{"id":4210,"date":"2019-11-22T16:31:12","date_gmt":"2019-11-22T20:31:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=4210"},"modified":"2022-03-11T15:36:21","modified_gmt":"2022-03-11T19:36:21","slug":"non-scalable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/non-scalable\/","title":{"rendered":"Non-Scalable: What It Means, Its Effect on Your Job + Pay"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What does it mean for something to be “non-scalable”? What does it mean for something to be “scalable”? Can a job be scalable or non-scalable?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We’ll cover examples of jobs that are non-scalable and jobs that are scalable to give you a better idea of the benefits of a scalable job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Scalable and Non-Scalable Jobs<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

One reason that Black Swans<\/a> are so profoundly disruptive is that they occur in the \u201cscalable\u201d parts of our lives\u2014where physical limits don\u2019t apply and effects tend toward incredible extremes. When a particular thing\u2014an income, an audience for a particular product\u2014is \u201cscalable,\u201d it can grow exponentially without any additional expenditure of effort.
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\u201cMassage therapist,\u201d for example, is a \u201cnon-scalable\u201d profession. There is an upper limit on how many clients you can see\u2014there\u2019s only so much time in a day, and therapists\u2019 bodies fatigue\u2014and thus there\u2019s only so much income you can expect from that profession.
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In contrast to non-scalable professions, \u201cQuantitative trader\u201d is a \u201cscalable\u201d <\/em>profession. It takes no additional energy or time to purchase 5,000 shares of a stock than 50, and your income isn\u2019t limited by physical constraints.
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Artists, too, are in a scalable profession (at least in the age of digital reproduction). For instance, a singer doesn\u2019t need to perform her hit song each time someone wants to hear it. She performs it once for the record, and that performance can be disseminated widely.
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The problem with scalability<\/a> is that it creates vast inequalities. Let\u2019s look at the singer example again:
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