The more-with-less era

Making sense of a "disrupted" job market

Silicon Valley killed my old Highsnobiety job. It killed a lot of my friends’ jobs too. But it’s not just media that got “disrupted”. Look in all corners of the economy and you’ll find sectors that are slowly getting eaten by tech companies. AI is starting to look like a threat to even the safest professions. Will you still need an accountant if a chatbot can file your taxes for you? All that disruption makes a pretty bleak picture for people climbing the career ladder. There is a not-zero percent chance that the ladder might just vanish in front of your eyes.

But media is also an interesting place to look for positive stories. Because the industry is in its second decade of disruption (I hate that word so much), there’s been time for people to figure out some answers in the rubble of bankrupted newspapers and digital lifestyle mags (RIP Vice). The publishers that are still going are getting leaner, and they’re competing not just with each other, but with newsletters and podcasts and Youtube channels, who are either run by individuals or tiny teams of a few people. Media analyst Brian Morrissey calls this the more with less era. As in, success is about building a relatively niche business that’s nicely profitable, rather than trying to be the next GQ.

This tracks with what some of my former Highsnob colleagues have been up to. Robbie Russell started his own project connecting musicians with brands (Say Less), Emily Dreesen is at a boutique strategy and research consultancy (Matter) and George Hammond joined a creative agency in the culinary arts (Sips). These businesses are all built around one person, or a handful of them, who then bring in freelancers to plug in the gaps on specific projects (I often work in this way with Jeppe Dalsgaard, aka Large Office, a digital marketing micro-agency).

And of course, there’s the creator economy. The newsletter writers and podcasters and Youtubers and Tik Tokers and Twitch streamers are solo-preneurs who build careers out of their own niches (sometimes those niches are very, very big — MrBeast has 380m subscribers on Youtube).

During the first Substack gold rush, a bunch of already-successful journalists started their own newsletters and almost instantly made a lot more than they did at their old job (Paul Krugman ditched the NYT a few months ago but already has the purple tick on Substack, meaning he has at least 10,000 monthly paid subs, meaning he’s making over half a million on here already, lol). But starting on a platform from scratch is a very different story, and a bit of a chicken-or-egg dilemma. You have to work on it a long time before it’s worth your time…if it ever will be. There is only so much space for paid newsletters and famous podcasters. A lot of aspiring creators will stay stuck in the middle class, grinding away on work that is neither stable nor lucrative.

There are no easy answers here, but people are starting to find a way through the mess that Silicon Valley dumps on us every time they invent a new app (we’re all downstream from something). And that often means doing something much smaller than the companies our parents worked at. It’s not guaranteed that these projects will scale in the same way that your pay would climb after a few decades in an office, but for a lot of people it’s the best option available to them.

Even working for the tech overlords isn’t safe. Just Google and Facebook laid off over 22,000 people in 2023, and last year the US tech sector as a whole cut almost 100,000 jobs. We can expect that the path ahead will be more about taking a step forward and seeing where it leads, rather than clocking in at the same place for 30 years straight (Risha Tobaccowala has some helpful insights on how to make the most of full time work, if that’s where you’re at).

And then there’s specialization. We’re supposed to become specialists at work…but what happens if a chatbot learns to do your specialization? Just another one of the impossible Catch 22s young people are supposed to figure out (how much disruption is one generation supposed to endure? IDK but I want it to stop.)

But at least we’re still young-ish. A recent story in the New York Times, appropriately titled The Gen X Career Meltdown, profiled a group of 40- and 50-somethings whose careers were wiped out just as they reached their peak earning years. If you’ve spent your entire life working in TV and the industry slips into a death spiral…what do you do? Those interviewed in the piece have sold houses, downsized their lives and their ambitions, or just switched lanes entirely. One former magazine editor retrained as a therapist, probably the safest career you can get into these days thanks to, well, everything.

The reverse of that is true too: Gen Z is having a hard time even getting into the job market. Here’s Scott Galloway’s newsletter:

“Entry-level jobs that once served as stepping stones are vanishing. In fields like law, finance, and tech, tasks traditionally assigned to junior staff are either being fully automated or completed more quickly by fewer workers using AI.”

We are living through an era that’s more about contraction than growth. Work, quality of life, democracy, money: none of it is easy anymore (thanks neoliberalism). The “my parents in their 30s” meme is a classic because it is so painfully true.

Brian Morrissey’s more with less idea is essential if you’re working in media, but let’s just imagine for a moment that we applied it to life more generally. A tough economy means getting smart about money. Brutal property prices means being realistic about where you can afford to live. The erosion of democracy and the climate means accepting that many things in life are simply out of our control.

And a turbulent job market means not getting too emotionally invested in your idea of a dream job. Maybe it means working a regular 9-to-5 where you don’t get to travel business class and stay in fancy hotels. Letting go of things is sad, but healthy! We’ve heard enough anecdotes from people on their deathbeds that work isn’t the only thing that matters.

The silver-ish lining to all of this contraction and disruption and disappointment and glaring, senseless unfairness is that we know more than ever that the real sources of human happiness are much easier than making a $500m exit or becoming Youtube famous. It’s about surrounding yourself with awesome people, doing work that feels meaningful, and having a healthy relationship with yourself. Quoting ancient philosophy is so cringe at this point but sorry, can’t resist — here’s some Socrates: “he is the richest who is content with the least”.