How To Survive & Perhaps Even Thrive In The Modern Cut Throat Job Environment

Jon hopping seems to be a necessity in the modern economy. People have become replaceable cogs that will be thrown away and discarded when needed. All traces of humanity have left the economic sphere leaving a cold, harsh, climate where you have to have leverage and knowledge to survive, much less thrive. This is not the economic times or world of our fathers and adapting their strategies and adages will get us killed and left in the dust. We have to adjust to modern realities so we can make modern money.

Once upon a time you started at entry level at a company and worked your way up. If you worked hard and stayed diligent you could afford to live in a relatively safe place and provide halfway decent food and shelter for you and yours, at least for the majority of people or close to it. However this world is long gone. The loss of character, societies fracturing, inflation, government policies, and about a million other things have killed this old economic world and left its corpse on the side of the road.

And if you play by the rules of this old world you will end up exploited and often in ruin. In this modern world you have to understand that the company you work for, unless it is your own, and especially if it’s a large corporation, is not your friend, ally, or anything good. It’s using you and you’re using it. Sort of like a whore and John relationship. Might sound a bit crass but that’s the reality. Actually maybe whore and John isn’t a good analogy because at least a John can have feelings for a whore and care about her. A corporation will have none for you.

Maybe a pimp and a whore is a better analogy. The coldest, hardest pimp you could ever think of. That’s essentially how you should look at your relationship with your employer. They are not there to help you and they don’t give a damn about you and yours. They’ll give you rhetoric that they do but that’s to trick you so they can use you more. If it was profitable and legal for them to do so they would shove and your family through a fine mesh screen if it gave them more profit and don’t think for a second that they won’t.

What’s A Man To Do In A Inhuman Economy?

So what does this mean for you? First off, understand that loyalty is a liability. Don’t have loyalty to your company or see it through rose tinted glasses. It’s not your friend, buddy, or anything of that nature. It’s a pimp that’s pimping you out but you need money to eat. I’m purposely putting this in harsh terms because it’s so natural to get connected to your job and the people there. It’s human nature to go somewhere everyday, work with people, and thereby develop an attachment to it. Even if it sucks. But we have to fight against this and stay vigilant, keep our eyes wide open about what is real and what isn’t.

So loyalty to one company isn’t the way forward, then what is? First off, I didn’t say loyalty to one company wasn’t the way forward. Depending on your job and circumstances it very well could be, but most likely is not. Most likely you will be working for a variety of companies in your time and therefore have to learn how to leverage this for your benefit. Remember that leverage is the name of the game. The more leverage that you have the more you’ll be able to get what you want. Understand that all employers want to screw you as much as they can, not because they’re evil, but because they’re naturally going to want things to be in much of their favor as possible, as well as it’s more profitable.

How do you prevent being screwed? A few things, namely leverage, but also negotiating skills and backbone. If all you have in the modern economy is a good work ethic you’ll just be more exploited. As a matter of fact you can be relatively lazy but still make lots of money so long as you have leverage and negotiating skills and know when to put your foot down. Of course putting your foot down without leverage only means you’ll be tossed out the door.

Which brings me to the next point.

How To Have Leverage

You’ve probably heard about multiple income streams before, all the gurus have gone on about it for awhile. But there’s something to this that you should understand. While I’m against starting one hundred “side hustles” in a bid to make a few extra bucks I am all for having one “side hustle” that has the ability to become your main job or at least keep you afloat if you ever had to leave. There are many options for this depending on your skills and desires, too many to go into here. But nevertheless this is something you need to look into. Why? Because money or rather income is the greatest level of leverage. If you had a million dollars coming in every year you could tell any job or boss you wanted to go pound sand because you’d have the ultimate leverage.

Of course this is a hard leverage to generate but one that you need to start looking at. Look for income outside of your job, not attached to it, so that if needed you tell your job to go to hell whenever you need to. Again, this would require a whole article or book to flesh out exactly what to do, but it’s enough that you’re thinking about it at the moment. So money is the ultimate leverage, what else is there?

Next in line, granted it’s a bit far behind, is negotiation skills and people skills, some call this sales skills, for the sake of brevity we’ll loop them all together and call them soft skills. Soft skills is essentially having an understand of how people work and using that to your advantage. It’s about learning how to get people to like you, especially those above you, without just being an ass kisser though if you want to make money there are times when ass kissing is needed, speaking frankly. After money develop soft skills to get your boss and those above them, as well as the workers around you, to like you and think you’re a great guy for the job even if you suck.

People don’t make money because they’re good at their jobs, understand that. Promotion has to do with who your know, who likes you, and what boxes you check, it has almost nothing to do with how good you are at your job. Let me repeat that income and promotion have almost no correlation to job skill, at least when you work at a company but even with your own job as well. These soft skills that I’m talking about are a hundred times more important and that’s not an exaggeration.

Next in a distant third comes back bone. I will say this, without the above two, back bone does very little. People with back bones don’t last long at jobs if they don’t have leverage of other sorts behind them. However with having the other two somewhat then having back bone can be an asset. Learn when to put your foot down and say no, people with respect it, if you have leverage of other sorts. Don’t be afraid to throw your weight around, when warranted.

Thrive & Survive In The Modern World

Our modern economic and governing system essentially take the worst aspects of capitalism and combine them with the worst aspects of communism to create the modern state. Because of this you have to be smart as a whip and cunning as a fox to survive and thrive in this world. Don’t be naive, it’ll get you killed, exploited, and destroyed. The world isn’t a Normal Rockwell painting and things like goodness and fair play never really played much of a factor in something as heartless as the economy. Hopefully what I’ve lain out here will help set you on the right path to money and maybe even riches. At the very least it’ll help keep you from being exploited and left out in the dark.

As always, thanks for reading.

-Charles Sledge

If you have any questions you would like to see answered in a future post send them to me at charlessledge001 (at) gmail (dot) com. If you found value in this post then I would encourage you to share this site with someone who may need it as well as check out my books here. I appreciate it.

-Charles Sledge