Okay, so this is probably going to ruffle some feathers as it’s certainly not going to be popular amongst many employers in particular, but I’m all about delivering the truth to my readers and helping them live out their true potential in the career space. This means that you’d value things like job satisfaction in addition to the salary you take home every month.

Speaking of job satisfaction, it is indeed the J.O.B. which is coming under fire as the topic of our discussion, particularly with regards to just why most employees appear to be miserable in their jobs. In the spirit of this blog, which is about offering solutions and not just pointing the problem out, I suppose an overall look at the listing and brief discussion of all the reasons suggests a solution to any astute reader.

We are all instinctively entrepreneurs

It’s true – you’re miserable in your job because instinctively, you’re an entrepreneur. Cast your mind back to the days when the fewer people who roamed the face of this earth were all traders (bartering) and later farmers, sailors, etc. Everybody essentially worked for themselves in some way or another.

Skewed value for time and effort sold

With that said, in this day and age it’s as simple as this – the amount of time and effort you sell to your employer isn’t quite bought at its real value. You’re giving more of yourself than what you’re getting in remuneration, typically.

A generational reoccurrence of the instinctive entrepreneurial instincts

I think I’d be correct in saying that the Millennial generation is perhaps the one which collectively displays the most concentrated degree of disdain towards the dream sold as part of the 45-year working career, characterised by one vacation per year and a daily grind which covers the working hours of 9am to 5am. It goes back to our instinctive entrepreneurial instincts, but seems to be more pronounced in this particular generation.

Glass ceilings all around

There’s a good reason why the contract you signed as part of your appointment has a non-compete clause which essentially forbids you legally from going into competition with the business you’re working for. The clause usually kicks-in once you resign from your position, but also applies within the construct of not being allowed to moonlight in the same industry.

Now, the “glass-ceiling” reason why most employees are miserable in their jobs simply point to the fact that you could probably take a bigger-picture look at the operations of the company you’re working for and figure out the business model. You could probably replicate the whole operation, from generating the pay stubs to sourcing the raw materials which go into making the final product or service and yet you’re seeing all of this through a glass-ceiling because you’re simply not allowed to go down that avenue!

So the barriers to entry exist in the form of your limited access to the capital which would be needed to run the exact same operation and earn much more money while enjoying more time off, so too in the form of the laws formulated around competition.