That was the message behind a ubiquitous bumper sticker in California and Hawaii, back in the day, and I thought it was also perfect advice for people approaching the new unbuttoned, anything-goes work culture, one that contained neither net nor guarantees — and that was back in the mid nineties!

Funny thing was, that advice seemed old hat even then; plenty of job gurus had already written books say there was no permanent job, not the kind of lifelong Japanese job that lasted longer than your marriage (those gigs began to disappear in Japan, too) and history was just repeating itself. I had just been laid off from my first web job, the gone and forgotten iGuide, temporarily funded by the still-with-us Rupert Murdoch, a venture that took more than a year (and more than forty million of Rupert’s money). After developing the idea for a learn-to-surf job site within the site, called Surf or Die, I shopped it a few other places as we surfed from job to job, and internet companies kept burning like pirated ships in the harbor, before sinking into oblivion. 

The internet boom, and ultimate bust, can’t hold a candle to what’s happening now, of course. Then there seemed to be secure industries (like car manufacturing, or Wall Street banking) and from within those unsinkable ships the perpetually employed would look out at us and sigh: poor slobs. Too bad they didn’t learn them a real trade, the kind that allows to get paid even if the business model is faltering and somebody else is doing your job better than you…

Now no man (or woman) is safe. Dilbert got laid off, for crying out loud. He’s home, talking outsourcing with his dog. I heard the strip’s creator, Scott Adams, being interviewed on Marketplace the other night. Even the show’s unflappable Kai Ryssdal seemed to have trouble accepting the news. “How’s he going to fend for himself?” the host demanded of the cartoonist. Without giving away any secrets (though I wouldn’t look for Dilbert to hang himself in a strip anytime soon), Adams said his flat-headed Everyman is going to have to adapt. 

“I think cubicles are going to last forever,” he reassured listeners. “But I always thought we’d end of moving toward a Hollywood studio kind of model where, for each project or each product, you kind of gather the people you need just for that effort. And then at the end of it everybody’s free-range chicken again.”

Time to get your feathers wet.