I have an email job, which is why I decided putz a little, read this, and start working half an hour late today. There's some unavoidable ennui that comes with these jobs, but all in all, it could be a heck of a lot worse.
My current job is a pleasing mixture of email job and regular job, in a middle school dean's office.
I have been largely successful at work by establishing the persona of a guy willing to speedrun through the email chain-touching base-knock out this online training-action plan meeting side of things in order to focus on the nuts and bolts of the actual job of meeting with kids face to face and providing them with positive reinforcement.
My admin bosses are aware I find their world of high intensity/low impact meetings and crafting official guidance memos and using the right dialect to describe normal interactions to be silly and incomprehensible, but I make their lives easier across a broad spectrum of tasks so my cheerful "The inane bullshit guidance that district is pushing down to us is wishful thinking and documenting every single interaction with kids and their parents while I put it into effect is a pointless time sink, but if it helps flip slides from red to green, then fuck it I get paid the same" attitude is tolerated.
Gets you out of the house/apoartment and into a classroom where you learn where you socialize where you stumble andost importantly where you grow (up). It can help vyou find your way. It can lead you in so many directions. Post college you enter the world market place where you find your way thru life.
Enjoy the ride. The above also applies to trade schools.
The concept of the email job helps me anchor a culturally unacceptable question that bugs me: why do women (and women seem to many/most? of these jobs) prioritize these kinds of jobs over staying home with children? I understand why someone with a burning passion for her work as a lawyer or doctor or rocket scientist really values the work and the intellectual challenge. And of course I understand that there are financial challenges for many: single mothers and breadwinners and caretakers of elderly parents and minimum wage earners etc cannot choose staying home over work. But many women working email jobs DO seem to derive their identity from *having* a job, even if the job itself is less satisfying than the alternative. As if sending emails and organizing calendars and attending meetings is somehow sticking it to the patriarchy.
I think you're right, obviously, that not all people have email jobs, but I also think it's astounding how much our culture *assumes* everyone has an email job. This was most obvious, and polarizing, in the discussion around remote work during Covid ("why can't everyone just stay home??") but also - nothing is open outside of work hours. If you need to talk to your insurance company, or your bank, or a lawyer; if you need to visit a government office or sort out your taxes - our culture just seems to assume that at least one spouse in every family can take a pointless phone call for half an hour every few days. It's another hidden tax on the poor - I think if both parents work on an assembly line or something they must just have to take their lumps with whatever the insurance company rejects or denies, because they're just not able to spend 45 minutes on hold while door panels come down the assembly line.
My wife has an email job. It allowed her to work from home during Covid, is unionized with great benefits, and her boss is a wonderful woman who encouraged her into training so that one day my wife can take over a new position: another email job. My wife tries to explain her job to me sometimes, but with all the obscure government jargon and acronyms I have a hard time following along. There is a lot of Excel spreadsheets, and a lot of phone calls and meetings. I don’t think an email job would be for me, but my wife is great at it, and has moved up quickly in her short time there. She’s also a thousand times happier than she was in her last job. Not everyone is suited to these types of jobs, as it is easy for people to coast and not participate from what I glean from the office chatter I overhear when my wife is working from home, but a world of email jobs seems a pretty fine one to me.
This kind of pitch -- proposing a new taxonomy that seems clear & useful enough for others to fill in further -- is really worthwhile, & I wish people tried it more; seems like the most fitting creative task in the era of big admin & big data. & it seems very complementary to AI: define a new pattern for it to match to, then let it run wild proposing new applications or datasets. After all, the reason we remember Euclid & Freud is that they did much the same thing: they gave their acolytes a clear set of rules & axioms & "win conditions" & set them loose to build up their abstract games into high-status disciplines; Pythagoras isn't seen as the founder of math because he built a politically powerful math cult, but Euclid is because he gave people a list of clear (albeit facially absurd) rules, eg: "ok imagine that lines are infinitely thin." &, fittingly, "email job" might be a good description for those people who apply these kinds of rules once they've been established: the people who decide that this company will begin every meeting with a land acknowledgment, & sign off every email with gender pronouns, & defer between identities in some particular way; those ways we're all softly conditioned at every moment, by the little skinner boxes of ideology who hover nicely over us in every meeting, or in every thread.
Thus maybe "email job" is an overly constrained term for what could more appropriately be called "the deep state" -- that thing which democracy-lovers define as democracy. As you point out, they often come from changes in litigation risk: eg when the civil rights enforcers decided that mere "disparate impact" on any "protected status" created massive liability; but now these decentralized petty enforcers are the ones in charge (the ones who apply this pressure on the public -- & the ones who have seized control of every major cultural institution, public & private).
I think in many ways I have an email job, and it’s really lovely. Great colleagues, on a university campus, incredible flexibility, and bandwidth at the end of the work day to do my own creative stuff. No complaints. Much happier in this situation than I think I would be either struggling to support myself in a purely creative fashion or working super hard to make a ton of money.
