Are you being gaslit to think that you need to stay in your corporate role for financial security?

I was talking with Alex, a manager of managers at a large corporation, today who described the role she was in by saying, “I feel like I am being gaslit, and I can tell how toxic the culture is, but no one around me seems to care. Everyone else seems fine working here.” She went on to say that her husband is not supportive of her leaving the corporate world to find more fulfilling work because he is afraid of the financial instability that can come from independent work.

I know I felt that way at times when I was working in a corporate setting. I once was in a meeting with an VP in a technology department who said he liked having our team as part of their work to design the future state of the department because, “if the project doesn’t end up being successful, we can always blame your team. It is a good thing you are having [lowest paid member of the team] present, [department leader], because you can always blame [lowest paid member of the team].” We all laughed. We did not debrief this comment after the call. Just another day’s work.

So, what could Alex do? What are their options?

In this post, I am exploring the options I see people taking based on my own experience in exploring options during my career transition.  

To be very transparent, I was working in the corporate sector and in my last role, I was making $130,000 annually. I am getting paid less than 1/3 of what I was paid as a consultant while supporting a non-profit that is incubating worker cooperatives in Ohio (though I’m working only on one part-time project right now). I am choosing to be paid at the center of the pay scale for the organization’s team. There are many ways that I could have structured the funding for the work I am doing, but I decided that while working with a Black-led organization that is focused on cooperative development, I want to be incentivized to raise the wages for everyone on the team by being paid the same as the rest of the team. I have financial security from my family, so I can take this financial cut, at least for now.

Option 1: Contract work

Alex could become an independent contractor. They could use the skills they’ve gained within their corporate role to complete tasks on their own. Alex can either do this by connecting directly with clients or focusing on businesses that need contract work.

Trade-offs

There are many websites that provide opportunities to find contract work. As someone who has only looked at these options passively, it seemed harder to find financially stable opportunities to work through these options without being willing to spend a lot of time and energy sourcing clients.

A lot of companies that provide platforms for contract work often exploit the workers by either excessively tracking outputs without accounting for the full time it took to complete the work (e.g., Upwork’s work tracking app) or not providing enough compensation to cover the resources required for maintaining the work (e.g., Uber and car repairs). Often people who are working on contract projects are getting less than market value for their work. (Caveat: I may be missing great places to find contract work, so let me know if you know more than me.)

Employees who enter contract work through businesses that provide staffing solutions often are not eligible for benefits and can have poor workplace experiences. Most contract work through staffing solutions also does not engage the person’s creative outputs and focuses on the execution of work. These contract workers are often anxious to do anything that may cause them to lose their job, so they often will not speak up if they notice something that is wrong.

This mindless execution of work can have harmful consequences for businesses that are using vendors in hopes of saving money in the long term. The contract workers are highly focused on the task in front of them, but they don’t care about the future of the project. Data science and technology infrastructure teams that I have worked with have run into problems with contractors because they aren’t implementing solutions that lead to fully integrated systems because they are only focused on their current projects.

Option 2: Start a business

Starting your own business can be a way to generate income. Alex could redesign their work life to only work on things that they love doing. Alex could fill a gap in the market to provide access to a product or service that is needed. They would get to decide how they wanted to work with others on their team.

Tradeoffs

Starting a business has a lot of risks for the individual starting the business. They need to find funding for start-up costs. Many Americans, especially populations that have been systemically under-resourced like Indigenous and Black people, do not have access to capital that can be used for start-up funds. White Americans also tend to have a larger social network of people who can provide start-up funding.

Many startups also fail because they don’t have a solution that solves a relevant community need. This leads to people not purchasing the product. It can sometimes take startups many iterations to provide a product or service to customers that they are willing to purchase.

Overall, starting a business can be largely beneficial if the business is successful, but it often takes time, resources, and connection to make it successful. For many people interested in leaving a corporate role, this can feel like a risky decision.

Option 3: Find a ‘less bad’ corporate experience

Alex could find a job at an organization that pays well, gives them the freedom to work on projects in ways that are enjoyable to them, and works toward a goal they believe in. Alex can take a role to learn new skills, work with people they enjoy, or provides enough benefits that enable them to live the life they want to live outside of work.

Tradeoffs

Being selected for a role takes weeks, if not months or years. Many people invest hours in applying for jobs and don’t hear back, even if they would have done a great job in the role. In the age of AI-based sourcing software, resumes may never be seen by a human and may be disqualified even if the candidate matches all the qualifications. It may be hard to trust that the next experience will truly be worth the amount of time it takes to find a new role.

Once in a new role, there is no guarantee that the interview process is anything like the role. Within every environment where people are coming together, there is bound to be messiness of competition and difficulty understanding others that leads to varying saturations of toxicity within that organization. The trouble with having this within the work setting is that access to financial, health, and social support are provided by work and contingent upon continued employment. It is hard to decide to leave a role where you have at least a perceived sense of security. This is intentionally designed into the capitalist system, to keep people working in roles that deliver profit for the company’s executives and shareholders.

Option 4: Work at a nonprofit or in the public sector

Alex could join a nonprofit and use her skills and interests to serve her community.

Tradeoffs

The first tradeoff is that nonprofit and government staff are generally not paid well and doing more work or doing better work will not necessarily lead to better pay or benefits for the staff. Their work outputs are not directly tied to the financial inputs, which makes changing the work conditions difficult.

