Millennials Are Obsessed With Side Hustles Because 'They're All' They've Got (qz.com)

Quartz ran an article over the weekend which captures a growing trend among millennials: to have a side job -- or as many of them call it, the "side-hustle." One of the reasons that people need this other gig is obviously money, but there are other factors at play as well. From the article: The side hustle offers something worth much more than money: A hedge against feeling stuck and dull and cheated by life. This psychological benefit is the real reason for the Millennial obsession, I'd argue, and why you might want to consider finding your own side hustle, no matter how old you are. Now one might say that this "side-hustle" is not a new phenomenon at all. People have since forever have had multiple jobs to make the ends meet. But the author argues that in the post 2008-crisis, we have witnessed a whole generation where one gig would simply not cut it all for many. The article adds: Previous generations have also coped with such semi-tragedy; probably every human ever has been a sort of actor-waiter at some point. In any case, those of us who are employed generally understand ourselves to be lucky. Working as a benefits administrator, an ad-sales rep or even a Facebook engineer might not be the dream job. But your side hustle can keep you from feeling pigeonholed. It's the distraction from your disappointment, a bridge between crass realities and your compelling inner life. In the best-case scenario, your side hustle can be like a lottery ticket, offering the possibility -- however remote -- that you just might hit the jackpot and discover that holy grail of gigs. The one that perfectly blends money and love. The one that's coming along any day now.

Comments

Free time

[StikyPad]

Sorry, my free time is worth more to me than a second job.

Re:Free time

[magarity]

Everybody needs a hobby, is what this article boils down to. For the people in question, part time job is hobby.

Re:Free time

[sinij]

Sorry, my free time is worth more to me than a second job.

When you are unable to afford food, housing, and defaulting on your student loans you quite likely will reconsider this stance.

Re:Free time

[Captain Scurvy]

Everybody needs a hobby, is what this article boils down to. For the people in question, part time job is hobby.

I would agree with this, but phrase it as: "Millennials try to turn their hobbies into part-time jobs." I think part of this trend has to do with the desire to eventually turn a "side-gig" into a job that can offer full financial support, and the Internet has made it possible for a lot of people to at least make a fair shot at doing that.

Re:Free time

[AmiMoJo]

Fuck you.

For decades they have been telling kids to work hard and achieve all they can. To get a good job you need a degree, they said. And she enough, all the good jobs list a degree as a requirement.

Degrees used to be free of course, or at least quite cheap. And there were good jobs that paid the debt off.

Millennials made the decision to get an education based on the advice they had at the time. They were 18, younger even. And it worked out well for their parents.

But oh, sorry, we broke the economy and well, someone's gotta pay... And it won't be us, we've got ours.

Re:Free time

[AthanasiusKircher]

I think part of this trend has to do with the desire to eventually turn a "side-gig" into a job that can offer full financial support, and the Internet has made it possible for a lot of people to at least make a fair shot at doing that.

I really don't think "the Internet" has a lot to do with this, nor do I think it's a "trend." Everybody acts like entrepreneurship was invented in the past couple decades. But how do you think people "got ahead" in previous centuries? How do you think we had a "rise of the middle class" that moved us out of the dark ages of feudalism, then led the charge for the Industrial Revolution, etc.?

A lot of those people were folks with ideas about what they'd prefer to do, and they kept working at a day job to make money to fund what might start as a "hobby" but then lead to a new business or a new invention or whatever. By the 20th century, big business had grown to the point that more people were employed in large corporations, so this idea of "hobbies" or "side jobs" leading to lead to bettering your life shifted instead to "night school" and credentialing/formal study on the side to convince an employer that you're qualified for something better.

The only thing the internet has done is "disrupt" some large corporations and their control in certain sectors, which perhaps makes it a little more likely for an individual to take the "hobby" route instead of the "night school" route again. But let's not kid ourselves -- the number of such people who eventually convert some online hobby to dayjob may be larger than similar entrepreneurs of the past couple generations, but as a percentage of people who dream of doing so... it's vanishingly small.

Re:Free time

[phantomfive]

I really don't want to give into Millennial stereotypes (which I think are often inaccurate), but TFA is just BEGGING for it.

Don't. Create a new category like "self-entitled" or "dumb as a brick" (which fits most people with a $200 a month phone bill). These are traits that cut across generations.

aka a "side job"

[phorm]

These have been around for awhile. Usually it's a change to
a) Get a little extra cash
b) Do something you enjoy a bit more than your day-job
c) Build skill/experience/clientele

It's not a bad thing to have, especially in your "day job" goes south. I know some people whose side-jobs became a fledgling business and grew from there.

Also, hustle?

