Debunking ’Follow Your Passion’ as Career Advice, The Rise of Downcredentialing & Skill Based Hiring (DF#106)

Ryan Maruyama [00:00:34]:

Aloha, folks, and welcome back to degree free where we teach you how to get hired without a college degree. We are your hosts, Ryan and Hannah Mariamae. It is great to have you back. Welcome back. Welcome back as always to the podcast folks. Ryan and I are so tevye with us today. We are, as always. Let's jump into today's topics. The first thing that I wanna talk about is a new study that came out while new to me. It was a few months ago. A study that came out that was talking about the advice follow your passion And whether or not that was good for your career. Would you like to guess?

Hannah Maruyama [00:01:13]:

What this study found? I would be willing to bet that the study found that when you follow your passion, you end up broke. Well, not in so many words.

Ryan Maruyama [00:01:22]:

that is not what the study said, but it's very close. There's an m s NBC article that will link in the show notes for everybody, degreefree.c04/ podcast. I will also link the study itself can go there, but you can only read the abstract. It costs, like, $18 to actually read it. But I will sum it up here for you. The title of the study is does the follow your passions ideology cause greater academic and occupational gender disparities, then other cultural ideologies.

Hannah Maruyama [00:01:57]:

Of course, it does. Yes. But, also, that is a terrible terrible title. Yeah. That's really long. That is so terrible. I have no idea what that means. title? I felt like that was the that was the entire study that I that I that you just read. Right. Exactly. So The MSNBC

Ryan Maruyama [00:02:12]:

article, they put it up much better, is, quote, follow your passion, good career advice, this new study says no. So that's a lot easier to read. Yes. I'm not bringing this up because I wanted to talk about the gender pay gap or anything like that. I have no idea. I'm not gonna talk about that. That's not my field of expertise. What I wanted to talk about was how this impacts the way that you view your career. So to sum up the study, they found When you are given the advice, follow your passion. Women go towards more careers that are arts or health care related, and thus they get paid less

Hannah Maruyama [00:03:00]:

because of it. Because those jobs don't pay as much. Exactly.

Ryan Maruyama [00:03:04]:

Men, when they are given the advice, follow your passion, they choose more science or business. But when asked about following the money and choosing a career where you get paid the most amount of money or better or that's the thing that you care about, then women chose more science or business. The reason why this is important, never mind the gender stuff and the pay gap stuff. I mean, if you care about that, that's great. I have no idea once once I said that's too political for me to get into. But if you think about it, the framing of your career is what's so powerful.

Hannah Maruyama [00:03:40]:

Well, I will get into the, I guess, political nature of this, which I don't think is political. But The thing is the advice, follow your passions, is targeted towards women because they know that they need people to go into these low paid fields. And so they say follow your passions, and then they pay all those passions. And so they say, oh, you wanna work with kids? Okay. Well, you should be a teacher. Okay. Well, now you need a master's degree to be a teacher to make $43,000 a year. And now and they know that women will not only buy degrees, but they know that women will go back and buy more degrees if they're told again, oh, well, now you have to get a higher paid degree. And so I actually think that this is intentional. I think that there is an intentionality behind this. And I think that it's very much, hey. We know who our customer is, and we know what their buying habits are gonna be. And we know if we tell them early on, you have to pay in order to play in this field that is your passion, that they will do it anyway. And by the time they get through their master's degree program, it's gonna be too late. and it will be too high cost or too high risk or there'll be too old to change careers. Follow your passion is just overall terrible advice. What that what that implies is that people should just run around and do whatever they feel like without any sort of thought to, hey. What do I actually want my life to look like? And as a result of that, How much money do I need in order to live that life? And it just completely absolves you from having to pick responsibly or having to actually work And instead, you just pay if you pay a college, then you should get whatever result you want because you're following your passion. And I think that that's really not good advice, and it results and a lot of people having very disjointed expectations about what their work is gonna be like and also about what their work is gonna pay them. So they get out of college, and then they're struck by the realization. that their field doesn't pay well, but also they're kind of stuck because they've already sunk so much time and money into it. I think you conflated a couple of things there. I think you conflated wrongfully so You conflated going to college and following your passion. I don't think that those 2 are the same here. You can follow your passion and not go to college.

