"Fall In Love with Your Job, Get Ripped Off by Your Boss"

"In today’s increasingly freelance economy, DWYL has become a convenient way for corporations to pay fewer people less money for more work. If work is what you love, after all, why do anything else?..

Tokumitsu sees the mantra leveraged on three levels, correlating to the executive, middling and entry-level “rungs” of employment (though they no longer form a ladder one can predictably climb). At the top, “passion” rules. Workers who have achieved the fantasy trifecta of wealth, status and power must continue to prove their commitment by staying later at the office than anyone else...

For lower-level, white-collar and corporate workers, the DWYL drumbeat is somewhat muted—though Tokumitsu still discerns its effect in pressure to exhibit attitudes of “insistent happiness” at work. Tokumitsu also notes that the rise of DWYL correlates with the glut of micromanagement such as employee surveillance and relentless performance assessments, which seem to exist only to justify middle-management positions. As skilled workers lose their autonomy and give up authority to omnipresent managers, DWYL may be most appealingly rephrased as do what you like—it’s a fantasy of what work could be without stifling oversight...

More sinisterly, because it also pretends that “work and class float free from each other,” DWYL implicitly assumes that everyone has the same options to follow their heart, and denigrates the worker who “chooses” not to."

http://inthesetimes.com/article/18282/love-dont-pay-the-rent

This goes on to discuss how gendered it can be.

This is making me think about how #millenials are defined by our work, and our sort of career path situation. I don't think this is "new" but it something that I guess I am observing in real time, being in this place where people I know are gathering these new work-identities and understanding themselves as parts of certain systems -- or, really, often feeling lost because they don't feel part of whatever system they find themselves in. So, maybe what I'm reaching for is just how much we are seeking to understand ourselves as part of our work but not being totally successful.

(credit to DK)

Related: Give women your money; sad truth about your dream job