(2023-03-06) Playing A Career Game You Actually Want To Win

Simone Stolzoff: Playing a Career Game You Actually Want to Win. After a half-decade of working in tech marketing, I grew disillusioned by the corporate presentations and ad campaigns. I wanted to be a real writer. So I decided to pursue a degree to legitimize my intention.

I sought the advice of a mentor, the author Robin Sloan: Robin asked me a question that cut through the noise: “If you could go, but you couldn’t tell anyone that you went, would you still do it?”

I decided to go back to school, and I’m glad that I did. Robin helped me recognize that I was interested in taking classes and working on my craft, not just having a credential

I’m about to publish a book about work culture in America

met several people who achieved nearly every goal set out for them, only to realize they were winning a game they didn’t enjoy playing. How do so many of us find ourselves in this position, climbing ladders we don’t truly want to be on?

C. Thi Nguyen, a philosopher and game design researcher at the University of Utah, has some answers. Nguyen coined the term “value capture,” a phenomenon that I came to see all around me after I learned about it. Here’s how it works.

Video games offer what Nguyen calls “a seductive level of value clarity.”

The games we play with our working hours also come with their own values and metrics that matter

These metrics are seductive because of their simplicity.

that clarity trumps your subtler values.” In other words, it is easier to adopt the values of the game than to determine your own. That’s value capture.

There are countless examples of value capture in daily life.

Naturally, maximizing your steps or citations or retweets is good for the platforms on which these status games are played. (cargo cult)

The higher-education rankings in U.S. News & World Report exemplify value capture at an institutional level.

Before U.S. News, standardized rankings for law schools didn’t exist. Law schools each had their own missions and areas of expertise: one school emphasized legal theory, while another prioritized corporate litigation. In order to pick a school, prospective students would determine what mattered to them, and then choose a school to fit their unique tastes. The U.S. News rankings changed that. (positioning)

Schools largely did away with their varied specializations and missions in order to position themselves in a way that might help them rise in the rankings

as students and institutions internalized the rankings as the standard, they no longer had to grapple with what they themselves valued in a school.

Nguyen offers an alternative to value capture—“value self-determination”—that essentially means figuring out what you care about. Studies show that when we have a clearer sense of what we value, we make more decisive decisions and are more resilient in the face of adversity.