How to Quit Your Job the Right Way

When I was at a corporate IT job, I kept wondering: What are all these people doing?

Many people were on the phone. Or were already outdated by new software systems. The corporation wouldn’t fire them until much later. When layoffs were mandated. But they were mandated. And they lost their jobs. And now I don’t know where they are.

I ran into one of these useless people at a minor league baseball game about seven years ago. I said, “George, what are you doing these days?”

He said, “I follow this one team. I go around to all of their games.” He pointed to a woman in the first row of seats. “See that woman? She’s married to one of the players. I sat next to her at dinner last night.”

I walked back to my seat. I thought to myself, good ol’ George. Like I used to say to myself when we sat next to each at work 14 years prior to that. Things change — and then they don’t.

As for me, 14 years later, I have my masks also. I am trying.

Automation Is Eating the World

Here’s the problem: Industrialism consumes itself. As an example: Every time a line of software is written, a job is lost.

Software increases automation, which removes the need for a worker.

Think of all the innovations happening and what they replace:

• Artificial intelligence removes the need for thinkers of basic jobs (and later, more advanced jobs).
• 3-D printing removes the need for construction and many manufacturing jobs.
• Virtual reality is going to be a trillion-dollar industry that removes the ultimate middleman: air and distance.
• Robotics removes the need for much manual labor. Walmart shelves are already being stocked by robots and not humans.

And on and on. Autonomous cars remove the need for drivers and will eventually replace public transportation.

Robin Chase, the founder of Zipcar, told me that automated cars will eliminate 90 percent of the auto industry. Biochemistry and personalized medicine will turn insurance and the drug industry upside down.

If the ultimate innovation happens — “the cure” — then doctors will be needed less.

All innovation consumes the innovation of the generation earlier.

Corporatism, which is different from capitalism, wants to appease shareholders, not employees. Employees are paid salaries that allow the shareholders to extract as much profit as possible.

And innovation forces the gap wider between the needs of the shareholders at the top and the employees who are moving closer to the bottom. This is not a bad or a good thing. It’s reality.

Corporations want to ultimately fire you, whether you like your job or not. Their entire purpose is to create and squeeze the efficiencies out of you until you drop dead or are no longer needed.

OK.

You can love your job so you don’t want to quit. But the company that hires you eventually will quit you. Eventually they will squeeze every bit of profit out of you. Eventually you will join the class of workers who have become outdated. Eventually they will fire you.

There is a version of leaving that costs you nothing

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