Over the course of my professional career, I've experienced all sorts of different ways of working.
In University, as I was studying Graphic Design and Spanish—double major; but at the end of one degree, facing another year to complete the second, with a job lined up: I accepted the Minor in Spanish so I could go ahead and start getting to work—I was packed. In addition to full workload, I had four internships, my own freelance clients, worked at the school's newspaper, and at a grocery store.
Two weeks after graduation, I started my first full-time job: 40-hrs a week, working at a Ruby shop as an interaction designer. I bummed around friends' apartments for the first few weeks, because I couldn't even move to the city I was working in yet. I also was a co-organizer of a local professional meet-up group, and had my own freelance clients—one was the largest website I ever designed & built; and my first large client invoice of $15,000.
Then, I moved to Amsterdam. Not two years out of University, and I got thrown into a completely different sort of working environment.
- Extremely diverse: over 40 nationalities on the floor, an introduction to languages and life experiences from people who's lives were very different than anything I had experienced.
- Global scale: my first multilingual site was offered in 42 language, all copy translated by humans from that area; in a few years I would lead the department that added the 43rd language to the site: Argentine Spanish.
- Culture of learning: mistakes were accepted, even planned for. You could mess up, break things, as long as you took responsibility, learned from it, and tried to find a way to make it so that sort of breakage wouldn't happen again.
- Exponential growth: I was one of the first UX Designers hired, when Tech was around 300 people. By the time I left, the department was closer to 5,000.
- Rapid responsibility: Within a year, I was managing platform teams as a line manager. Within three, from starting, I was managing organizations as a manager of managers. Within seven, I was elected to represent employees as the Vice President of the Works Council, on par with the CEO and the rest of the Executive Suite.
There are vast variations in:
- who says what work gets done,
- how work gets done,
- when to show up for work,
- where work can be done,
- why work matters, and
- what work even is.
Relationship became toxic
By 2017, I had worked six years professionally—after University—at a salaried 40-hours per week.
If you're guessing that I worked more than 40-hours per week throughout those six years—you'd be right. But, at some point, my bodymind couldn't keep up with the constantly accelerating pace of work for ten years straight. Since beginning University, I hadn't stopped. Or paused.
Never-stopping led to my first burnout.
It was the first time I had ever taken a break, and it was prescribed. I took a modified version of short-term care leave.
I cut down to six working hours a day, and to four working days a week. I didn't really know what to do with myself during those times, and that was part of the problem that lead to the burnout.
Even then: I was planning internal conferences, managing 18 direct reports with a 100+ sized human organization, leading three partner technology platforms (one was responsible for bringing in 78% of Booking.com's revenue).
Eventually I finished that short-term care leave, but had come to appreciate the fewer working days through the week. So, took the pay cut and lowered my contractual working hours to 32 hours a week.
Throughout that time, I had learned all sorts about labor law.
For example, in the Netherlands, my employer couldn't say no to my reduction of hours unless they could prove I was critically essential to the daily operations of the business, and the detriment of the fewer hours would be felt.
Another example, the Netherlands' care leave. It's obligatory to be able to take it, you can't be punished for taking it, and it's a foundational part of the labor rights and worker protections in Dutch law.
Burn-out is a symptom
As I had come back into more full-time work, I shared the knowledge I'd gained through my down time. In that openness, more and more people came to me asking for support on how to deal with their own burn-outs—at various stages of "feeling something's off and knowing where it could lead" to "I have no clue what's going on, but I need help."
I even learned that, if an ambulance was called to someone's house for panic attacks, one of the first things they asked was, "where do you work?" When my colleagues would share, the medical workers would respone, "ahhh, yeah. We talk with people very week or day from there for this sort of reason."
It got to a point where I co-authored a Mental Health & Well-Being Petition with two co-workers.
We wrote it directly to the CEO, stating the case, and how the company was failing its employees. We shared the petition through the company chat with a few people, and it all started:
- In less than a week, we had over 400 signatures.
- the CEO called an emergency All-Hands Meeting to discuss.
- We broke the conferencing system because of the 1k+ attendees.
- She immediately invested more into the Global Inclusion, Diversity, and Belonging + Well-Being Departments—more staff, larger budgets, and direct support for employees.
It was the first time I had an active role in organizing anything to that impact.
It changed my life.
Later that year, I ran for—and was elected into–the Works Council, elected employee representatives that functions as an enterprise-level complement to trade & labor negotiations. The Executive Chair, at the time, described it as "a fulcrum between labor unions and the business, ever balancing the interests of employees while helping the business do better."
