Work Face
A podcast where people finally tell the truth about work. Workplace culture expert Ben Jackson hosts refreshingly honest conversations with people from all walks of life about what actually happens on the job.
Work Face
Do What You Love, and Treat It Like a Job (with Rob McRae)
Have you ever stayed in a job you hated because you thought that's just what adults do? Maybe you even convinced yourself it was character building, that being miserable at work was some kind of badge of honor. What if the real sign of maturity isn't suffering through a job you hate, but respecting yourself enough to set healthy boundaries while doing what you love?
Rob McRae, a digital producer, writer, and social media manager, shares his experience transitioning to media after burning out at a Big Four consulting firm, and explains why it’s never too late to discover new skills.
(00:00) What Adults Do
(01:46) First Job After Law School
(04:02) Living for the Weekends
(06:12) Confiding in Coworkers
(11:05) Mental Health and Performance
(15:25) Finding Your Voice Online
(19:32) The Taco Bell Tweet
(21:51) Breaking Into Media
(24:42) Being Who You Are
(27:25) Using Your Imagination
(29:47) Loving Your Job Without Losing Yourself
(30:59) Advice for Managers
(32:34) Final Thoughts
Rob McRae is a producer at Meadowlark Media, who previously worked as a digital producer and staff writer for Desus & Mero, following the show from Vice Media to Showtime. At the age of 30, Rob completely reset his career, moving from a Big Four consulting firm into working in social media at Vice.
Follow Rob on Twitter/X or Bluesky and find his work at latebutstill.com.
See also:
Make Your Own Job, by Eric Baker
Designing Your Life, by Dave Evans and Bill Burnet
Work Won’t Love You Back, by Sarah Jaffe
The Internet is Talking | 2016 Taco Bell Quesalupa Commercial with George Takei
Pablo Torre Finds Out on YouTube
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Work Face is produced by Hear Me Out, a culture strategy firm for leaders with the courage to listen. We help them cultivate trust by having real conversations with employees at all levels about what’s working and what’s not.
Learn more at hearmeout.co and follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.
I don't think that me loving my job is something that the company that I work for is giving me as a treat. The satisfaction I take from my job is my own. I create that satisfaction and I benefit from that satisfaction. And I think we need to keep that in mind. Having a good job is not a gift that you receive. It's something that you take and make your own.
Benjamin:Have you ever stayed in a job you hated because you thought that's just what adults do? Maybe you even convinced yourself it was character building, that being miserable at work was some kind of badge of honor. What if the real sign of maturity isn't suffering through a job you hate, but respecting yourself enough to set healthy boundaries while doing what you love? I'm Ben Jackson. And this is Work Face, a podcast where people finally tell the truth about work. Our guest today is Rob McRae. Rob is a producer at Meadowlark Media, who previously worked as a digital producer and staff writer for Desus & Mero, following the show from Vice Media to Showtime. At the age of 30, Rob completely reset his career, moving from a Big Four consulting firm into working in social media at Vice. Rob McRae. Welcome to the show.
Rob:Hey, happy to be here.
Benjamin:So before we start, would you like to introduce yourself?
Rob:Sure. My name is Rob McRae. I'm a producer, writer from Brooklyn, New York, and a former attorney.
Benjamin:What have you worked on?
Rob:I currently work on a show called Pablo Torre Finds Out on Meadowlark Media. I've worked on Desus & Mero at Showtime, Desus & Mero on VICELAND, which is currently called Vice TV. I've done some agency work. I've done a lot of different things. I used to be in public accounting, so a few different jobs in my career.
Benjamin:So Rob, what do you remember about the first time you felt insecure in the workplace?
Rob:Well, my first really serious job was right after law school. I worked at a large public accounting firm, one of the biggest, and. I was nervous from the start because it wasn't a career that I was particularly passionate about. It was a situation in which I And one of the more secure industries was taxes, so I interned in that area at this large accounting firm and I took a full-time job with them graduated from law school. But the insecurity really stemmed from the fact that deep down, I knew it was a mismatch from the start and I was approaching this job as "This is what i'm gonna do during my working hours Monday through Friday, and when I'm off the clock, I'm off the clock, and I won't worry about it anymore," and, you know, not to give away the story, but it turns out it didn't work out so smoothly as far as that separation between work life and personal life.