Ryan Maruyama [00:05:36]:

So but I I understand the essence of what you're saying, and I think I I agree with the essence of what you're saying. But to conflate and equate following your passion to going to college, I don't think that that's correct. And I just wanna be fair to the process and to this discussion. the reason why I thought this was important with the framing is not only is it important in your own career, but it's important in the career advice that you give over your life. Because we've all been given this advice because it's always been regurgitated. You've heard it and you've said it. Follow your passion. Follow your passion. Follow your passion. But you don't take into account exactly what you were saying, which is the money portion of it. You have to remember why are you working, and it's of my opinion that you are working so that you can do things out side of work so that you can live your life outside of work. So you can take vacations so you can go to or after work so that you can go out on the weekend so you can take care of your kids. Make sure that your kids get a good education. those types of things. That is why you're working. You're not working for your passion. At least that's what I believe. Yeah. I think that's a very American

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:52]:

notion to the that our work has to be our passion. It's probably because we spend such a high percentage of our time at work, and Americans Americans are so statistically overworked that maybe that's just part of our culture that we've adapted. And so we say, follow your passion and your work. And we we say that we think that that's good advice because you're gonna spend so much time in your life working. But I just don't think that that is realistic. I think there's a little bit of classes in there as well. Because if you really look at that, it's follow your passion. Okay. Well, how many jobs are there that people have that pay well, that have to get done, that people are not passionate about? Right. The idea that people have to be passionate about their work in order to make money and have a good life is just ridiculous because there's so much work. There's so many jobs And how many people do you think are really actually passionate about and I'm re I mean, at the end of the day, they're really passionate about their job. I know that there are people that are passionate about

Ryan Maruyama [00:07:46]:

Their job sure, but there are people that are passionate about what the money that they get from their job allows them to do.

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:55]:

Yeah. Absolutely. And that that I think is sincere, but I think this whole your job has to be your passion thing is really insincere because it that is targeted at a very small group of people. who either are being duped into thinking that they can afford to follow their passion when they realistically cannot, or it is targeted towards people who have the background to have the family wealth in order to follow their passion, and it won't cut their knees out from one of them in their life if they spend a lot of money or a lot of time following something that doesn't make them enough to live. The one caveat here that I wanted to put on this is that if you are going to be a business owner or an entrepreneur,

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:33]:

a lot of times, it is easier to be passionate about what you are doing. It's not necessary to do that, you don't have to be passionate about the business that you start. You don't have to be, but a lot of times it helps because you're gonna be working so many hours on that business. For years, for months, you are gonna be working 40, 60 hour weeks and not making any money. So it just helps to be passionate if you are about those things. But if it's just a job and you are looking at your career and you're gonna be okay. I'm gonna work 40 to 60 to 80 hours, but in a role, like, in a job at a company,

Hannah Maruyama [00:09:16]:

well, then maybe you don't have to be passionate about it. Yeah. A lot of people too when we have this conversation, they Oh, we know. It's really important. I'm not saying don't have pride in your work. I'm not saying don't get satisfaction out of it. That's not what I'm saying at all. I think the word passion is -- far too liberally applied to work in the US. You cannot tell me that people get up in the morning. They're like, oh, wow. I can't wait to get into these spreadsheets. You're not passionate about that. You may like the people you work with. You may think that the company that you're working for is doing some good, and you're glad to be working there. But I think the idea that people just have a fire lit in them to do the

Ryan Maruyama [00:09:50]:

maintenance that is a lot of work is just not accurate or realistic at all. So to make this segment useful instead of just the rant about passion and money and everything like that, I know the most difficult portion of this when you're thinking about making a huge job change. When you're thinking about changing careers, is literally just starting and finding that first goal. You're listening to this, and then you think, Okay. I agree with you. I'm not gonna go after my passion now. I do wanna make x amount of money, whatever it is, $80,000 a year now. Okay. Which jobs can I get? That is the most difficult place to be. Be I've been there. was a bartender. I've told this story many times in this podcast. I didn't know where to go. I didn't know what jobs to turn to. I applied to every job under the sun. So to combat that, we came up with vocational creativity, which helps you think of different jobs that are out there. And then from there, you can go and do research about the different pay, how to get those jobs. You can use our resources, how to find a job backwards. and you can figure out exactly what you need to learn to get these jobs. And I will put links to all of this in our show notes degreefree.coforward/podcast. We did an entire podcast episode about vocational creativity. We did an entire podcast episode. on how to find a job backwards, and those are really, really good places to start. You can also go to degree free dotcoforward/ get hired. and you can sign up for our 7 day get higher challenge. And that will walk you through how to find a job backwards and teach you in 7 days. how to become a better more effective job seeker and get the work that you want. If you wanted to go deeper on the vocational creativity stuff, we also have the job change accelerator. where we go into more depth with examples in course materials of the whole vocational creativity process, and we walk you through from a to b, how to make that job change, how to make that career change. So those are a few different resources that are available to you, and you can start going after jobs that you didn't even know were possible. You didn't even know existed. Those are great places to start. Yes. Absolutely

Hannah Maruyama [00:12:12]:

do that. And before we get into our next topic, if you want to be in the loop on degree free news, companies that are down -- resources that Ryan and I think you need to know. You are gonna wanna go over to degree free.c0forward/newsletter to sign up for a free weekly newsletter that'll be delivered straight to your inbox. Now, let's talk about jobs that you can get. Intel creates 7000 new jobs, and their VP of government relations Alan Thompson says that most of those jobs will be going to degree free people. Color us unshocked over here. But, basically, this is what Alan said. They're hiring they're gonna have to hire 7000 people to staff new factories that they're building in Arizona and Ohio. And Of that 7 k, 2 thirds of those will not. Maricopa County College has been tasked with administering this 7 day entry level curriculum for semiconductor entry level fabrication text. You can go through this course and it costs $270 is the fee. When you come out of that, you will be eligible to interview for jobs that pay between 20 and $25 an hour just for reference. The median college graduate now makes 22 to $23 an hour. So $270,

Ryan Maruyama [00:13:21]:

10 days, you will be competitive in wages to the median college graduate. So just so people know, this was from a few months go we will put links to everything at degreefree.c04/podcast where you can find these resources and see if they are up right now. This is not a shock. There are a lot of things especially in manufacturing that do not require degrees that did require degrees before,

Hannah Maruyama [00:13:47]:

and you're seeing it right here. And they just got a heavy dose of reality, and that that's really unrealistic. and people do not need to spend that money in college before they just start working. Exactly. Well and I wanted to say there, I usually

Ryan Maruyama [00:13:59]:

mention air quotes. and I didn't there. So they are they used to require

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:07]:

degrees. Yeah. They were hiring people for that didn't have degrees anyway. There were degree already. But yeah. Right. And so now that you see it here -- They're just embracing their actual habits. Exactly. Because they need a wider

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:20]:

talent pool. The what's happening is that a lot of people are rule followers, but if you listen to this podcast so you know that they're are no rules, but a lot of people are rule followers, and they will not apply to jobs that say college degree required. I know that because I was that person. I didn't apply to any of those jobs that I wanted prior to me graduating because I thought that the most important thing on there was college degree required because it was the only line item that was required. That was it. So I figured if I got a degree, then they would hire me. Everything else was nice to have. And then I got my degree, and it just wasn't that way. And so they are realizing now that a lot of people are not applying to those roles, and they have a very small talent pool. They need to figure out how can we get people into these roles that are already trained with what they need to know? Because The thing about colleges as well. The thing about the college degree is that you are assuming the companies are assuming that you are coming in with some sort of base knowledge, but that's just not true. It varies so widely depending on which university you went through which program in that university you went through, those types of things. So they say it's just better to hear is this Maricopa County Community College. Here's this 7 day course. If you can complete this course, then you know everything you need to know. rather than taking a shot of this person that got their associate's degree or this person that got their bachelor's degree with a program that you have no idea about. And it's the same thing that's happening in the certification market. The same exact thing is happening, but for you know, development and software on the other side of it. So this is for manufacturing, but there's all the Google search There's the Salesforce search. There's a ServiceNow search. HubSpot search. SaaS search. You name it. The search are limitless, but it's so necessary in today's market because all of these jobs are so hyper focused on these particular skills. That actually brings me to my next point, which is Ohio