Nonprofits and public sector roles are given grants or funding based on the decision-making of people outside the organization who often are far removed from the direct issues the teams are working on. It means that to adapt to changing needs of the community they serve or to provide new services or products, they need to translate the needs of the community into an ask that can be understood by the decision-makers. This leads to inefficient systems with many people in the middle who are working to make the system work. There is so much money spent employing the people who are working throughout the nonprofit and public sector as translators between the people who are directly serving the community and the people who have the power to make decisions. The inefficiencies make me hesitant about working within the nonprofit and public sector, not because the work that is done is bad, but because the reliance on money from these big donors or public decision-makers makes me wonder if there are better ways to support people in our communities.   

Option 5: Join the worker cooperative movement

Alex could join or start a worker cooperative. They could also use what they already know to advise, consult, or be a bridge between worker cooperatives that exist, are growing, or are interested in being converted. Alex could even start conversations within their current organization to explore options for worker ownership within their current workplace. In a worker cooperative, employees have the power to shape the way they want to work.

A worker cooperative is an organization that is owned by the workers who are producing the product or services. There are many structures that worker cooperatives can take, but they all have some process for profit sharing across all owners and shared decision-making processes that include all owners in decisions about the strategic direction the organization will take. They all also follow the 7 cooperative principles.

Tradeoffs

Worker cooperatives have been an organizational structure that has existed for centuries, and they have been particularly useful in times when there are fewer social benefits provided by the state or governing body. At this moment in history and in the United States, there are not enough sustainable worker cooperatives that exist currently to employ a huge number of workers. In Ohio, there are less than 1,000 people employed by worker cooperatives, so it is hard for people to see this work as a mainstream option for employment. Based on the type of work available through worker cooperatives right now, there are not always high-paying roles available, but that does not have to be the case long term, and we have seen that is possible from looking at cooperatives in other countries.

If people are interested in joining a worker cooperative, they will more than likely need to be interested in a startup or in being part of a cooperative transition. Any time there is a startup or a major organizational transition, there is intrinsic risk involved that could lead to economic instability. The flip side is that the change can also lead to economic growth, and studies have found that worker cooperatives keep money in the local community longer and are more resilient in economic downturns. Worker cooperatives that are part of a network can support each other through collective purchasing, shared services, moving employees to other organizations, and acting as customers to each other.

Another drawback to worker cooperatives is the amount of time it takes to prepare people to make decisions collectively. While working at an organization where a select few people need to make the big decisions, the customer service agent doesn’t have to understand the financial state of the company. Worker cooperatives have been known to be slow to act because they need to integrate the points of view of many different people. It can be damaging to an organization when the people who are making the decision do not have enough context or knowledge to make informed decisions. At the same time, once worker cooperatives support their owners and pre-owners with appropriate training and structured decision-making processes, they can become strong engines that do smart work.

Some think only of socialism when they hear about worker cooperatives. In its most fundamental structure, worker cooperatives do share the same values as socialism, the political structure (as much as I understand it). However, a big difference is that this is socialism from the ground up. Most organizations will not get to the size of a state, so the governing bodies will not have as much power as state-run socialism. Some people fear living in a socialist society because they do not want to support social loafers. In a worker cooperative, the worker-owners have to adhere to policies in order to maintain membership, which reduces the risk of having too many social loafers (though I am of the belief that social loafing is more of a systemic issue than an individual flaw, and I think worker cooperatives incentivize finding the right roles for people to enable them to work in ways that best meet their abilities).  

Conclusion

All the options I’ve listed have tradeoffs, and my hope is that by reading this, you see joining the cooperative movement as a viable option. It is not a panacea or an ideal solution for every person, but I would love it if more people considered it as an option while making their next career transition or while they are considering diversifying their work portfolio.

I have never felt more supported or energized in the work I’m doing. I get to have meetings with staff where I ask what they want to do, what is stopping them from finding joy in their work, and what patterns exist that are serving or hurting their organization. From there, we get to make decisions to redesign our decision-making processes, roles, project outputs, and structure based on the needs and desires of the team. We have been able to hold paradoxes within our work, and the team is able to disagree about what is needed to get to their desired future state while still making decisions collectively. I have never worked at a place where people are so open with their fears and the things that are personally holding them back from doing work that is meaningful. Their openness is helping us clearly articulate challenges and test ways to make things better. We still have a long way to go, but the ways we are living our values in the work tell me that we can continue to grow. I am so grateful that I get to be working toward building a solution that keeps more profit in my community than in shareholders and executives at major companies’ pockets.

Circling back to the conversation I had that ignited my interest in writing this piece, I would have a hard time telling Alex, who is relying on their work for financial security, to join a worker cooperative if they were unable to take on the risk of being part of building new organizations. At the same time, there are ways to get more involved in the worker cooperative movement by volunteering, consulting, or mentoring others, which will hopefully in term lead to more opportunities for roles within worker cooperatives long term.

So far, the work I’ve done in building relationships within the worker-cooperative community has been fulfilling. It seems like the opportunities to do more work within the network of the worker-cooperative movement continue to expand, even after only a few months of doing this work. I would encourage anyone who is interested in considering a role within a worker cooperative, even 10 years down the line, to start building relationships now.