TLDR: Privilege sounds like “You work too much” because the majority of ordinary people work to make ends meet, regardless of balance. Outside of the—highly privileged—tech bubble, people live very different lives, and it’s hard to change when making the switch. There are hard-wired habits related to one’s own life values.

In the last couple of years I have had a massive amount of fortune. My life did change upside down, and in very tangible ways. Among many things—4 apartments, 3 countries, 3 languages—change also meant working from insanely nice offices, surrounded by amazing people doing what I love. I have lived the material change of being welcomed in fancy offices as quite a shift from dusty break-rooms back in Rome, and from using my employee discount to pay for every coffee while at Eataly. Across the many significant changes in the recent years, this part of moving into the tech industry is perhaps the one I have noted the most. Still, I am extremely lucky to have maintained close contact with people reminding me these fancy city views, free lunches, and even complimentary coffee are not the norm, but the exception.

The tech industry has felt like a sort of safe haven, where words like culture, resting and balance seem to have meaning, which is increasingly rare in today’s society, and especially in countries where ordinary people are not becoming richer (France’s GDP per capita is declining, Italy’s has been stagnating since I can remember). In this stagnating—if not declining—context, this world of balancing out work and personal life feels extremely out of touch. I really can’t help it but to feel very few know the overwhelming majority of ordinary people carries out very, very different lives. For starters, most people—one might even say, virtually everyone—put in just about all they have to make ends meet—which is an increasingly challenging objective in most countries in Europe. More than anything else, the challenge of us Europeans I believe is to change that.

Ordinary people do have ordinary jobs. People who work in the service industry, blue-collar workers, and really anyone working a job easy to explain to their grandparents spend increasingly long hours working, resorting to overtime to make more than “barely enough”, when they don’t have second jobs altogether. This is the reality most people face day-to-day. This is the reality the people I looked up to growing up and I come from: working hard through life. For these people—people like me—labour is a value, something I have witnessed since a very young age in my own family. More than anyone else, my grandfather taught me that, waking up everyday at 2am well into his 70s, to go to work. I have always known growing up I was lucky enough to see first hand what it means to be working as much as one needs to, not as much as one likes.

For a very long time, I thought this was just what all people do. Then, I got lucky, very lucky. I can still remember my first day on the job in a fancy office in downtown Milan. I struggled for minutes, trying to figure out how to pour water from what I thought were be old-good bottles. Eventually, I succeeded, and quickly became familiar with the feeling I have known the best in the last two years: unnecessary pompousness. For a very brief amount of time, I thought everyone would feel exactly the same. At the end of the day, that was a bottle, and over-designing a bottle is only a bad idea. To me, it was just impossible anyone else would feel any different. Then, off-guard and with my great surprise, I found out that was not the case. Instead, that tasteful pretentiousness felt extremely familiar to the very, very loud minority of people among which I now live and work since two years. This blogpost is about Them.

First in gorgeous Boggi suits, and then wearing their new startup uniform (those “On” sneakers), I met true embodiments of just how amazing young-adulthood is. I spent great time surrounded by living proofs the “age of responsibility” can be much more than that, much more than being confronted with the pleasure and duty of independence. In all honesty, I should add I am not even entirely sure most of these people are faced with responsabilities at all. To a very large extent, I would argue their passion for summer houses in Sardegna, obsessive running club attendance, and excellent knowledge of Asia makes up for more than necessary responsibilities. While it’s hard to balance work with just as-important hobbies and passions, I am constantly reminded of how they manage nonetheless.

If you are one of them, good for you (I mean it). If not, this blogpost is directed to you: someone normal, perhaps spending time in parts of society feeling totally unnormal. On this side, we may be sharing this familiar feeling of an impossible and unfair balance between what got us here, and life in general. By now, I think I have had it a million times: once we are done discussing plans for whatever long weekend might be coming up, or the resolve to train for the next marathon (there is always a marathon these days), They start lecturing crowds about the importance of balance. Sometimes, I am lucky enough to receive advice on the importance of working less, to improve on “work-life balance”—something I feel is foreign to me, and to other millions of ordinary people right here, in Europe.

For the record, I’m a 25yo Italian expat in France as I write this, and I deeply enjoy and find fulfillment in my work. If my long-term friends and family lived in the same city, I’d work less. I’ve come a long way from how poorly I once balanced labor with other values like family and health. For instance, in 2018, I purposefully skipped Christmas with family and New Year’s with friends to earn €150 per shift with overtime—something I’d weigh differently today, especially as my grandparents age. Health-wise, I now exercise regularly, quit smoking five years ago, and eat as healthily as I can. Between 2018 and 2021, I slept less than five hours a night—again, something I’d approach differently today.

That is to say my values have changed drastically over the last few years, and that labour is not as important as it once was. Still, I am not the point: the point is the advice of “working less” is wrong, unfit for those of us who have known what a normal life in today’s economy looks like. While I am certain on virtually every occasion this is a good-hearted advice, in my experience it still comes from a privileged position, simply unaware of the sacrifices ordinary people need to make to match their ambitions—simply out of touch.

Playing devils advocate—to work less is terrific advice for those whose ambitions are normal sized, or feeling safe. I just argue this advice is not general enough, and serves the cause I care about the most—social mobility—horribly. In my experience, those who can’t count on personal connections, social capital, financial resources, or really anything besides getting luck with a first “yes”, tend to make it by maximizing their exposure to luck while on their quest to see their ambitions and aspirations through. By its very definition, getting lucky typically requires time, commitment, and lots of personal investment—changing countries, saying many goodbyes, often even losing connections to places and people one once felt close to. In practice, that also mean pushing harder—not working smarter, but working longer—not because the potential upsides become better—–they don’t—–but because the negative odds do.

Someone I really admire once said “your environment is not diverse if everyone comes from the same School”, and I agree. Surrounded by people who seemed to all have gone through the same path in life, I found upper society’s most shameless sin to be thinking the world is just one way. For what is worth it, this is a piece sharing the lesson I have learned: not listen, and continue seeking the true fulfillment one can carve out of labour. With time and patience, luck will come. At some point, the real world will feel just as distant as it feels to Them—hopefully you (or your kids, if that takes too long) will join a running club at that point.

Just promise yourself you’ll never wear “On” though.