This article was written by Ken Leaver who comes from a product & commercial background. He has founded multiple companies and held senior product positions at SEA tech companies like Lazada and Pomelo Fashion.
Now Ken runs his own agency that helps early stage startups with content and traction called End Game.
Guest Author: Ken Leaver
So this holiday I flew back to New York from our home in Bangkok for two weeks. And I needed to keep my projects running, primary of which is a media/affiliate play where we produce and publish content each day.
I was a bit concerned about whether we’d be able to put out content reliably but it has turned out to not be a problem at all.
We use around 15 different freelancers and we just kept pumping out content as if it was any other time of year.
And as we have been 100% remote with completely asynchronous work processes, I was able to move my place of working from Bangkok to New York without missing a beat.
During the holiday I met a number of folks who were fairly ‘traditional’ employees
A lot of my family and friends in New York tend to work somewhere and have traditional ‘jobs’. This generally means that they work from 9 to 5 and when they walk out the door they completely leave their job behind till the next day.
There’s no such things as checking a few emails at night.
Or taking a quick call in the evening to make sure that a critical process runs.
Or working a few hours each weekend.
They go home… and focus on their family.
This is the comfort of working at a large company that is profitable and protects them…. for now.
This way of working is in my view going the way of the dinosaur
There are fewer and fewer companies out there that can protect their profitability while allowing their work force to operate like this.
Why? Because there are more and more companies that are run by folks like me who are using cheap, flexible labor from abroad… and we don’t mind doing whatever it takes to win.
So sure their brand and technology remain a bit of a moat… but that moat is drying up as companies from places like China turn up the heat.
Will this new, aggressive breed of company hire the traditional folks who have preconceived ideas about a nice stable job that allows them to leave their job behind at 5pm each day?
Most likely not. They will hire the folks that are available at a moment’s notice, get paid for what they do, and have almost no fancy benefits.
It’s sad… but it’s true.
The hordes of folks that are willing to work like this are now armed with high quality educations, the latest tech tools, and they are banging at the gates of the castle.
The ‘Castles’ that are run the traditional way will be overrun
It’s just too competitive out there to continue hiring and maintaining employees the traditional way.
Sure, some critical and senior folks will still be employees… but outside of that I think more and more of the ‘successful’ companies will use hordes of flexible contractors.
Because they will be competing against companies with roots in Asia where the labor is cheap and ultra-flexible.
And the folks that are in America and wanna work 9-to-5 and leave their jobs in the office when they leave for the day… will be uncompetitive.
Even in America.. the young folks entering the work force for the first time will grow up the way they have in Asia for decades already. There won’t be many ‘careers’ or full-time jobs.
There will be contract work and they’ll be competing directly against folks in Asia to get it. It’s already happening in many niches on places like Upwork… but it will extend into pretty much all categories of work.
After the war is won… a new ‘contractor epoch’ will rule the land
What I mean is that this war will completely destroy the old way of working and making a living in America.
The norm will go from getting a job that pays you a stable salary to getting contract work and competing against folks from all over the world. With the majority of those countries having a much lower cost of living.
And it will evolve from just being simple jobs like you see on Upwork to being even the most senior and high-paying work. The CFO, the CTO, etc.
This is where we are heading. And in my mind it’s not a question of ‘if’ it is going to happen… rather it is only a question of ‘when’ it will happen.
I feel like I’ve been operating on the frontlines of this battle that is waging as I use contractors from places like Pakistan, Africa, and Vietnam for years now.
I understand the old world that existed before and I’ve also acclimated to this new one. And I can say without a doubt in my mind.. that this old world will be obliterated.
I will be preparing my child for the new world
Some folks of my GenX generation (born from 1965 – 1980) lucked out and they can continue to ride out the tail end of this ‘old’ world.
But they cannot ignore this seige that is happening because it impacts their kids.
It is why I will be preparing my 9-year old son straight out of the gates for this new world. In this new world you don’t rely on getting a job with a company that protects you… rather you hustle and raise your profile as an individual so that opportunities come to you.
You do this by creating content, building your network, doing side hustles, etc.
And in this world I think the ‘entrepreneur’ will be the ultimate winner. Because they are the ones who will have learned to be self-reliant.
They may not have been the ones that got straight A’s in school (as I did)… but rather they were the ones that went deep on their passions and figured out how to make money out of them.
This is the world we will be entering… in the decades to come.
The writing is on the wall… it’s only a question of whether you’re paying attention to it.
