On Work: Money, Meaning, Identity (Atlantic Editions)

inverting reality sometimes helps show that even the most familiar institutions are also inventions.

every Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn profile is conspicuously marked with the metrics of accomplishment—followers, friends, viewers, retweets—that inject all communication with the features of competition.

To be a workist is to worship a god with firing power.

Others spoke about the fundamental need to witness the outcome of one’s work, which was satisfied more deeply by craftsmanship than by other jobs they’d held.

How will people discover their talents, or the rewards that come from expertise, if they don’t see much incentive to develop either?