After the elections, initial trainings, and establishing the new council: we entered 2020.
Everything changed
My second burn-out leave started in October 2020, after leading the Works Council as Vice Executive Chair through the first lay-offs in the company's history while quarantined in a global pandemic, representing 6,000+ Netherlands-based employees.
On top of— gestures wildly —everything, I discovered I'm neurodivergent. Not only that, but everything that that means. For 32 years of my life, I had been living with neurotypical expectations of myself. I had never known, well, the things I needed. That I was diagnostically Different, and had my own uniquely different needs.
This time, I took the full, long-term care time off of work.
I still received my paycheck—have I said YAY LABOR RIGHTS enough, yet?—and focused on what I needed to do to figure out these new named labels (disabled, neurodivergent, ADHD, etc) while actively reshaping my relationship with work.
I sought out things I enjoyed.
I wrote.
For the first time, I wrote something for me. And published it! (still need to re-publish it). I created for myself. I made things. I painted. I played. I finally knew enough about myself, starting to trust myself for the first time—to finally get a dog! (Having a partner also was a big factor in that decision; to share & distribute labor.)
At some point, I needed to find work again. A job.
The job market changed drastically in the past five years—and continues to devolve & evolve at an astonishing pace.
Trying out new things
We started our own business, seeking to codify the knowledge we've gained from scaling a company over the course of a combined 20-years, into ways to help others scale themselves.
Hard sell.
Especially when you're in a new place, have no network, and the working culture is exclusive & transactional.
Got a job at a small mom'n'pop shop. Six months before I was fired for false allegations of saying something mean-ish on the Internet. It was also a big slap in the face at how different work is when there are no labor or worker's rights.
A year later, landed my first freelance contract job, helping a start-up found their design system and evolve their product strategy & direction. That was two months, "full-time."
The month after finishing work with the start-up, I started a 20-hours/week contract, sub-contracting to design an app for the Space Force. That's still ongoing.
Summation
- From 2007–2017, I worked >40 hrs/week; ~10 years.
- From 2017–2020, I worked 32hrs/week; ~3 years.
- From 2020–2024, I worked 0 – >40hrs/week; ~4 years (does trying to build your own thing count in "number of hours worked"? I think so. So, 0 from an "employed working hours" perspective, but >40 from a "entrepreneurship" perspective).
- From 2024–today, I work 20hrs/week.
Well, the 20hrs/week is for my paid contractual gig. The rest of the working week, and traditional "working hours" I've spent doing things that I've wanted to do (and in pursuit of getting more work and paid).
The differences between working 40 > 32 > 20 hours a week are incalculable.
Work, today.
As the tech & design industry pursues perpetual acceleration, I'm finding that I seek deceleration. A slower pace. But, the slower pace doesn't mean slow-moving.
It was Mike Monteiro's recent newsletter, How to be a tugboat captain that prompted this whole reflection. That, and, having a surprisingly short day because I was hitting my 20-hour limit to the week.
How he describes his relationship with work resonates:
...let’s talk about the difference between a job and work, because I think it’s important. Very early on in my career I discovered two very important things. One, I love to work. I love doing things. I love making things. I love solving problems. I am constitutionally disposed to working.
His description of work applies to me. I enjoy doing things, making things, problem solving, and just getting things done. If I'm not making progress on something, or working on something, I get down, anxious, distracted.
I spend my "extra" 20-hrs/week building websites, writing, reading, learning, supporting community in a job seeker's support group.
I've spent four years searching for a job, while also doing all the other things—from 2021–now. Searching for a job has been rough, and the work to get a job feels like busy-work more-so than pursuit of something worth doing.
Later on in Mike's newsletter:
When you ask about getting a job, you may be asking the wrong question. Instead, ask yourself how you can get some money. You may end up in the same place, deciding that getting a job is the best option for you, which is totally fair, but you may also discover some possibilities that you hadn’t thought of before. And that’s a trip worth taking.
That's where I'm at these days.
I do need a job—for the health insurance, financial stability, routine, sustainability—and I'm not opposed to it. I'm still searching.
That said, I am finding the 20-hrs of billable hours a week a good pace. It's allowed me to take and make space for different possibilities of getting money from my work.
The current contract is energizing. It's the first time I've worked together, on a team, since 2020. It's the first time I've been a full-on individual contributor since 2016. I don't know the form, but I want a good half of my work to be within teams, working together with others, making things together.