The Brief Experiment
The office building, the 40-hour week, the career ladder, the single employer, the retirement age. These feel permanent. They feel like the way work has always been and always will be.
They are not. What we call "normal work" is a 150-year experiment. It began around 1870 and is now coming to an end. For the previous 298,000 years, humans worked in entirely different ways.
The Timeline of Human Work
What Came Before
For most of human history, work operated on principles that would seem foreign to us today.
Integrated Work (Pre-1870)
Work was not a place you went. It was something woven into daily life.
A baker in a medieval town did not commute to a bakery. The bakery was part of his home. His children learned the trade by watching and helping. His reputation spread through the community he served. His schedule followed the rhythm of demand and seasons, not a clock.
This was true across cultures and continents. The blacksmith, the weaver, the farmer, the merchant. Work happened where life happened. The separation we now consider normal did not exist.
The guild doorway was not just an entrance to a workshop. It was a threshold to both livelihood and education. Work and learning were the same activity. You did not finish school and then start working. You learned by working.
Skill and Reputation
Value in this system came from mastery, not time. A master furniture maker was not paid by the hour. He was paid for the quality of the furniture. His reputation determined his livelihood. Word spread through the community about whose work was excellent and whose was not.
This created strong incentives for craftsmanship. Cutting corners meant losing reputation. Losing reputation meant losing income. The feedback loop was direct and personal.
Adam Smith (1776)
Observed this system in "The Wealth of Nations" before it began to change. Craftsmen controlled their work and developed deep expertise, but the system could not scale. Smith saw that dividing labor could increase output dramatically. He also acknowledged the trade-off: specialization would erode intellectual engagement.
Seasonal Rhythms
Work also followed natural patterns. Farmers worked intensely during planting and harvest, then rested during winter months. Craftsmen took on more work when demand was high and slowed when it was not. The idea of working the same hours every day, every week, all year would have seemed strange.
This was not paradise. Life was hard. Many people had little choice in what work they did. Child labor was common. Women's work was often invisible and unpaid.
Yet work itself operated on principles that had endured for thousands of years: integration with life, skill-based value, reputation within community, learning through doing, and rhythms that followed natural patterns.
These principles were about to be dismantled.
The Brief Experiment
Between 1870 and 1970, a new system emerged that would redefine work entirely.
Standardized Work (1870-1970)
The Industrial Revolution changed everything. Not just how goods were made, but how humans related to work itself.
Factories created a problem that had never existed before. Hundreds of workers needed to operate interdependent machines. If one station stopped, the entire line stopped. Coordination became essential in a way it had never been when craftsmen worked independently.
The solution was standardization. Everyone working the same hours, performing the same tasks, following the same methods, in the same place. The principles that had governed work for 298,000 years were dismantled in less than a century.
Frederick Taylor
American mechanical engineer who believed work could be optimized like a machine. His time-motion studies in the 1880s broke jobs into their smallest components. Taylor decided that any task could be done in one best way. This was the origin of "best practices."
Henry Ford
Applied Taylor's principles at scale. The moving assembly line, introduced in 1913, reduced the time to build a car from over 12 hours to 93 minutes. Each person performed one task repeatedly. This was efficient, but it was also monotonous.
Max Weber
German sociologist who provided the theoretical framework for large-scale organization. His model of bureaucracy emphasized hierarchy, formal rules, specialized roles, and impersonal relationships. He described bureaucracy as an "iron cage."
Alfred Sloan
As CEO of General Motors from 1923 to 1956, created the template for the modern corporation. Divisions, hierarchies, career ladders, annual reviews. His organizational model spread throughout American industry and then globally.
The corporation offered something new: security. A worker who performed adequately could expect to remain employed for decades. Healthcare, retirement pensions, steady advancement. In exchange, the worker provided loyalty and compliance. This was the birth of the "company man."
The Inherited Assumptions
The Brief Experiment left us with beliefs we never questioned. Each emerged at a specific time to solve a specific problem.
We measure work in hours. Forty hours per week, eight hours per day, overtime, part-time, full-time. Compensation is calculated by the hour, the day, or the year. This assumption is so deep that it shapes how we think about fairness itself.
The time clock was invented in 1888. Its purpose was to verify that factory workers were present during required hours. Paying for time made sense when output was predictable. An assembly line worker produced roughly the same amount per hour as any other.
