenomena and challenge conventional discourse, roles that demand submissiveness and focus on monotonous tasks require a major adjustment. This transition, from the independent culture of higher education, to “respecting the hierarchy” requires an internal shift and can be very humbling.

2. The division between the “Entitled Precariat” and the “Code-geois”

Entitlement can be considered a euphemism for somebody overvaluing their value to an organization, suggesting that only people without relevant, valuable specializations can be considered “entitled.” The Entitled Precariat is characterized by frequently changing jobs, geographic migration and major lifestyle complications that arise from their unpredictable work life. To break free of incessant unpaid internships, they need to not only be productive, but exceptional. Their work-experience is an extended audition, rather than a development process.

In contrast, I coined the term “Code-geois” to refer to any worker who has widely sought-after skills, regardless of whether it’s being able to write C++ code, engineer new products or other transferable skills. These people are pursued by employers and will never have to consider unpaid internships. They do not have be thankful for the opportunity to work, nor are they accused of being “entitled,” because they have leverage to work at other firms. These are the people with stable incomes, employment security and, most importantly, options.

Acquiring such skills, the career progression paradox, is the central challenge for liberal arts students entering the workforce. Rather than pursuing what we believe to be our passion or aiming to work in our ideal field, a more effective strategy is to develop a “unique value proposition” by identifying an aptitude and developing it until it becomes a specialization. A key takeaway from Cal Newport’s, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, is that when it comes to a successful career, passion should not guide our search, but develop from within a specialized, engaging job. Passion matters, but to succeed in the workforce, a practical strategy to find an employment niche may be the most effective means of finding stable, lucrative, meaningful employment.

 3. Living in accordance with your values  

There’s a tension between career realpolitik and morality: how can you live as a cog in a system of structural injustice and not only survive, but make change?  “When you don’t like capitalism, being an accountant doesn’t work in your favor,” Ashley Guzman ’13 offered sardonically in her presentation at the RAJ-organized Youth Labor and Unemployment Conference last week. She, along with other panelists at the event, sacrificed potential employment by pursuing only career options that aligned with their world views. While few workers are truly unrepentant, Frank Underwood-ian pragmatists, particularly selective moral compasses — a virtue to be commended — necessarily exclude options that others are happy to seize.   The best way to live in accordance with our values is to combine a nuanced view of ethics in the workforce with a commitment to diligently refine our specialization, so that it is valuable enough, ideology aside, to be an asset to any employer. For example, if Exxon gives you a job that offers to help you develop your GIS skills, perhaps you cannot change the organization from within, but you can accumulate some income while acquiring a valuable skill for the rest of your career. It’s easier to move from the for-profit world to a specialized role in a social enterprise or non-profit than vice-versa.

While each of our moral codes is distinctive, developing skills and finding a niche is the best strategy to escape internship purgatory and thrust yourself into the ranks of the Code-geois, where you will have options that can allow you to live according to your values and find meaning in your work. To say there is only one way to achieve such goals would be reductive: the paths to our own versions of success are likely to be indirect, unpredictable and arduous. But we are more than capable of living up the challenge.