Benjamin:So it sounds like this is a little bit of what some of my friends from college used to call a"live for the weekends" situation.
Rob:Absolutely, and I don't think that's well, I would say at least around the time I was in college and law school, I don't think that was an unusual premise and maybe i'm a little bit out of touch with What younger working professionals are like now…
Benjamin:How Did it feel on your first day at the Big Four accounting firm?
Rob:Well, it feels like a long time now, but I felt okay. I was used to the environment. I'd kind of spent a lot of my early career in corporate environments, regular offices, cubicles, pretty standard 2011 workplace. So environmentally I felt pretty comfortable. A lot of people that I was starting with were people that I interned with, very cool people that I liked a lot. So I wasn't totally uncomfortable, I'd say. The issue was just when it came to the actual work, I kind of knew I was faking it, I guess I would say. Not so much just in terms of expertise, but in terms of just, you know, passion for it, in terms of, you know, in terms of a lot of things. It was just not a role that I was, I was particularly well suited for. And it took a few years, but I think everyone around me discovered I wasn't too well suited for it either.
Benjamin:Was there a moment that stuck out in the beginning where you really felt like, Oh man, I don't know if I can do this.
Rob:At the very beginning there were a couple of moments, but I kind of ignored them to be honest with you. I just figured that I was at a point in my life just starting out my career where everyone feels that way. Everyone dreads going to work. Everyone dislikes what they do, or at least the majority of people who have jobs, dislike their jobs, you know, complaining about your job is a national pastime, I'd say. I think I ignored them because I just figured this was normal It was normal to feel the way that I did it was normal to not enjoy my job. Most people don't enjoy their jobs, or at least that was the impression I was under, and I think that to some extent is true. But I didn't really have any better options or better ideas at the time, so it wasn't something that kept me up at night at that point. It wasn't something that was a huge red flag in my mind, it just felt like a normal part of the job. Who likes working in accounting? Who likes being a tax attorney? Who likes sitting at their desk in clothes they maybe don't even wanna wear, 8, 10, 12 hours a day? It just felt like, I wasn't considering myself special for disliking my job.
Benjamin:What, if anything, did you share with your boss about how you were feeling?
Rob:That's a good question, and the answer is simple, nothing. Knowing that this was not a special scenario, a person who is working a corporate job and is being compensated really well, but doesn't particularly enjoy it, doesn't particularly have a passion for it, I felt like, if I were to tell my boss that, there are a couple things that were likely to happen. One is probably that they'd be sympathetic, but would not have a solution for me or advice for me, because you tell your boss, "I don't like my job." What's your boss going to do, even if they're sympathetic towards you? Tell you to quit? I didn't see the benefit of voicing something that felt very mundane: that I didn't particularly like my job, especially in the early days of my job. It didn't feel like something that felt like a personal problem or a skill issue, if I'll put it that way.
Benjamin:Did you confide in any of your coworkers?
Rob:I think I confided in my coworkers in the way that we all commiserate about our jobs. So it wasn't a secret that none of us were loving our work or loving our jobs, but the people I worked with, most of them were a lot better suited for it than I was. And this isn't to paint myself as unique in that way at all. It's to say that a lot of the people I worked with that ended up in those jobs worked really hard and specifically at obtaining that job and being in that industry. I worked with other accounts. I worked with other attorneys and Many of them did have an interest in the kind of work that we were doing. I was one of those people which, maybe there were others, but I was one of those people that kind of fell into the job. But we were all commiserated about the hours, or about the work, or about how it wasn't as interesting as we wanted it to be, or any, any number of normal, kind of around the office complaints that people have.
Benjamin:Did you pretend to like your job?