Knowledge work broke the connection between time and output. A software developer might solve a critical problem in three hours or struggle with it for three weeks. Output in knowledge work is nonlinear. Some hours produce nothing. Some minutes produce enormous value. Measuring time captures neither.
Work begins at 9:00 AM and ends at 5:00 PM. These hours are so standard that "9-to-5" has become shorthand for traditional employment itself.
The eight-hour workday emerged from labor movements in the 19th century. "Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will" was the slogan. Having everyone work the same hours enabled coordination.
Technology removed the need for synchronization. Email does not require both parties to be present. The assumption also collides with how people actually function. Some people do their best thinking early in the morning. Others come alive at night.
A career is a ladder. You start at the bottom and climb toward the top. Promotion is progress. Staying at the same level is stagnation. Moving down is failure.
Vertical success made sense in pyramidal organizations. Companies needed clear chains of command. Alfred Sloan's organizational innovations at General Motors formalized the ladder with defined grades, salary bands, and promotion criteria.
Organizations flattened. The ladder has fewer rungs now. Many people have discovered that climbing the ladder takes them further from the work they enjoy. A talented engineer gets promoted to managing engineers and spends their days in meetings instead of solving problems.
"What do you do?" We ask this question within minutes of meeting someone new. The expected answer is a job title or employer. The assumption is that work defines who you are.
The Brief Experiment merged identity with employment. The "company man" of the mid-20th century derived status, security, and self-worth from his employer. IBM or General Electric was not just where he worked. It was who he was.
Careers became fragmented. The average person now holds many jobs across multiple employers. The merger creates psychological vulnerability. If your identity is your job, losing your job is an identity crisis.
A salary from a single employer is normal. Multiple income streams are unusual, suspicious, or a sign that something is wrong.
The employment relationship that emerged in the 20th century was exclusive by design. Workers who depended entirely on one source of income were more compliant. The dependency was a feature, not a bug.
Technology enables multiple income streams without conflict. A single income source is a single point of failure. Layoffs can eliminate income overnight. Multiple streams create resilience.
Healthcare, retirement savings, disability insurance, paid leave. In many countries, these benefits are tied to employment. Losing your job means losing your safety net.
Employer-provided benefits emerged in the mid-20th century, particularly in the United States. During World War II, wage controls prevented companies from competing through higher pay. They competed through benefits instead.
Employment became unstable. Tenure shortened. The tie between benefits and employment creates perverse effects. People stay in jobs they dislike because they cannot risk losing healthcare. The system designed to create security now creates dependency.
Education happens first. Work happens after. You go to school for years, then you enter the workforce and apply what you learned. The two phases are distinct.
The separation emerged with industrial education. This was a dramatic departure from the guild system, where work and learning were inseparable. An apprentice learned by working for a decade. There was no graduation.
Knowledge becomes obsolete. What someone learned in college ten years ago may be irrelevant today. Judgment, creativity, and adaptability are not learned in classrooms. They are learned through experience, feedback, and reflection.
A degree proves you can do the job. A certification proves you have the skills. Credentials are the gatekeepers.
With millions of graduates entering the workforce, employers needed efficient filters. A degree from a recognized university signaled basic competence without requiring individual evaluation.
Credentials became decoupled from competence. A degree proves that someone completed a program, not that they can do a job. Credentials also create gatekeeping that restricts opportunity. The system conflates privilege with competence.
The office is where work occurs. You commute there in the morning and commute home in the evening. The building contains work. Home is separate.
Factories required physical presence. Office work inherited this assumption without inheriting the necessity. Supervision required observation. Observation required presence. Presence required a building.
Technology eliminated most reasons for the building. Documents exist in the cloud. Communication happens instantly across any distance. The pandemic of 2020 forced a global experiment. Many discovered they were more productive without commutes and interruptions.
Retirement is the final career stage. You work for decades, then you stop. The transition is sharp. One day you are employed. The next day you are retired.
Germany under Otto von Bismarck introduced the first modern pension system in 1889. The age was set at 70, later reduced to 65. These ages were chosen because few people lived much longer than that. Retirement was a brief period at the end of life.
Life expectancy increased dramatically. Someone retiring at 65 today may live another 25 or 30 years. Many people do not want to stop working entirely. They want to shift the nature or intensity of their work.