You've summarized it very well. There's obviously a bit of breathing room around impact - some will be completely nebulous, others may have occasional real-world ramifications - but the diffuse and in many ways fungible, non-specialized nature of it is a defining characteristic. It's also one I've not seen well-summarized prior to reading this piece, which is surprising, given that (as you say) millions of us have jobs like these.
The requirements for a college degree are half ass-covering and half interia. In my previous email job I was trying to hire another email jobber to report to me, but she didn't have a college degree. My boss was very skeptical; I pointed out how well she interviewed, how solid her resume was, and that the one referee I'd heard from had spoken in glowing terms. In the end she turned us down for a better-paying job elsewhere, and I'm happy for her. But that one exception aside, everyone I dealt with except the front-liners who actually went into the world and did the work had a degree. I think it's less that people are impressed by college or now assume that it "teaches you how to think" but more that it shows people can sit at a desk for a couple of years and occasionally write a paper without walking out and quitting.
The key to happiness in an email job is to automate as many tasks as possible, and spend the rest of the day on personally fulfilling activities (reading, writing, taking walks, etc).
Email jobs are great as long as you are adaptable and can see around corners. Corporate mergers and automation have reduced the level of security that people who do this kind of work once enjoyed. That being said, if you treat changing jobs every so often as part of the deal, and jump before you get the dreaded severance package, it's a nice life. Not as nice as it was prior to the advent of the Blackberry in 2004 or so--after that it was harder to leave work at work, and by the end my employer just assumed we'd have our work email on our personal phones and respond the whims of the VPs more or less 7 days a week.
If you can stay in the corporate musical chair game long enough, max out your 401K and don't screw up your finances in other ways (divorce being the biggest hit--especially as you accumulate more money or have kids), you can exit and do something you like as early as your mid '50's.
Both of us spent our entire careers in email jobs and we retired early, moved to a place we had always wanted to live in, and have the financial freedom not to work. I am working because I have what I call a "fun job," which I define as having a flexible schedule, being creative, and not reporting to anybody--I'm a freelance chef/event person/floral designer.
I have an email job, which is why I decided putz a little, read this, and start working half an hour late today. There's some unavoidable ennui that comes with these jobs, but all in all, it could be a heck of a lot worse.
My current job is a pleasing mixture of email job and regular job, in a middle school dean's office.
I have been largely successful at work by establishing the persona of a guy willing to speedrun through the email chain-touching base-knock out this online training-action plan meeting side of things in order to focus on the nuts and bolts of the actual job of meeting with kids face to face and providing them with positive reinforcement.
My admin bosses are aware I find their world of high intensity/low impact meetings and crafting official guidance memos and using the right dialect to describe normal interactions to be silly and incomprehensible, but I make their lives easier across a broad spectrum of tasks so my cheerful "The inane bullshit guidance that district is pushing down to us is wishful thinking and documenting every single interaction with kids and their parents while I put it into effect is a pointless time sink, but if it helps flip slides from red to green, then fuck it I get paid the same" attitude is tolerated.
College:
Gets you out of the house/apoartment and into a classroom where you learn where you socialize where you stumble andost importantly where you grow (up). It can help vyou find your way. It can lead you in so many directions. Post college you enter the world market place where you find your way thru life.
Enjoy the ride. The above also applies to trade schools.
The concept of the email job helps me anchor a culturally unacceptable question that bugs me: why do women (and women seem to many/most? of these jobs) prioritize these kinds of jobs over staying home with children? I understand why someone with a burning passion for her work as a lawyer or doctor or rocket scientist really values the work and the intellectual challenge. And of course I understand that there are financial challenges for many: single mothers and breadwinners and caretakers of elderly parents and minimum wage earners etc cannot choose staying home over work. But many women working email jobs DO seem to derive their identity from *having* a job, even if the job itself is less satisfying than the alternative. As if sending emails and organizing calendars and attending meetings is somehow sticking it to the patriarchy.
I think you're right, obviously, that not all people have email jobs, but I also think it's astounding how much our culture *assumes* everyone has an email job. This was most obvious, and polarizing, in the discussion around remote work during Covid ("why can't everyone just stay home??") but also - nothing is open outside of work hours. If you need to talk to your insurance company, or your bank, or a lawyer; if you need to visit a government office or sort out your taxes - our culture just seems to assume that at least one spouse in every family can take a pointless phone call for half an hour every few days. It's another hidden tax on the poor - I think if both parents work on an assembly line or something they must just have to take their lumps with whatever the insurance company rejects or denies, because they're just not able to spend 45 minutes on hold while door panels come down the assembly line.