Rob:I don't think at any point that I pretended to like it, and I will say, I did genuinely like the people I worked with. They just happened to be people who were a little better suited for the work that we were doing. And I don't think they ever held that against me. So it's funny because I feel like when I talk about my early career, I talk about how bad it was. I talk about all the problems I was having, but it wasn't the nightmare scenario of working with evil, horrible people or anything like that. And that made it a lot easier, and in some ways maybe it made it a lot easier to hang on as long as I did. So, I guess I say that to say that not all career issues or job issues or industry issues or personal issues you're having with your work are due to every single thing being horrible. But sometimes the important things are just not a good fit. And for me, it was just not a job I should have had. It wasn't a job I should have sought out. It wasn't a job someone should have given me. I was qualified in the very technical sense of, I graduated from law school. I passed the New York state bar. But that is a very baseline qualification for the kind of work I was doing. I think to continue to work in that industry and to continue the work that I was doing, it would have required me to either be a lot better at compartmentalizing my personal life, how I feel about things in general, my wholeness as a person, separate from the work that I do, or I would have just had to have more passion and more interest in the work I was doing, and I didn't have either of those things.
Benjamin:How did working a job that you had no desire to be in impact your motivation or your performance there?
Rob:I think the motivation aspect was the biggest problem. A lot of people can work jobs that they don't like, and they're motivated by other things, whether it's compensation, the choices that they have, whether it's, you know, the living that they're trying to make any number of things can motivate you outside of the work itself. And honestly, I guess also being younger at the time, I didn't have, you know, a wife and three kids and two dogs. I didn't have any external motivation that was really keeping me in the job, and keeping me sharp and keeping me good at it. So not having any kind of external motivation and not having any internal interest in what I was doing was really hurting my productivity and hurting how good I was at the job. It was easy for me to start off as just a new hire and new in a career and and doing well enough for a while, but it wasn't gonna last, and it didn't.
Benjamin:How did those jobs impact your mental health?
Rob:After a while, my mental health became pretty poor. The job was consuming more and more of my time. I was already losing the battle of confining it to a space where it was comfortable for me and I could do the things with the rest of my time that I wanted to do. And then, lacking the motivation and the interest to do my job well was causing stress, because now I'm letting other people down who are depending on my work. As much as I didn't like what I was doing. I don't want to be the person that's creating more work for other people. I don't want to make my boss look bad. I don't want to make my coworkers look bad. So, not being able to perform, even in something that I didn't care about or didn't like doing, that in itself I think caused a lot of stress and self doubt, and maybe I'm not as smart as I thought I was, or maybe there's something wrong with me. Again, going back to this idea that was ingrained in me that everyone hates their job and everyone deals with it and just kind of puts on a brave face and, you know, goes to work in the morning, comes home at night, and grinds their way through it. That's what I thought everyone else around me was doing. That is how I viewed the nature of work: it's a grind and it's going to be hard and you may not like it and you're going to run into issues . And I think it was hurting me mentally because it felt like I was the only person who couldn't handle just having a job. I wasn't breaking rocks. I was sitting in an air-conditioned office. And there are people out there who have been working those jobs for longer than I'd been alive, and they seem to handle it. Okay, and I was just starting to feel like maybe there's something personally wrong with me that I couldn't also handle it
Benjamin:You know, this is bringing up a couple of things for me personally. I heard an interview with Eric Baker the other day on a podcast called Know Your Enemy. He's the author of a book called Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America. In the book, he talks about the history of the discourse about work and he draws a distinction in his book between different kinds of work ethic. And before the entrepreneurial work ethic, the idea that, you know, you should love your job, there was a different way of thinking about
work:the industrial work ethic. And the phrase that I keep coming back to from the book is "blessed be drudgery." It used to be the case that people who worked just accepted that work was drudgerous. You know, the other thing that's coming up for me is an experience that I had as a manager, with an employee who out of the blue stopped performing, over time, they really just completely stopped coming into the office and their performance started falling, they stopped pushing code, and I found out, after speaking to them over a series of months and having a series of performance conversations with them that put frankly, they were suffering from depression. And there was a cycle that they were falling into where they placed a lot of their self-worth in their productivity. And so they fell into this spiral where from the outside, it really looked like they were just blowing off the job, when they were actually having a mental health crisis.