What's Emerging
The Brief Experiment is ending. What comes next is not yet fully formed, but patterns are visible.
These patterns are not entirely new. Many resemble what existed before 1870: integration of work and life, skill-based value, reputation within networks, learning through practice, rhythms that follow natural patterns rather than industrial clocks.
The difference is the tools. Technology that once enforced standardization now enables distribution.
The Thinkers Who Saw It Coming
Peter Drucker (1990s)
Identified knowledge work as fundamentally different from industrial work. Knowledge workers own their means of production. Their tools are in their heads.
Charles Handy (1980s)
Described the "portfolio career." Continuous employment with a single organization would give way to a portfolio of different types of work.
Daniel Pink (2001)
Documented the rise of independent workers in "Free Agent Nation." Millions were leaving traditional employment not because they had to, but because they wanted to.
Lynda Gratton
Has written extensively about the 100-year life. When people live and work longer, the three-stage model of education, work, and retirement breaks down.
Emerging Patterns
Integration Returning
The separation of work and life is dissolving. Remote work demonstrated that knowledge work does not require a building.
Skill-Based Value
Organizations increasingly pay for outcomes rather than hours. Portfolios replace resumes. Work samples replace degrees.
Networks Over Hierarchies
Relationships form around projects, interests, and mutual value. Authority comes from expertise and contribution, not position.
Multiple Income Streams
The "side hustle" has become normal. Multiple streams provide stability when any one disappears.
Continuous Learning
Learning must be embedded in work, not separated from it. Organizations are rebuilding apprenticeship in new forms.
Reputation and Trust
Networks build trust differently. Reputation spreads through connections. Your track record is visible through your work.
The emerging patterns are not utopia. Security is less certain. Inequality may increase. Boundaries are harder to maintain. Community may weaken. These challenges are real. The Brief Experiment's solutions no longer work, but solutions are still needed.
Implications
Understanding the Brief Experiment changes how we think about preparing people for professional life.
If the assumptions we inherited were universal truths, then career education should teach people to succeed within them. Find the right job. Climb the ladder. Build credentials. Secure employment.
If the assumptions are historically contingent, the task is different. The system itself is shifting. Teaching people to optimize for a dissolving structure does not serve them. They need something else.
When assumptions are unstable, answers become unreliable. What remains valuable is judgment: the ability to evaluate options when outcomes are uncertain, the capacity to make decisions with incomplete information, the skill of recognizing when circumstances have changed.
Paths assume stability. Structures are more fundamental. Working within an organization. Working for yourself. Building something new. Developing specialized trades. Combining multiple arrangements. These structures exist across every economy and have existed throughout history.
Security depends on external structures remaining stable. Resilience depends on internal capabilities that transfer across structures. Skills that remain valuable regardless of employer. Relationships that persist beyond any single job. The ability to generate income through multiple means.
Capabilities can be demonstrated in ways credentials cannot. Portfolios show what someone has actually done. Work samples reveal quality that transcripts cannot. Projects demonstrate judgment that certifications do not measure.
Experimentation provides information that planning cannot. Small tests reveal what actually works, not what should work in theory. Trying something generates feedback. Feedback enables adjustment.
When the system itself is shifting, individual responsibility is insufficient. Someone can make excellent decisions and still struggle because the assumptions underlying their choices have changed. The responsibility extends beyond individuals to the structures that shape their choices.
What This Means
The Brief Experiment embedded assumptions so deeply that they feel like reality. Questioning them feels strange, even threatening. The way things are seems like the way things must be.
One hundred fifty years is not long. The assumptions we inherited are younger than many buildings still standing. They emerged to solve problems that no longer define most work. They are dissolving whether we acknowledge it or not.
Understanding this is not comfortable. It removes certainties that made decisions feel simpler. It reveals that much of what we were taught was temporary, not permanent.
It also opens possibilities. If the assumptions are not fixed, then neither are we. If the system is shifting, then new arrangements become possible. If the rules are changing, then different ways of working become legitimate.
The Brief Experiment was one way of organizing work. It was not the only way. It was not the final way.
What comes next is not yet determined. It is being built now, by the choices individuals and institutions make. Understanding where the assumptions came from is the first step toward deciding which ones to keep and which ones to leave behind.