A French-language YouTube monologue in which the speaker responds to a WhatsApp comment accusing the speaker's office job of not being 'hard enough.' Using personal career anecdotes, the speaker contrasts early, strenuous, low-paid work with later higher-paid, lower-effort roles that rely on rare/specialized skills. He argues that social and cultural origins create limiting beliefs that equate suffering with work's value, warns against compensatory behaviors (seeking unnecessary hardship), and offers the metaphor of an "upside-down cross" to describe corporate values that reward scarcity of skill over sheer effort. The video closes with a brief promotion of the speaker's book (career survival/advice), available on Amazon.
Questions this video answers
"What Career Coaches Don't Tell You" (also referenced as "Survival Guide in the Corporate Environment").
On Amazon, in Kindle and paperback editions.
He says it was the best-selling book in its category (career advice books).
Good morning, my friends. I received a message on WhatsApp from someone who said my job isn't hard enough. I feel a bit guilty. I compare myself to my friends when I see how they struggle, how they work for next to nothing, okay? And I work in an office. I'm very well paid, even though I don't do much. You see, this person has this complex. And in reality, even before reading the rest of the message, okay, without reading the rest of the message, you can guess where this person comes from. You can guess their social background. That is to say, the person has made progress in their career. Even though they come from a working class background, they come from modest parents and all that. You know that I'm always in favor of social advancement. And I congratulate all the people who succeed in this advancement. On the other hand, sometimes they come with limiting beliefs, or sometimes they come with complexes related to our origins. You, you know, our origins, whether ethnic, social, national, cultural, whatever, will always influence us, even in ways that we sometimes fail to realize. This guy, for example, judges work because his father was a factory worker and his mother was a factory worker. They both worked in factories. He judges work based on its difficulty, okay? For him, the more difficult the job is, the more valuable it is. If you don't suffer, if you don't break your back, if you don't destroy your health, you're not working. So I'd like to tell you something. It's completely logical at the beginning of your career. Look at me when I started out. I'll just give you my example, but everyone can see this in their own career. When I was starting out in my career, I worked like a madman. Why? Because I was paid by the piece. I was paid by the time. It means that the employer saw me as someone with minimal qualifications, let's say compared to others, and wanted to extract the maximum value from the hour that I was paid. It means that I worked. I worked, I worked non stop. I was doing a job, I was in it, I was in an office, but I was doing absolutely arduous work. I couldn't leave my desk for a second. I had the manager sitting three meters behind me. He could see my screen, he could see me. And then once a day he would call me. I would turn around and he would tell me, go take a break. Look, he was the one who managed the breaks. I wasn't allowed to take a break like that. And so there I was in hard work. Was I paid well? No, not at all. I was paid peanuts. But it allowed Me to eat. It allowed me to pay my rent, pay my bills, and then make ends meet while waiting for my next paycheck later. 15 years later. This time I have a six figure salary. I'm very well paid. Did I work as much? No, not even. I didn't even make. I didn't even make 5% of what I made when I was paid. Peanuts.
Okay.
Sometimes there was a week, honestly, there were whole weeks where I had, I won't lie, a whole week. I had an email to write in a meeting. Like you have an email to write. You have an urgent call to someone on Tuesday, you have a meeting on Thursday from 2 to 3pm and then maybe a phone call on Friday morning. There you go, Done. Goodbye. Okay, that looks like the numbers. Why? Because when you've progressed and become more skilled, you're paid more for your time. You're paid more for doing repetitive tasks. You're paid more for. I don't know, it wasn't on an assembly line, screwing iPhones or putting lids on tin cans. That's not it. You're paid for a rare and specialized skill. This rare and specialized skill. Well, we don't need it every 30 seconds. Well, of course.
Okay.
How often do you compare? How often you go to the general practitioner and how often you go to the specialist.
Okay.
Of course, you go to the specialist less often than you go to the general practitioner.
Okay.
So the more specialized the knowledge, the less we need it all the time. On the other hand, when we do need it, we pay a lot of money for it. Some people pay a lot of money to go to specialists, so they sell it maybe once every 10 years or once in their life or whatever. But when they do, they need it, they can't do without it and they pay a lot of money for it. They. It's exactly the same for professionals. When you have a generalist job that's cheap. Well, we'll pay you a lot of money, but we'll make sure to treat you like a lemon. But the higher you go, the more we'll pay you for very specific, very rare, cutting edge knowledge. We'll pay you a lot for that. And the rest of the time you're at our disposal. That's all. You stay there, do what you want, figure it out, read Wikipedia, go to the swimming pool. It happened to me at the swimming pool during my working hours. Go to the swimming pool. I tell my manager, yes, I'm going to the swimming pool. You need me, you ring.
Hey.
Okay, that's it. There you Go and I leave. I can't see myself at the beginning of my career telling this manager, who was three meters behind me, listen, I'm going to the swimming pool. You ring me when you need me, okay? It's not possible. It's not possible. Okay, so what I'm trying to tell you is don't judge. Pay attention to your beliefs in general, beyond this case, pay attention to your family and cultural beliefs which can accompany you and create complexes in you. For example, in this context, what is this guy likely to do? This man, what is he likely to do? Well, he may consider that his work is not difficult enough. And he may add to it. He may compensate, be in a compensatory logic and add, for example, overtime. He'll think he's paying me too much. I'm not suffering enough. I'm working long hours. I'm offering them overtime. I'm doing lots of things that I'm not supposed to do, but I have to do. One day he might find himself doing stair climbing, okay? Because he thinks that it will add difficulty and nobility to his work.
Okay?
That's what I wanted to tell you. So relax. It's normal. The higher you go, okay, the less you do. By the way, let me tell you something. A company. I don't have a pen. I can show you. When you think of a company. Wait, I have to find a pen. So wait, I have one. Let me draw a little picture. When you think of a company, you think of this. Look at this. It's a cross. It's upside down. You think of an upside down cross, the values reversed. So in a normal and traditional value, the. The guy who works more gets paid a lot more than the guy who works less. But you forget that you're in a system of inverted value. So if you're in a system of inverted value, well, it's the one who does the least who gets paid more. That's how it is. And it's at every level in business. You'll notice it once you go to work tomorrow with the idea that the cross is upside down.
Okay.
Go with the idea that the cross is upside down, consecrating the victory of the moment over eternity. And you'll see that all this is true, that all this can be explained. Thank you, my friends. And by the way, I always forget, you know. Mind you, I don't have the advertising talent. I'm not bad. I talk to you about my book from time to time.
Okay?
It's not to annoy you. If you don't put the books. You can already skip it if you want. My toxic book called what Career Coaches Don't Tell youl or Survival Guide in the Corporate Environment. It's a book that is currently I saw, I was very happy to see that it was the best selling book in its category in the category of career advice books. It's an extremely tough book. Okay, there are some. There's one who told me I had PTSD from the company. He told me I can't read it in one go. I read, I stop, I read, I stop because it reminds me of memories, it reminds me of things I've experienced and it gives me explanations and I want to be able to stop each time to digest before continuing. Okay, so it's a pretty strong book but I think it will make you even stronger people. It is available on Amazon and is available, yes, on Amazon in Kindle or paperback. Thank you my friends.
