We spend much of our lives mitigating risk. We have health insurance in case we get sick; auto insurance in case we crash the car. We tell aspiring actors to make sure they get that university degree, and seek second opinions from doctors. We order something exotic at a restaurant, but throw in a serving of fries just in case.
At every turn, we avoid putting all of our eggs in one basket … except when it comes to one of life’s most important elements: our careers. We tie ourselves to single companies—or even yoke ourselves to individuals—without any thought of hedging our bets. Maybe that’s because we feel we have the illusion of control: if you’re good at what you do, we think, what’s the risk? It’s a strategy that may work really well—until it doesn’t.
My LinkedIn feed and inboxes are daily filled with notes from former colleagues, friends, and professional acquaintances who have lost the egg bet. Sometimes that’s by choice; more often it’s not. Some 21,400 jobs were cut in media sector in the US last year, and the hits just keep coming: barely a day passes without another old or new media company announcing layoffs.
Now, maybe I’m reacting to the particular travails of my long-dying sector: I’m guessing experts in AI aren’t exactly struggling for employment right now. And there’s also a big difference between tying yourself to an employer in your 20s, when the opportunity cost of moving to or losing a job is much lower and you’re significantly less expensive to hire.
It’s that last point that’s crucial. No one is asking for sympathy, but the older professionals get, the more they tend to earn and the fewer roles are available. In my universe, there’s basically a carousel of about a dozen super senior folk who seem to shuttle between the most significant positions. If you’re in one of those roles, fantastic! But if you’re not, you’re probably going to be forced to figure out how to spread those eggs around.
Last week, an acquaintance of a friend founded a “fractional marketing consultancy.” I like to think I’m on top of jargon and had an inkling of what “fractional” meant, but I reached out to my (vastly more plugged-in) friend for clarification. My ignorance, he said, was “probably because you’ve been safely employed.”
“It’s all the rage among people who are too pricey to be re-employed full time,” he said.
Here’s the deal. Let’s say you’ve been working in a sector for a long time and have deep expertise. But, of course, that expertise doesn’t come cheap and the number of potential full-time roles is vanishingly small, let alone full-time roles that are actually available. At a certain point, seniority becomes both a noose around your neck and a trapdoor beneath your feet.
So, what’s the solution?
Hedging your career. Rather than a single role, you split your time between a handful of clients. They benefit from your expertise without the burden of your full salary; you get a variety of work, and ideally have enough clients so that the sum of the parts equals as much or more than the previous whole. You’re basically doing what company directors have done for decades, just pre-retirement.
Now, it’s a hedge with risks. As a contractor, you’re more easily discarded—discretionary spending is, unfortunately, at a company’s discretion. I can imagine there’d be stress from juggling clients and projects, as well as potential conflicts of interest to navigate. And, at least in this insane country, there’s the issue of healthcare and how you’d ensure you have medical coverage.
But I do love the concept. The company I work for has a couple of individuals in this category: incredibly accomplished, smart professionals who split their time between working with us and doing other projects. That’s also a big draw: it’s rare that someone defines themselves by a single skill, and you can underwrite your life with a client or two and still retain the time and flexibility to undertake other passions.
The key now is scale. While there are companies that specialize in matching professionals with organizations looking for fractional expertise, it’s hardly widespread. And that means the risk to individuals of voluntarily shifting to such a model remains high—it takes a leap of faith to back yourself, especially when doing so means walking away from long-held notions of how a career operates.
Still, it’s worth watching. We seem to be reaching a point where tying yourself to one organization is arguably more perilous than not—companies keep firing thousands of workers even as they report record revenue and earnings (tech companies alone sacked 260,000 people last year, largely in the name of “transformation”). Often, there’s no rhyme or reason to it; you’re just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It’s made me think perhaps we should all take a cue from industries that have traditionally been hard to crack and even harder to make a living from. People in the arts have long been forced to develop multiple arrows in their quiver and, even at the top end, we have “multi-hyphenates” like Pharrell Williams, who has morphed from songwriter and singer to producer, television star, and now men’s creative director at Louis Vuitton.
With Williams—or, for that matter, Gwyneth Paltrow with goop or any number of celebrity-driven businesses (Casamigos, anyone?)—I used to think side projects were purely opportunistic, or maybe just celebrities indulging a whim. Turns out they were ahead of the career curve. Who knew?
A note about whatever this is …
After writing a few thousand articles for newspapers and magazines, I spent a long time trying a bunch of other stuff. I guess I figured what came (relatively) easily must by definition be less valuable, so I wandered in the corporate wilderness, becoming increasingly frustrated and doing work that felt increasingly lousy.
Sometimes with age comes wisdom, and I’ve realized finding something (relatively) easy ain’t a bad thing. So, this is a space where I’m resurrecting writing for myself, on topics weird and wild and wonderful.
Posts will appear when the mood takes me, but I do try to be consistently inconsistent—sometimes it’ll be a couple of days between drinks; sometimes a week. But if you subscribe, you’ll get a email letting you know I’m ranting. Again.