Overview of It's Been a Minute
This episode of NPR’s It's Been a Minute (host Brittany Luce) features Eric Baker, lecturer at Harvard and author of Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America. The conversation traces how the "grindset" — the entrepreneurial work ethic that urges people to always be creating, innovating, and treating themselves as a company of one — became a dominant cultural and managerial expectation, why it persists, and how it both helps and harms workers across decades and social groups.
Key points and main takeaways
- Definition: The "grindset" (entrepreneurial work ethic) emphasizes constant innovation, self-branding, and the idea that workers should "make their own job" rather than rely on stable employment or collective protections.
- Historical roots: The idea spread from the 1970s–90s as corporations faced global competition, downsizing, and a heightened managerial focus on innovation. Management rhetoric encouraged workers to act like entrepreneurs to prove value and survive layoffs.
- Intrapreneurship: Companies promoted the concept of "intrapreneur" (entrepreneur inside an organization) to get employees to take initiative and innovate, even when their roles are not entrepreneurial in nature.
- Creativity as a control mechanism: Framing routine, uncreative labor as "creative" or self-actualizing often masks monotonous work and extracts more emotional/mental labor from employees.
- Political/structural function: The rhetoric discourages collective responses (e.g., unions, policy demands) by individualizing responsibility for economic insecurity; it can also justify inequality by blaming groups for not being "entrepreneurial enough."
- Impact on marginalized groups: Entrepreneurship appeals as agency and a path to economic mobility (e.g., "Black capitalism"), but it can be weaponized to deflect from structural remedies and to blame communities when entrepreneurship doesn't pan out.
- Human costs: Burnout, perpetual precarity, depletion, and the psychological pressure to always prepare for the next disruption are common outcomes of living by the grindset.
- Why it persists: Cultural admiration for charismatic entrepreneurs, pessimism about collective or policy alternatives, and the political utility of celebrating "job creators" keep the narrative alive.
Topics discussed (highlights)
- The shift from valuing production to valuing "innovation" as the main creator of corporate value (1980s–90s).
- Management consulting and business-school influence on workplace norms.
- Examples from policy history: war on poverty, Nixon's "Black capitalism," Clinton-era welfare framing.
- The gig economy and startup culture as contemporary expressions of the grindset.
- The expansion of “burnout” as a diagnosis across worker populations.
- Maslow’s quote praising entrepreneurs and its cultural resonance.
- The political payoff for elites when workers see themselves as mini-CEOs rather than members of a class.
Notable quotes and insights
- "Make your own job" — central framing for how work is marketed to individuals (Baker/book title).
- "Intrapreneur" — captures the expectation that salaried workers behave like entrepreneurs inside firms.
- The entrepreneurial ethic "exhausted America" — shorthand for how relentless self-optimization depletes people and silences structural critique.
- Entrepreneurs become "heroes of last resort" — because of cultural pessimism about collective solutions.
Implications and recommended responses
- Recognize structural causes: The grindset is not merely personal failure or motivation; it’s a managerial and policy-driven response to economic pressures.
- Don’t self-blame: Individualizing insecurity obscures systemic options (unions, policy reforms, social safety nets).
- Collective options matter: Strengthening labor protections, unions, and public policy (healthcare, unemployment supports) are presented as real alternatives to perpetual entrepreneurial self-reliance.
- Personal boundaries: Be realistic about entrepreneurship as a strategy — it has benefits for some but significant costs (burnout, precarious income) for many. Protect time, health, and resources.
- Political action: Support policies and institutions that reduce the need to "make your own job" as the only path to security (e.g., stronger workplace protections, universal benefits).
Why you should care
If you or people you know feel compelled to constantly hustle, diversify income streams, or present every job as an identity project, this episode explains why that pressure is more than personal choice — it’s embedded in decades of corporate strategy, public policy, and cultural mythmaking. Understanding that helps move the conversation from individual solutions ("work harder") to collective remedies and realistic personal strategies.
Produced by NPR; guest Eric Baker is author of Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America.