Rob:Yeah, I mean, I think that is a lot of what was happening to me. It was slightly different in a few ways. One is, I don't think I took particular pride in my productivity, I thought it was a smart enough person. The issue with me was more the idea that working a job is drudgery. As you mentioned, it is a little bit about the suffering. It is a little bit about overcoming that. And that is what was hurting my sense of self. I think I was in a situation where I was spending a lot of time and a lot of energy doing something that I didn't want to do that. And that in itself, I think, can take a toll on you. And it did for me, and took a toll on my mental health. Sometimes it's hard to see that I think sometimes, you know I'm literally too close to it, but I would definitely say I was depressed, and whether depression was hurting my work and whether the work was irritating my depression, I would say the answer is yes, both those things. It is a cycle. I think that's just kind of how depression works. It saps your energy for things, those things then are left undone or done poorly, that gives you another thing to criticize yourself about to feel bad about. That's, that's definitely what I was experiencing, including the, you know, working from home sometimes. And sometimes that was just the issue of not being able to get out of bed in the morning because of how I was feeling. So I definitely see a lot of parallels with what this engineer was going through and I think it's probably something that a lot of people go through and because it's so work oriented and it's not related to, you know, a dramatic tragedy or a personal issue or family issue.
Benjamin:Did your boss or your coworkers notice when you, I don't want to say hit rock bottom, but if you have a better way of putting it let me know.
Rob:I hit some sort of bottom. Was it rock bottom? I don't know. I hit, I hit the low. I hit as low as you can go in terms of that career. But again, I'd like to keep perspective. These are still problems that a lot of people would be happy to have. But for me personally, in terms of the personal state I was in, and the kind of work I was doing, they definitely noticed. One of my managers was my age, maybe even a little bit younger. He was the first person to really notice that I wasn't all there. And, again, to his credit, he definitely phrased it to me as," Hey, what's, what's up with you? What's, what's going on?" It's kind of like the situation you described with the engineer that you were managing. It's kind of hard not to notice. And it's not just about the work slipping. It's just, you know when someone you interact with every day, you know when that person is not quite the same as they were previously. The workplace is an intimate place in that way, it's very easy, even with virtual work, even with Slack, it's very easy to pick up on when someone isn't quite feeling their best.
Benjamin:So when did you start writing?
Rob:I always liked writing, even as a kid, and I started spending a lot of time on social media, on Twitter specifically, because at the time, it was a good place to follow writers. I started a personal blog as an outlet for my creative interests, and I started writing reviews for albums or movies. I started just talking about different things that were happening in politics that I was interested in. It wasn't so much of a, it wasn't so much of like a Livejournal style, personal blog. I was trying to give myself an academic task to do. I was basically assigning myself homework. I was, I was, I was basically being my own assignment editor, and I was writing first drafts and second drafts and revising and then posting it and then I would share it on Twitter and I'd get a reaction, you know, positive, negative, whatever. And I started just doing that because it just gave me something to do and something to think about that wasn't work, that wasn't my mental health it was an escape, but it was also a way to keep my mind working. And again, this wasn't great art or great journalism that I was writing by any stretch. But it was nice to create something, and it was nice to put it out there, and have strangers read it, and have people talk about it again on a super small scale, even having a couple of people read something, and three people telling you that they enjoyed it is, was a great new feeling that I got from doing this.
Benjamin:So what finally got you to leave consulting?
