I've had a lot of jobs in my life. Notice I didn't say career
because while many of the jobs were in related fields, I don't really
think of myself as having a coherent career. That could be because each
job was simply what I did at the time. Sure many of them involved a
computer and built on the knowledge I may have learned from school or
even the previous job, but they were connected to each other in the same
way that hand-gliding and riding in a commercial jet are related. The biggest issue I've found with my jobs is that
they don't really matter to each other. My previous experience helped
me get the job I have now, but I could have done this same work ten
years ago with little difference in overall performance. What does that
say about my so-called career that my jobs are all interchangeable?
Now I know several people who were fortunate enough
to find a job they enjoyed early on and turned it into a career. It
seems with my generation it's becoming more likely that people will not
only switch jobs, but change fields. Sometimes it's out of necessity
and other times it's forced upon them. Thirty years ago it would have
been strange for someone my age to have as many jobs as I do. It used
to be you find a job that pays you well enough and stick with it until you were too
old to work anymore. Twenty to thirty years later you called it a day
and collected your pension. The idea of me working anywhere long enough
to generate a real retirement fund seems unlikely. Not just because of
the economy, but because of who I am. I tend to have the attention
span of a puppy when it comes to work.
For much of the time since I graduated from college
the economy has been in a recession and in some cases I think it's been a
depression. I'm not an economist or anything. I just know that for as
long as I can remember people have worried about layoffs, downturns,
and unemployment rates. One has to wonder if the trend for the last ten
to fifteen years has been overall negative then maybe it's not a trend,
but just the way things are. Of course everything is cyclical and I
have to believe that eventually things will turn around. I've just
never seen it since I've been old enough to really care about it. There
are people graduating from college that can't find a job. It's not
because they are unqualified, well some of them are, it's because
there's simply not enough jobs to go around anymore. The whole
situation is strange too because there's still work to be done. I know
several industries that are swamped with work, where their people are
working well over forty hours a week.
One of the most hated phrases thrown around in corporate America is "do more with less", which is really just a buzz worthy way of saying that they expect the same level (or higher) of service but don't want to pay for it. The company just laid off three hundred employees because they couldn't afford to keep them on anymore. That doesn't mean the work those people were doing goes away. Instead it gets redistributed to whoever is left standing. Often times those people still with a job are just thankful they still are working and will take on the new responsibilities because if they don't, they too may be out the door. Eventually though it just becomes standard operating procedure for people to keep taking on more work. Their salaries or benefits don't go up because the company is trying to save money. I get that a company's primary function is to make money. They may make computer software, or shoes, or save babies, but they need to make money in order to continue doing whatever it is they do. So I don't think that most companies set out to screw over their employees by taking from them and giving nothing back in return. That's not usually their intention, at least not at first. What probably happens is that the higher ups see that they've been able to save X number of dollars after "trimming the fat" and that overall productivity and/of quality hasn't gone down, so they figure everything is fine. What they most likely don't ever see is that the person who was already swamped with their own work now has to take on extra work from one of the people who were walked out the door. The employees do this because what's the alternative? If they aren't able to meet the new demands they know that the company has no problems with letting people go. Essentially the employees are held hostage in their jobs because the other option in a recession is to join the unemployment line. Companies know this and have a tendency to take advantage. Like I said, things haven't been good for as long as I remember, so they know that it's unlikely there will be a sudden explosion of new jobs that people could flock to.
I think my fundamental issue with jobs is that I just don't understand how our society has gotten to the point where we're defined by what we do for a living. My job is just the thing I do to make money so I can buy food and pay my bills. While I'm not some kind of anarchist who thinks we should do away with jobs and bills, I do wonder why is it that we think we're so advanced and yet we still behave like ants or cavemen. Many people think it's an unreasonable dream to do a job that you love. They believe that you should be happy just being able to make money to survive. What if you want more than to survive? What if you wake up one day and realize that this is the only life you're going to get and spending forty hours a day doing a job that you loathe is a waste of your life? Are you supposed to just accept it and sell more widgets because anything more is just a dream? There are people out there right now who have their dream jobs. They wake up in the morning and get excited about going to work. They don't even think of it as work a lot of the time. If they can do it then why can't others? There has to be more involved than just blind luck. Maybe it all comes down to personality where one person simply will not accept tedium for their life. Everyone eventually gets to a point in their life where they start looking back and wondering if it's been spent wisely. The jobs we've had should be footnotes in the story of our lives, not the defining moments.
One of the most hated phrases thrown around in corporate America is "do more with less", which is really just a buzz worthy way of saying that they expect the same level (or higher) of service but don't want to pay for it. The company just laid off three hundred employees because they couldn't afford to keep them on anymore. That doesn't mean the work those people were doing goes away. Instead it gets redistributed to whoever is left standing. Often times those people still with a job are just thankful they still are working and will take on the new responsibilities because if they don't, they too may be out the door. Eventually though it just becomes standard operating procedure for people to keep taking on more work. Their salaries or benefits don't go up because the company is trying to save money. I get that a company's primary function is to make money. They may make computer software, or shoes, or save babies, but they need to make money in order to continue doing whatever it is they do. So I don't think that most companies set out to screw over their employees by taking from them and giving nothing back in return. That's not usually their intention, at least not at first. What probably happens is that the higher ups see that they've been able to save X number of dollars after "trimming the fat" and that overall productivity and/of quality hasn't gone down, so they figure everything is fine. What they most likely don't ever see is that the person who was already swamped with their own work now has to take on extra work from one of the people who were walked out the door. The employees do this because what's the alternative? If they aren't able to meet the new demands they know that the company has no problems with letting people go. Essentially the employees are held hostage in their jobs because the other option in a recession is to join the unemployment line. Companies know this and have a tendency to take advantage. Like I said, things haven't been good for as long as I remember, so they know that it's unlikely there will be a sudden explosion of new jobs that people could flock to.
I think my fundamental issue with jobs is that I just don't understand how our society has gotten to the point where we're defined by what we do for a living. My job is just the thing I do to make money so I can buy food and pay my bills. While I'm not some kind of anarchist who thinks we should do away with jobs and bills, I do wonder why is it that we think we're so advanced and yet we still behave like ants or cavemen. Many people think it's an unreasonable dream to do a job that you love. They believe that you should be happy just being able to make money to survive. What if you want more than to survive? What if you wake up one day and realize that this is the only life you're going to get and spending forty hours a day doing a job that you loathe is a waste of your life? Are you supposed to just accept it and sell more widgets because anything more is just a dream? There are people out there right now who have their dream jobs. They wake up in the morning and get excited about going to work. They don't even think of it as work a lot of the time. If they can do it then why can't others? There has to be more involved than just blind luck. Maybe it all comes down to personality where one person simply will not accept tedium for their life. Everyone eventually gets to a point in their life where they start looking back and wondering if it's been spent wisely. The jobs we've had should be footnotes in the story of our lives, not the defining moments.