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:36]:

has just joined the ranks of degree free friendly states. And those are states that have opened their state jobs 2 degree free people, and they are actively recruiting from tech and certification programs for state jobs. That's really unsurprising because what that -- is actually showing them is a base level of knowledge that is actually quantifiable and actually measurable, and you can actually see what people are learning. Microcredentialing is definitely the future. In the meantime, while companies try to figure out how to measure people who come from different educational -- backgrounds and different abilities, and I don't mean people of different educational backgrounds, different college degrees. I mean, people who are educated, who do not have college degrees, who are degree free. And while companies and states try to figure out how to measure these people, micro credentialing is going to step into that void in the meantime. However, the governor of Ohio has just passed an executive order that is requiring all classifications where a degree is required by law to be assessed and propose amended requirements, and that is due within a 180 days. And this was a few weeks ago. This is a quote from the director of the governor's office of workforce transformation. By shifting the emphasis to specific skills and competencies relevant to the role employers can identify candidates to possess necessary capabilities, and that is the future of work, people.

Ryan Maruyama [00:17:56]:

Yeah. Absolutely. I think that you were peeking off of my notes because I have something very similar here. Virginia's governor, Youngkin. I think that's how you say it. his or her name scraps degree requirement for most state jobs, and it's a 90% of state jobs. And this is as of July 1st.

Hannah Maruyama [00:18:20]:

The funniest thing when I hear about the states doing this, and they're removing what are broadly unnecessary degree requirements, and it opens up 90% of the jobs. I'm so smug because our estimate of jobs that actually require degrees is very close to that. And so it just tells us that we're probably correct. We're definitely in the ballpark. Yeah. Definitely.

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:40]:

This opens up about 20,000 job opportunities a year for degree free people. So this is Great news. This is following the trend that Marilyn said, like, last year? Yeah. It was last year. They started doing this. Yeah. Yeah. 2022, I believe, they did it. And since then, they, like, 7 other states. Maryland removed all of them. They just nicked them completely. And I think Pennsylvania got very close. to almost all of them. 7 other states since then have followed suit or 7 total have followed suit. and have dropped the majority of the college degree requirements because they're just not necessary. I wanted to call back to what you were saying earlier about the micro credentials. I was having a discussion with a doctor recently. He is in residency right now for orthopedics. We were talking about this about micro credentialing because he was talking to me about med school, and he was talking to me about how He did not go to any classes in med school, basically. Not that he didn't go to any classes, but let me just quickly what he was telling me. He said, in med school, it was very much you have a class. And at the end of it, you have a test, and you just have to show proficiency in those tests or in those assignments. However, you absorb The information is all up to you. So there are lectures that you can attend. There are study halls and things like that that you can attend put on by the university, or you can use online classes. You can use your textbook. You can use private tutoring, that type of stuff. That didn't matter. You didn't have to, like, come to class and learn it this way. So The way that he did it was he used online resources. And, basically, he used them all for free. He's was saying, which is, yeah, not great for the publishers of those course contents and things like that. Unethically, you A pirate, you say? Yeah. Exactly. Modern day pirate.

Hannah Maruyama [00:20:56]:

Ah, a cyber pirate. I see. Exactly.

Ryan Maruyama [00:20:59]:

But he estimated even if he were to spend all of the money on those things because he never went to class. All of those private materials would have came out to about $3000. I'm sorry. What? Yes. It would have costed about $3 for all the private materials that it took for him to pass med school. And I was like, that's crazy.

Hannah Maruyama [00:21:20]:

And they're putting them in

Ryan Maruyama [00:21:22]:

God knows how much at least a quarter of a $1,000,000. Yes. He's he is he is about the average because I believe the average is 250,000. I've been I've been wrong before. I have no idea. I'm just some guy with the microphone. But I believe the average is around that. please correct me. Go to YouTube in the comments. Please let me know what the average is. But he is in about a quarter $1,000,000 of debt. but he could have had that same education for $3, apparently, according to his, you know, his own testimony. What's interesting about that is I asked him, okay. Well, then If you could have done this for $3, how do we solve this? Because you are in debt a quarter of a $1,000,000, and you're gonna be paying that off forever. How do we fix that? He answered almost immediately because he said, you know, Ryan I've been thinking about this for a long time. I've put a lot of thought into this. But he has. Exactly. Because of his experience. And he said, I believe the answer is micro credentialing. He used that exact same verbiage. And he said, every single industry, every single job that you can have somehow figuring out micro credentials so that you can figure out your proficiency and your aptitude at that one single task or in that job that has the 7 tasks involved.