Rob:So towards the end of 2015, I basically got called in by my boss's, boss's, boss, and he kind of put it on the table that I either needed to agree to improve my performance and do better at my job because my work was slipping. I was showing up to work, but I just wasn't 100 percent into it and I wasn't 100 percent there and it was starting to show in my work in a way that it hadn't in the past. So I can either agree to improve on my performance and literally sign a piece of paper that says I will get better and I'll be better and please don't fire me. Or, could take a month's severance and leave the job. And a strange e thing about this meeting, I think for a lot of people, they would rightfully be scared by this ultimatum or, you know, feel some kind of shame and to some extent I did feel that. But it was also the first time that someone presented me a choice and asked me, Do you want to do this job or not? I don't think I've ever been asked that or even asked myself that so much at that point. I was still relatively young, I was about 25, 26. And in that room I realized, that I'd kind of just been floating along and taking the best option of whatever options were available to me. But I'd been doing this since I was probably 18. And I also think that the way that our education system is set up, the way that jobs are set up, we are forced to make a lot of decisions really early. And if you think about it, it is really wild that we let 16 year olds, not only let them, but we make 16 year olds make these decisions that are going to alter their lives for the next 20, 30, 40 years, when they're 16. And I think I was just, I was just a little bit of victim of that.
Benjamin:So how'd you end up in media?
Rob:After deciding to take the severance, I was looking for work, I'd lined up some interviews things fell through but I was still online a lot I was still making connections with a lot of people in media, specifically at Vice, I was still freelance writing and I was doing pretty well a lot of the essays I were writing were personal essays about my experience at my job about depression about mental health , and I got a lot of positive feedback from social media, honestly, and from the people that I met in the New York area who were working in media. And I started to meet more and more of these people and started to go from online relationships to actually going out in the world and meeting these people and talking to them. And as much as I felt good about my decision and knew it was the right thing, I had been unemployed for months at this point. Money was getting a little tighter. The cushion that I had built up from working a job that I hated was starting to feel a little less fluffy than it started. And at this point, strangely enough, someone reached out to me via DM on Twitter and said, Hey, we found this tweet on your account and we'd like to use it in a Taco Bell commercial. This person offered me $2,000 for a tweet that I spent two seconds thinking about at the time, and more than the$2,000, which was really nice, again, the cushion was starting to get a little bare, it felt like it was like this sign that I was actually onto something as far as what my skills were and what my career path might be, it felt like the universe or whatever was confirming that I could actually be good at this. I was already better at this job by accident than trying to be a lawyer on purpose for four and a half years. I was not thinking about anything when I tweeted this thing, which is really stupid. I'll recite it for you. I tweeted, " I saw a picture of a queso lupa in a newspaper and it made me pick up a newspaper." That's the entire tweet. And in the commercial on television, George Takei reads a newspaper and recites my tweet as my face and tweet fly across the screen for the Taco Bell quesalupa. So, it was the first time in my life that I was compensated for doing something based on my skills and not on my qualifications.
Benjamin:How did that feel?
Rob:It felt like the first dollar I'd ever earned. I mean, I was unemployed and there were other aspects of my life that were less comfortable, but I think it really came at a point where I needed to feel that. And as funny as it sounds, that weird Taco Bell tweet really confirmed I'd been feeling, and I needed that confirmation to continue to move forward in this direction, I think.
Benjamin:So how did you end up working at Vice, and then eventually going to Showtime?
Rob:So I ended up working at Vice because through my connections there, I'd pitched a bunch of articles and worked with editors at Noisey and at Vice. I was able to get a social media producer job at their new television channel, VICELAND. It was the first job I'd ever had that I enjoyed, and I really enjoyed it.
Benjamin:And how old were you then?
Rob:It was just before my 31st birthday.
Benjamin:How did it feel going into an entry level job in a new field at the age of 30?
Rob:Honestly, I was so happy to not be at my corporate job. And I was so happy to feel like this is something I'm actually good at that the status aspect of that situation did not faze me at all. If anything, I thought it was really interesting and really funny that I was finally at a job that I was really good at, and the job didn't exist when I was 22 years old, which is the age that most people would take some this kind of job. It was interesting to find out that a job I was almost born to do hadn't been invented yet when I was first looking for work. I think that says something about our careers, because it's never too late to find something that you're good at and that you enjoy.
Benjamin:So how did you end up on Desus & Mero?