My wife has an email job. It allowed her to work from home during Covid, is unionized with great benefits, and her boss is a wonderful woman who encouraged her into training so that one day my wife can take over a new position: another email job. My wife tries to explain her job to me sometimes, but with all the obscure government jargon and acronyms I have a hard time following along. There is a lot of Excel spreadsheets, and a lot of phone calls and meetings. I don’t think an email job would be for me, but my wife is great at it, and has moved up quickly in her short time there. She’s also a thousand times happier than she was in her last job. Not everyone is suited to these types of jobs, as it is easy for people to coast and not participate from what I glean from the office chatter I overhear when my wife is working from home, but a world of email jobs seems a pretty fine one to me.
I am a teacher, and reading your description of email jobs sure took me back to teaching remotely.
This kind of pitch -- proposing a new taxonomy that seems clear & useful enough for others to fill in further -- is really worthwhile, & I wish people tried it more; seems like the most fitting creative task in the era of big admin & big data. & it seems very complementary to AI: define a new pattern for it to match to, then let it run wild proposing new applications or datasets. After all, the reason we remember Euclid & Freud is that they did much the same thing: they gave their acolytes a clear set of rules & axioms & "win conditions" & set them loose to build up their abstract games into high-status disciplines; Pythagoras isn't seen as the founder of math because he built a politically powerful math cult, but Euclid is because he gave people a list of clear (albeit facially absurd) rules, eg: "ok imagine that lines are infinitely thin." &, fittingly, "email job" might be a good description for those people who apply these kinds of rules once they've been established: the people who decide that this company will begin every meeting with a land acknowledgment, & sign off every email with gender pronouns, & defer between identities in some particular way; those ways we're all softly conditioned at every moment, by the little skinner boxes of ideology who hover nicely over us in every meeting, or in every thread.
Thus maybe "email job" is an overly constrained term for what could more appropriately be called "the deep state" -- that thing which democracy-lovers define as democracy. As you point out, they often come from changes in litigation risk: eg when the civil rights enforcers decided that mere "disparate impact" on any "protected status" created massive liability; but now these decentralized petty enforcers are the ones in charge (the ones who apply this pressure on the public -- & the ones who have seized control of every major cultural institution, public & private).
I think in many ways I have an email job, and it’s really lovely. Great colleagues, on a university campus, incredible flexibility, and bandwidth at the end of the work day to do my own creative stuff. No complaints. Much happier in this situation than I think I would be either struggling to support myself in a purely creative fashion or working super hard to make a ton of money.
You've summarized it very well. There's obviously a bit of breathing room around impact - some will be completely nebulous, others may have occasional real-world ramifications - but the diffuse and in many ways fungible, non-specialized nature of it is a defining characteristic. It's also one I've not seen well-summarized prior to reading this piece, which is surprising, given that (as you say) millions of us have jobs like these.
The requirements for a college degree are half ass-covering and half interia. In my previous email job I was trying to hire another email jobber to report to me, but she didn't have a college degree. My boss was very skeptical; I pointed out how well she interviewed, how solid her resume was, and that the one referee I'd heard from had spoken in glowing terms. In the end she turned us down for a better-paying job elsewhere, and I'm happy for her. But that one exception aside, everyone I dealt with except the front-liners who actually went into the world and did the work had a degree. I think it's less that people are impressed by college or now assume that it "teaches you how to think" but more that it shows people can sit at a desk for a couple of years and occasionally write a paper without walking out and quitting.
The software development term "Yak Shaving", defined as "All the work you have to do before the actual work" encompasses this concept rather well
I wonder how Graeber would respond to this article if he were alive.
The key to happiness in an email job is to automate as many tasks as possible, and spend the rest of the day on personally fulfilling activities (reading, writing, taking walks, etc).
If you need to stay “active” on Microsoft Teams, the market provides solutions: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=mouse+jiggler
Tangential, but here to say I’m all ears for a juicy Graeber analysis (or links to good writeups!)
Email jobs are great as long as you are adaptable and can see around corners. Corporate mergers and automation have reduced the level of security that people who do this kind of work once enjoyed. That being said, if you treat changing jobs every so often as part of the deal, and jump before you get the dreaded severance package, it's a nice life. Not as nice as it was prior to the advent of the Blackberry in 2004 or so--after that it was harder to leave work at work, and by the end my employer just assumed we'd have our work email on our personal phones and respond the whims of the VPs more or less 7 days a week.
If you can stay in the corporate musical chair game long enough, max out your 401K and don't screw up your finances in other ways (divorce being the biggest hit--especially as you accumulate more money or have kids), you can exit and do something you like as early as your mid '50's.
Both of us spent our entire careers in email jobs and we retired early, moved to a place we had always wanted to live in, and have the financial freedom not to work. I am working because I have what I call a "fun job," which I define as having a flexible schedule, being creative, and not reporting to anybody--I'm a freelance chef/event person/floral designer.