Hannah Maruyama [00:22:48]:

It's almost like it needs to be you know, I've and and you and I talk about this at length, and I think this this is a solution. It it have to be something open source. It would have to be something right. It would have to be something that was accessible to everybody so that if you those proficiencies, if you are able to study and teach yourself to the point where you are able to pass these benchmarks that you're able to test into and get whatever credential that is. And this is something too that people always think that colleges are out for the greater good. Like, they're out for the common man. They're out for the commonwealth for the people. They're If they were, then they would allow people to open source. They would allow people to take examinations. They would allow people to test into programs and do a la carte classes, but they do not do that. Why? they're actually out for the money. If they were actually out for the common good, they would do something like Michael Sailor has done. Right? He has his sailor what is it called again? Hope, I think. Yeah. But it's Sailor University Or Sailor Academy or or whatever, where you can a la carte take things that you were interested in and receive a certificate that shows that you've completed that class. And that is all you need because if you're going to learn this one specific thing to a college because that is the place where the higher learning is contained, you can go and you can get this one specific thing. whoever figures out how to open source a standard that employers can use to measure people based on their skill stack for micro credentialing,

Ryan Maruyama [00:24:01]:

that's That's the answer. That's it. Complicated, though. Very complicated. And then you would also have to it couldn't be one governing body for everything because that doesn't make any sense. How are the videographers gonna know anything about orthopedics? How are the orthopedists supposed to know anything about accounting? It has to be by industry by the governing body of that industry. And I use governing body in air quotes because I think if you establish a governing body of that, then you just have tyranny just like how we have tyranny right now in the ex educational. And once again, I'm using education in air quotes here because college does not equal education, but their marketing system has been so good that People think it is. Exactly. And I know that people think it it is. You know that people think it is. because people literally tell us that literally every single day in the YouTube comments. So I don't know what the answer is. But that seems much closer to the solution than what is going on right now. What we have now is unfeasible. it was a really eye opening conversation for me because this is somebody who's put a lot of thought into it because for the total value of $3000, he could have had all of this knowledge and all of this education. He could have literally tested to this thing he did do that. But instead, he was

Hannah Maruyama [00:25:20]:

charged $250.

Ryan Maruyama [00:25:23]:

So it's somebody that has a very large vested interest, at least to think about these things. And hopefully in the future have these things solved,

Hannah Maruyama [00:25:31]:

especially that profession. Yeah. Especially yeah. The the that's that's quickly coming to a head. There there's gonna be a reckoning with with the doctors in the medical profession specifically, but PAs, nurse anesthetists, doctors. They're gonna have to figure out what to do about that because it's it's out of control. because they know they can charge them. They know they can charge them, and they know they'll pay it because they have to in order to obtain licensure.

Ryan Maruyama [00:25:50]:

Yep. Yep. Absolutely.

Hannah Maruyama [00:25:52]:

My last topic our last topic is Gen Z once back into the office, these crazies. But according to the a team, which is a future of work resource organization, not the elite group of outlaw mercenaries headed by

Ryan Maruyama [00:26:07]:

Mister T. Well, I wasn't headed by Mister T.

Hannah Maruyama [00:26:10]:

It was headed by I don't know. Okay. Well, if you're gonna call me out, you gotta know. In the movie,

Ryan Maruyama [00:26:17]:

it was Liam Nissan.