Rob:I was already doing social media for VICELAND, and Desus & Mero were negotiating a deal to do a television show at VICELAND shortly after I'd started. My boss and the head of development at Vice, already knew that I had a relationship with them. I've known them through social media and also through New York parties and social stuff. So it was a natural extension of my job to also do the social media for their show. But when they decided to leave Vice, at the same time that happened, my boss had left and the head of marketing had decided to hire someone else from outside to be my new boss instead of promoting me. So that's kind of a sign that maybe I should start looking. And I did. And in the interim, I worked at an agency, but I only lasted there about four months before Desus & Mero called me to join them at Showtime.
Benjamin:One thing that's striking me as we talk about your career: when you started, it sounds like you were really faking it and that, as you found your voice on the internet and you were able to be more authentically yourself, that was the moment when you started building an audience and doors started opening for you. What advice would you have for somebody who's maybe working a job that is filled with drudgery and is looking to do something creative, but feels trapped?
Rob:I think What I didn't appreciate about the time when I was unhappy in corporate tax and corporate law was that I felt like my job was something I could just do, and the person I was was a separate thing. And that was true, but I think those two parts of my life started to butt heads. And I think if you're at the point in your career where you're trying to do something completely different, or you're working in a field that you don't feel as creative, and you'd love to do something more creative, you're probably realizing the same thing. It's hard to be who you are and work the job you work and have those things coexist in a way that makes you feel good about yourself. And it doesn't have to be dramatic. It doesn't have to be this big moral dilemma or anything, it's just that my personality and the things that I were interested in were completely different from the work that I was doing at the time. And now that I'm doing things that are in line with my interests and doing things in my career that are actually improved by my personality, I'm a lot happier. And I think we often overlook who we are as people, what we're interested in. We think in terms of qualifications and not in terms of who we are as people.
Benjamin:What would you advise them to do first if they're looking to get out?
Rob:I honestly think that we get caught up , especially if we're trying to leave a job, and we don't take time to take a step before that process to say," What are the things that I'm good at? What are the things that I like to do? What are the things that I would be willing to learn more about to improve upon myself?" You need to get a good sense of the person that you are before you can really take a positive step towards figuring out what kind of work you'd actually like doing.
Benjamin:So what you're saying is go to therapy?
Rob:I mean, therapy can be part of that. I do think that bouncing these ideas and these thoughts off of a therapist would be helpful, but it doesn't necessarily even require that. How many times in your life have you taken the time to reflect on your own personality and your own interests? I don't think we take time to reflect upon ourselves partly because there's probably a little bit of embarrassment about being so self-centered in some ways and also partly because we're just in a rush to find a job. We're in a rush to send out applications to update our resumes to do those sort of things, but we don't take the time to actually reflect upon our own skills, our own interests. And I even, and I even hesitate to say skills because I don't want people to be too hung up on what they can and can't do. I want people to think first about like what excites them, what interests them, what do they like doing before they start going down the road of figuring out what they're able to do for work.
Benjamin:One thing that's occurring to me is when most people imagine their future careers, they ask the question, what's the natural next step here? And there's an assumption there that there's one next step that makes sense, and you know, there's a book called "Designing Your Life." One of the exercises they have you do in that book is to imagine a number of different possible futures. And I think that unfortunately, most of us don't use our imagination very much. And especially not at work unless you're working in some kind of creative field. And I think what's missing for a lot of people is just that freedom to use their imagination.
Rob:The thing that you mentioned about imagination is interesting because, again, I talked about not taking time to self reflect, and I think the ultimate form of self-reflection is to imagine different possible futures , to visualize all of your possibilities. I don't think my issue was a lack of imagination. It was almost negative imagination, it was worse than that. It was, "I'm gonna drop a hundred resumes And 10 companies will get back to me and i'm just gonna pick the best offer of the 10." It was not thinking at all. So forget even imagining possible futures. I wasn't even imagining the reality in front of me that my personality is this my skills are that and it won't fit with job X, Y and Z if I really took even 5 minutes to think about these things. I don't think we take that time because we're in such a rush to drop those resumes.