[phorm]

I'll add to my comment that I've *NEVER* heard this called a hustle, and it seems like a terrible term to use because classically "hustle" has been a term for a scam, con, or some other way of shady way of making cash.

Re:Also, hustle?

[rgbscan]

Trust me, driving for Uber is indeed a scam. "Hustle" definitely applies, it's just the driver getting scammed, not doing the scamming :-) But it's better than selling Herbalife...

Re:Also, hustle?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now jobs have employment contracts with anti-moonlighting clauses. Seems the 1%ers want to hire me for 16 hours/week and demand that I make myself available to them 24/7 on my own dime, then tell me I'm a lazy good for nothing bum for not breaking their contract and getting a second job to make ends meet. Or I break the contract and get a second job, then they call me at my other job and tell me I have 30 minutes to drop everything and present myself to them because of an emergency "rush" or don't bother showing up for my shift.

Music

[Sir_Eptishous]

I've been playing in bands longer than I've been working in tech.
I do it for the love of music, but the extra cash doesn't hurt either.

I'm not buying it

[rsilvergun]

These aren't hobbies. These are folks working second and third jobs because their day job doesn't pay enough for rent + food + car. I don't see a lot of actor-waiters, I see a lot of folks doing Uber on the weekend to make rent.

Re:I'm not buying it

[PRMan]

rent + food + car + STUDENT LOANS

It's also instability

[damn_registrars]

Few people - including those of us too old to be millenials - have truly stable employment any more. Long ago we signed away our rights to contest being fired or laid off. If one job pulls in enough money to keep you afloat, you need the second in order to put money away for when the first one is no longer there.

Re:It's also instability

[PeeAitchPee]

Long ago we signed away our rights to contest being fired or laid off.

You can thank people like the Millennial I fired for sleeping on the job. Or the other one I fired for (repeatedly) feeling like he didn't need to show up for his shift. Why should an employer have to waste time and money going through some bullshit appeals process for dead weight like these two clowns?

Re:"Millennials"

[chipschap]

Old people are annoyed by what young people do.

On the contrary, I'm definitely "old" by most definitions and I feel for young people. They have it harder than I did in so many ways. You are only young once, and not for long; you deserve to enjoy it.

Depressing...

[MitchDev]

So let's see, 8 hours to sleep at night, 8 hours for your main job, travel time to and from job, less than 8 hours left in the day for living, and you want to fill that with more work beyond the stuff you need to do like cook and feed yourself/family, taking care of your home/apartment, etc?

Fuck that, where's that extinction-event asteroid when we need it?

I though all these computers and automation was supposed to make us need to work less...

Re:Depressing...

[Anonymous Coward]

I though all these computers and automation was supposed to make us need to work less...

Yeah, but the people who own shares in the corporations realized that instead of letting the people creating all that productivity benefit from it, they could funnel that value to themselves and make even *more* money for doing nothing. Then, it occurred to them that people's productivity had become *so* high that even if they made employees work just a few hours a week more, in any reasonably large corporation that would result in significantly *more* money in their pockets, for which, again, they'd have to do absolutely nothing! What could be better?

Of course too much is never enough, so that became an upward spiral. Then add in minor upgrades like stagnating wages vs. inflation and several rounds of tax breaks for the wealthy, and you arrive where we are now: trying to convince people that having multiple jobs to have the standard of living society tells us is "normal" is also normal.

It will all cave in at some point; you can only take such activity so far before it all collapses. Of course, as with most of human history, the people who cause the collapse will find a way to benefit from it while the rest get screwed, but things should be better for a little while after that until the cycle ramps up again.

You can't blame them.

[Anonymous Coward]

As opposed to the older generations, up front they actually know what they are getting into and need to prepare for a life where you can't take anything for granted and you need to fight tooth and nail to keep what you have. So I'm not surprised by the whole multiple job thing increasing.

Feel bad for us old fucks, we bought into the American Dream because that's what our parents told us to do. Go to college, get a job somewhere for 30 years, buy a house, have some kids etc. But then we found out the hard way that even when you do the right thing your job loyalty means nothing. Your house can be taken away in a minute flat and you can lose a huge amount your retirement savings over the whims of greedy idiots on Wall St. Oh and don't have a serious medical issue or you will lose job/house/saving all in one.

So why I can't promise an easy life for the younger generations, at least you know up front the American Dream is a total lie and to change your thinking accordingly. Newsflash right?

Mind you I'm talking about the Middle class here. The "Lower" class has always been fucked and always will be. Working 2-3 jobs has always been the norm.

Again as always a BIG fuck you to all the scumbag companies who pushed our jobs overseas because they had to "stay competitive" and manufacturing in the USA was too expensive. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.