Hannah Maruyama [00:26:19]:

But I don't know the actual -- Oh, the character's name? Yeah. I don't know the TV show. Oh, okay. I'm gonna go with Mister T. He's the only character that matters of that of that group anyway. So it's fine. A future of worker resource organization. Only 7% of Gen Z is looking for remote work. What? in the world. These people are crazy. Which one is Gen Z? Gen Z, they are ninety six and older. I think it stops at they're 96 to, I believe, 2006. So young people. Youngins. Got it. They want community. They want to be around people, and they want to meet new people. This actually lines up. We have we have a wide range of people in our protein crash course, and we have had some Youngins, some seventeen, eighteen year olds, and they do want to work in an office. That is their goal. It's very interesting. My proposal is that we should let all of the middle of the young slash middle aged people. That'll be us. We're young middle aged. Okay? We should let them all work from home And then the empty the empty nesters who are lonely and the gen z years can all go back into the office. Hybrid if they want. I think that that sounds like a plan. We should all be able to agree on that. because there's a lot of hate on remote work right now. I don't know if I don't know if there's a memo that was sent out, but I've been seeing all of these talking heads talking about how bad and terrible remote work is. And I feel like it's just a general resistance to the changing of work. And most of the people who are resisting it are, like, over the age of fifty, they're all men, and they're all over the age of fifty. Like, oh, remote work does work, blah blah blah blah blah. But really, I think what it is is they just don't like the fact that work looks different now than it did when -- they started working, and it doesn't fit into their very narrow definition of work. Just a lot of a lot of different talking heads that have been that have been speaking about this in the recent weeks. And I feel like what they just don't understand is they don't understand that most people are are going to be contractors in the next 20 years. Everything is moving that direction because of the way that our economy is -- working and how high risk it is to employ people. And because of that, the market's natural response is contract work. And when you have contract you cannot make them work in a certain way. Not only can you not make them work in a certain way, but if you want access to a wide pool of contract workers especially for tech jobs, You have to let them work remotely because they're not gonna come into an office, and you're not gonna be able to get them to move to a high cost of living area if they live in a low cost of living in order to do work, which is the trend. Most people who are millennials or older, that would be us, are moving out of cities. They're moving away from the cities. Gen Ziers are moving in because that's kids do. Right? They go to the big city, and they wanna experience that. But for everybody else, if you wanna get people that have work experience, you're gonna have to allow them to work remotely. And people may disagree with me. A lot of very powerful talking heads, as I said, all men over the age of fifty that run big companies disagree with me. but I think that that is what I see happening, and I think it's gonna be interesting to see how this pans out. Yeah. So a couple of things there.

Ryan Maruyama [00:29:11]:

You can require contractors come in the office. Absolutely. like Facebook, Google, there's,

Hannah Maruyama [00:29:16]:

like, a lot of their workforce status contractors that all go to the campus. So, yes, you can. That's erroneous. That's just wrong. Okay. I will say, though, those are I'm more making a generalization about smaller, not necessarily companies. Same companies aren't the only people when people are worried about tech companies, they're always worried about these big tech companies. But I'm talking about most of the tech jobs. The vast majority of those jobs are not all gonna be for fan companies. And, no, I think a lot of people are not gonna require people to come into an office. But I'm saying you can.

Ryan Maruyama [00:29:43]:

You said that you said that you the scope of your statement was that you can't have contractors. You can't make contractors. come into the office, which is just erroneous. You absolutely can. Yeah.

Hannah Maruyama [00:29:56]:

Which begs the question on the contractor. So if you can make them do that. But, anyway, you know, that's a whole other thing.

Ryan Maruyama [00:30:01]:

Yeah. You absolutely can. I mean, yes. Maybe by definition, they're no longer contractors. It's been a long time since I've read the definition or I was responsible at my old job of the contractors that we did have on the payroll because I ran payroll being, like, Is this person still within the scope of a contractor? As their responsibilities increase, I constantly had to check. to make sure that we were in compliance on that. We ran a very small team, which is why I did payroll, and that's kind of like HR stuff too. So you know, obviously, we ran a small team. So it's been a while since I've looked on it. But, yes, you can require them to come into the office. Whether or not it's legal, I have no idea, but you definitely can. As far as Gen Z o only 7%, that seems off to me. Once again, I have no idea. I'm just some idiot in front of a mic. Well, the highest number I saw was 27%.