Benjamin:A lot of people run their career on autopilot.
Rob:Right. And I think that running your career on autopilot can very quickly become running your whole life on autopilot. Because again, I didn't appreciate how connected these two pieces are. It's really, really hard to compartmentalize your career and yourself, whether you like what you're doing or you don't like what you're doing, it's gonna bleed into the other thing. And if there's such a mismatch between who you are as a person and what skills and what interests you have and the work that you do. not a sustainable way to live your life and it's not a sustainable way to forge a career either.
Benjamin:I keep thinking about the flip side of working a job that you hate, which is working a job that you love too much. I'm specifically thinking about a book called Work Won't Love You Back, and the widespread phenomenon with millennials who, I mean, all of us were raised to believe that if you work a job you love, you'll never work a day in your life. Now that you are doing what you love, what, if anything, have you found helpful in avoiding those traps of becoming too invested in your job, putting too much of your identity and your self worth into what you're doing and your creative pursuits?
Rob:I guess this is where it is useful to compartmentalize. You need to separate the business side of what you're doing from the creative side of what you're doing. I don't think that me loving my job is something that the company that I work for is giving me as a treat. The satisfaction I take from my job is my own. I create that satisfaction and I benefit from that satisfaction. And if anything else, they benefit from that satisfaction, because I work harder, I work better. And I think we need to keep that in mind. Having a good job is not a gift that you receive. It's something that you take and make your own. I'm not saying your employer has to be your enemy, but keep perspective about what you're doing. At the end of the day, you're still creating value for your company, and they are compensating you at a price that makes sense for them.
Benjamin:And what advice would you have for a manager who is maybe running a team in an environment like the one you started in where there is a lot of drudgery, to avoid hiring someone like who you were when you started the job?
Rob:I think my perspective on work, and the idea that there's a nobility in suffering at your job, are things that employers feel too. And I don't think it's a malicious thing. I do think that when a manager is looking to hire someone, they are also maybe overly focused on qualifications and not focused enough on who that person is. I think managers need to look at applicants and also the people that already work for them and say, " Who are these people? What are their interests? What motivates them? How can we make this less harsh on their everyday existence?"
Benjamin:It also sounds like it's about caring enough to focus on the little things that you can do.
Rob:I think that almost any job involves asking people to do things for you and other people asking you to do things for them. There are so many things you can do to make that experience pleasant, even basic manners, please, and thank you. That person's going to appreciate that, and they're going to do a better job at what you're asking them to do. And when they need something, they're going to remember how you asked them, and they're going to mirror some of those things back to you, and they'll make your job easier.
Benjamin:That feels like a wonderful place for us to close things up. Where can people find you on the internet? Is there anything you want people to see of your work?
Rob:I'm still on Twitter, @yc, the letters Y and the letter C. I'm also on Bluesky, @yc.latebutstillcom. Also I'm currently working on a show called "Pablo Torre Finds Out", check that out on YouTube also wherever you get your podcasts. That's pretty much it.
Benjamin:All Right. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Before I let you go, is there anything you haven't had a chance to share, and think we should know?
Rob:I would just say something that I say to a lot of people who reach out to me and talk about career stuff, usually younger men, to be honest with you. And it sounds silly and it sounds a little bit new-agey or whatever it is, but it's never too late to discover new skills. No matter how old you think you are, you can find something that you're good at and that you're passionate about and that you can excel at. I really truly believe that, I found those things that did not even exist when I was 22 years old. So it might just take time.
Benjamin:I couldn't agree more. Rob McRae, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Rob:Thanks, Ben.
Benjamin:Work Face is produced by Hear Me Out, a culture strategy firm for leaders with the courage to listen. Our consulting producer is Lina Misitzis. Original music composed by me, Ben Jackson. Special thanks to Rob McRay and Michelle Matar. To learn more about Hear Me Out, visit hearmeout.co, follow us on Instagram at @hearmeout_co, or find us on LinkedIn by searching for Hear Me Out.
