What Is a Job

  

All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.

---- Henry David Thoreau

 

Three attributes of a job

A job is a regular activity that you can earn money from after you do it. Do it, then you get paid.

You may be a civil servant. Every day you go to the office, serve the people, and monthly your salary will be credited to your bank account. Normally you will have a steady income, unless the government gets bankrupt, which is rare.

You may be a salesperson, e.g. real estate agent. You find your customers, either someone who wants to buy a house, or someone who wants to sell their house. You help them complete the deal, then you get the commission. The more deals you process, the more you earn.

You may be self-employed, e.g. a home baker. You bake cakes at home, and sell them to friends, first-time customers, or shops. The more cakes you make and sell out, the more you earn.

Therefore, we know there are three attributes for a job from these examples:

●    Activity: something that is to be done, either a service (helping to sell a house or buy a house) or a product (quality cakes to sell)

●     Action: you do it by spending your time and effort 

●     Reward: then you receive something in return for your efforts (normally in the form of money) 

If you are employed, you already understand the above 3 attributes of your job. Here let us see if the job concept can be widely applied to your daily activities.

Is daydreaming a job

You daydream for 30 minutes, you spend 30 minutes of your life on the daydream, are you doing a job? Depends on who you are.

If you are Bill Gates, not only daydreaming, dreaming while you sleep is also equal to working. For people like him, everything he does means something. Ideas may come to him whenever and wherever, regardless if he is sleeping, reading, eating, or playing. When he does come up with something new, he has the means to make his ideas into reality.

However, for us common people on the street, we are rarely able to realize our daydreams. You can daydream every day, but our daydreams stay as they are. The next day, the next year, we remain the same nobodies – daydreaming for us is hence not a job. As long as we don’t take action, our daydreams will never come true and there will be no rewards to reap from them.

Nevertheless, this is not saying that there are absolutely no benefits to daydreaming. Daydreaming can be good for your health. You can daydream to calm yourself down, to get temporary relief from stress. For example, meditation or mindfulness. During the course, you know exactly what meditation or mindfulness is (activity), and you do the meditation or mindfulness (action), then you will feel refreshed or happy after that (reward).

What if I take action after daydreaming?

Then it could be different. If your dream has a clear goal, it is an activity. If you start to do it, it is an action. You can see now, it has the two attributes of a job.

Then how about the third attribute: the reward? Is it necessary? Yes, it is. That is the consequence of your action and your action is always followed by a consequence.

Good job, normal job, and bad job

Very often, you will hear people say, "You have done a good job, man!", or "That's a bad job!” That is, in daily life, whatever you do can fit into the concept of "job". Life is made up of jobs.

In the morning when you wake up, you begin your daily life. And your daily jobs are starting. Everything you do is a job. Brushing your teeth makes you fully awake in the morning; physical exercise builds up your body; eating food re-energizes you. You will then take transport to the office, start working for the company, and as a result, the company will pay you every month...

How much reward you receive from the action will define if it is a good job. When the reward is good and even exceeds people's expectations, that is a good job. On the other hand, when something is below people's expectations, that is a bad job.

You bought a stock yesterday, today the price surges up, and you make a great deal of money, you will feel happy -- you have done a "good job".

When you cook a seldom eaten and delicious meal, your family will say "good job" to you. 

When you prepare milk and bread for breakfast, your family sits together to consume the food, it is a "normal job", i.e., an everyday routine procedure.

However, when you fry eggs but overcook them, you do a "bad job". 

This job

That being said, you may ask, "Is this the job you want to explain to us in your series?" Now let's look at it seriously. 

Normally when people talk about a job, they are referring to an employment job. An employment job is a job in a narrower sense – a more specific job:

 

●       Activity: It is assigned by employers, normally it is a routine procedure, but may change from time to time depending on the employers. The employer may give the employees different tasks with different schedules

●       Action: The employee is required to carry out the task in the office provided by the employer, and with the necessary tools available, within due time

●   Reward: The employer will pay salary at a fixed duration, monthly payment is prevalent in most countries for most of the employees 

Employers and employees

Monkeys are social animals; a group of monkeys is led by a king, who rules the family. This can be seen as an ancient prehistoric human group. 

With the development of human history, different social systems have evolved over the centuries; however, the original rule remains the same: some people work for some other people. In the modern world, it is called "employment", which includes the employers who register a company and give the jobs, and the employees who take the jobs and work for the company. We call the employee staff.

There are different kinds of staff:

●    Contract staff: works for the company for a certain duration as specified in the contract with the company, e.g. one year

●       Permanent staff: works for the company with permanent duration as specified in the contract with the company

●    Outsource staff: works for the company for a certain duration as specified in the contract with the agency (not with the company)

The freelancer is a special contract staff –they sign a contract with the company for a particular task (e.g. to provide a working APP to trace the staff's body temperature daily for a month), they do not have to report to the company every day.

In any case, nowadays every employment job is contract-based. When you sign a contract with the company, make sure you understand all the clauses listed in the contract. 

  

Who is a boss

Human society has a hierarchical structure: the higher-ups generally control those at the lower levels. These higher-ups may also be more commonly termed "bosses". Therefore, the boss is a relative concept. You are a programmer, your manager is your boss; for your manager, his supervisor is his boss. In addition, your boss's boss is still your boss :)

For the purpose of simplification, we will use “employer” and “boss” to mean the same thing in this series.