Hannah Maruyama [00:30:59]:

So there's a wide range here, but it Does seem like it's not very many of them. You'd think that most of them would want that, but apparently that's not just not the case. If that is true, it does at

Ryan Maruyama [00:31:10]:

least makes sense when you're trying to connect the dots and why is that? 1, they're a lot younger. A lot of them probably want to be mentored into their position. And a great way to do that is by being in the office surrounded by people that are trying to accomplish goals and trying to work together. But, yeah, the reality is that remote work is just going to become more and more prevalent. Honestly,

Hannah Maruyama [00:31:39]:

I think it's a good thing. Yeah. That's kinda what I'm talking about. That's what I'm getting at here, is that humans are going to do less work. I feel like that is where all of these talking heads are coming from. They go, oh, people are working on something like, yeah. That's that's what technology does. Well, I'm not I'm not talking about working less, and

Ryan Maruyama [00:31:56]:

I'm not saying that because you work remotely, you then work less. I'm not sure what that means. If you're talking about hours a day in your seat with your fingers on the keyboards, just doing whatever, then okay. If you are working from a home, yes. You are probably working, and I'm using that in quotes. less. But the only types of jobs where that should matter are customer service roles where you are literally in charge of banging tickets out. That's all you do. Support tickets, support tickets, support tickets. When you're away from your desk, You are not handling the support tickets. And I'm talking about very low level customer support. The reason why very low customer support is because all you have to do with a very low level, and I'm not saying in a value that if you do these roles, it's low value. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying that it's very general. Like, here, I forgot my password. Can you reset it? Those types of those types of roles. because there ain't nothing to do but to do it. Yes. It's this literally active. It's literally active work. Whereas higher level customer support roles, if you actually have to think about a problem, it's very complex. You're an account executive or you're account manager for something like that, then maybe some time away from it where it's a very complex problem, that's good. That's so I'm talking about those types of fingers on keyboard's jobs. If that is your definition of work, then yes. they are going to be working less at their house or in Italy or whatever, you know, sitting in a coffee shop you know, pretending to do work. Yes. You're gonna work less. What I was talking about is output per hour spent doing work. I'm talking about actually getting work done. If you are able to create a space where you can work from home or work remotely where you can be just as effective in a shorter amount of time. Hey. Who cares? You're getting your work done. The company's paying you. Everybody wins. If you can bring some of that optimization

Hannah Maruyama [00:34:18]:

to things out side of the scope of your role as well. If that's needed, that'd be great. Yeah. I agree. And I think they're also overlooking some things too that really matter which is the commute and the time spent away from one's home. That is something that work demands of you, but you were not compensated for. And there's a ton of people that were commuting insane distances in order to do work. And the people who do that do not have high life satisfaction. They're at high risk for divorce They're at high risk for a lot of other problems because they are so stressed out by the fact that they are never around their families because they have to drive and be far away from their families in order to actually get work done. And now there are a lot of people whose jobs they are able to do from home. And now they do not have to have this completely unnecessary commute that just burns their life away. And that I feel pretty strongly about too. Yeah. Definitely. Definitely.

Ryan Maruyama [00:35:06]:

I think it's interesting that the Gen Z wants to go back into the office. Like I said, if you think about it, if that's true, the rationalization behind it makes sense. But honestly, I thought that they would have not wanted to go into the office. That seems like -- Surprise me. Yeah. Exactly. That's very surprising

Hannah Maruyama [00:35:22]:

to to hear. Awesome. Yeah. Made different strokes for different Maybe this is gonna end up working out. Maybe the Gen Zs get into the office. And then by the time it's their turn to leave the office and they realize it's not all it's cracked up to be. The next round will be ready, and they'll wanna go into the office Yeah. Definitely.

Ryan Maruyama [00:35:37]:

And that's pretty much it for this week, guys. And if you haven't already, connect with us on LinkedIn. I'm Ryan Maruyama at LinkedIn. She's hanamaryama on LinkedIn. I will put links to everything that we've talked about in the show notes, degreefree.co

Hannah Maruyama [00:35:51]:

forward slash podcast. And if you want more degree free, go on over to degree free.c0forward/newsletter and sign up for a free weekly newsletter delivered to your inbox once a week. Yep. And that's pretty much it for this week, guys. Oh,