No, not Steve Jobs. I mean work. Employment. Finding a job nowadays is tough. I work in the IT field, but it is being felt across industries. I don't think it's fair to say that AI is replacing jobs, because if it was, no one would have to be working, would they? I've read articles about how there is a sort of freeze in the job market, mostly due to people clinging onto their jobs for dear life. People aren't jumping around jobs like they're supposed to.
Work and money is such a strange, yet uniquely human, concept. No one wants to do the work, but the work needs to get done. People need money, so the people with the money pay the people with no money to do the work. Then you get to the higher-paying jobs, where corporations turn more into cults rather than businesses. They still pay their workers, of course, but that's based on a salary, rather than hourly work. Salaried workers get a predefined amount of money they're given, regardless of how many hours they actually spent working.
This concept of the salary makes things a lot more complicated for the worker. Suddenly, the corporation is putting a lot of trust into the employee to get work done, which makes loyalty a lot more important. Salaried employees are expected to put their best foot forward by participating in company events, working off-hours, and innovating with new ideas. This sort of dedication is what the corporation is buying, yet that sort of involvement in a company can cause burn-out. Salaried employees are expected to build their lives around a corporation when life is meant to be so much more than dedication to an intangible entity.
I've seen what happens when salaried workers are invested in their company. They take paid vacations, but still make themselves available to coworkers. If there are problems on the job, then they can be contacted - it is a paid vacation, after all. I don't think vacations are meant to involve work though. That's where the dedication to the cult comes into play. If you want to show your peers, and ultimately, the entity, that you are worthy of your position, or a higher position, you have to sacrifice your precious time, even if that time is designated for no work to be done. It's an endless cycle of needless sacrifice, all in the pursuit of the material wealth that's required to keep any sort of family afloat. The family wants to live happily, but the almighty entity must first feed.