Why Side Hustles And Portfolio Careers Are The Future Of Work

During my time at Levi’s, we underwent a critical evolution in how we thought about our customer. Instead of talking about “share of closet” (how many pairs of pants does someone own, and how many of them are Levi’s) we began to talk about “share of wallet.” The paradigm shift was recognizing that to engage current and future customers we weren’t just competing with physical purchases, but with all their discretionary spending. Customers today equate going for dinner, or purchasing concert tickets, with a new pair of pants or shoes. We had to reorient our entire marketing engine to make our jeans matter as much as any other spending choice available to our customers.

Winning The War For Talent

When I arrived at Nike
Nike
, I was tasked with rebuilding the global recruiting engine in the aftermath of the pandemic. Doing so required a significant investment of resources, and therefore the first heavy lift was getting the internal buy-in to approve the spend. To land the message with the executives I needed to convince I borrowed the “share of wallet” analogy and adapted it to the challenge we were facing in the talent market. I coined the term “share of economic activity” to explain to Nike leadership the battle we had to win:

Workers today have significantly more choice than even five years ago on how they can be economically active. The rise of the gig and creator economies has enabled folks to make money on their own terms – where and when they choose. Winning the war for talent today doesn’t just mean beating your direct competitive set, it means creating an offering that is enticing enough to convince folks to spend time working for you instead of working for themselves.

The Past, Present And Future Of Work

As Amy Wang notes in the New York Times
New York Times
, “In today’s unpredictable financial landscape, 9-to-5s and decades-long careers have become bad investments. Old-school benefits like pensions and job security are a thing of the past, and wages aren’t even keeping up with the galloping pace of inflation.”

The rise of popular financial literacy movements like FIRE (financial independence, retire early) and our changing relationship to work in the post-pandemic era are having a transformational effect on the workforce. With close to 1 million followers across LinkedIn and his other social platforms, Zach Wilson has become something over a poster child for the new world of work: he openly shares his journey from making $600,000 as a software engineer at Airbnb to making more than $1million in his first year in the creator economy.

New research from LinkedIn sharply underscores the shifting priorities of the different generations in the workforce, with Gen Z having significantly different goals than the Baby Boomers that are still economically active:

“We know that Gen Z really values learning and development opportunities. If you’re not investing in their growth, you’re not going to be able to hold onto them. They will prioritize their own career development over any long-term commitment to an organization,” says Nicky Vallelly of Google Deepmind

The Ascendance Of Side Hustles

We’ve already reached the point where the asymmetries in the employment relationship have become so imbalanced that it’s effectively viewed as a breach of contract by some parts of the workforce. High profile and highly publicized layoffs have reverberated through, and been amplified by, social media giving rise to acceptance of the notion that “all work is temporary.”

Side hustles are transitioning from being monetized hobbies to significant sources of income, and in many cases end up eclipsing workers’ primary income source. With more and more workers creating personal financial security through the creator and gig economies, it’s easy to see a future where the most agile workers have the ability to pick and choose engagements as they see fit.

I predict a reversal in the talent market: for the longest time companies have hired for pedigree (poaching brand marketers from PepsiCo
PepsiCo
or financial analysts from Goldman Sachs
Goldman Sachs
) in the future it will be the opposite. Talent will choose where to work based on whether it will burnish their marketability and improve their skills. “I’m joining xx for six months because they let you work across the whole code base” will increasingly become the type of decision the most in-demand workers will be able to make.

To succeed in this new paradigm businesses are going to have to completely rethink the employment relationship and foster a culture that supports short term and transitory “tours of duty.” A critical unlock will be investing in and carefully curating their alumni networks, and most importantly celebrating “boomerang” hires. If you can accept that talent is going to walk in and out the door, the smart move is to find a way to ensure they come back at some point in the future, with even more skills to help drive your business forward.