Category Archives: career

5 Best Websites for Job Seekers

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It can be difficult to discover careers in an unstable economy, but without the power of the internet, job searching can become even more difficult. Some job sites can help: these five job search websites make the process easier for the unemployed or underemployed - or even someone simply looking for a better opportunity.

1) Monster.com is the largest and most commonly used job search website that operates as a tool for potential employees to browse listings directly from employers.

  • Pros: According to the Wall Street Journal, 73 percent of employers spend a considerable amount of time browsing the database for potential employees. According to Greenfield Online, 61 percent of online job seekers choose Monster.com over competitor websites.
  • Cons: Creating a resume that stands out can be difficult because of Monster’s inflexibility that forces the job seeker to stick to its strict format. Also, some Monster listings are outdated or come from questionable sources. Some users have reported that they never received a response from the employer, not even an acknowledgment of a successful inquiry; this occurs because listings are often posted by recruiters and not actual employers.

2) Indeed.com is a job search engine that monitors listings from other websites. Indeed does not require the user to submit a resume, but opens up a window to job listings from other major websites.

  • Pros: Simple interface. Indeed does a great job at making the job search process simple and efficient. Also, users can subscribe to job searches which will notify them of any new listings.
  • Cons: Because Indeed is simply an interface to search for job listings, it doesn’t have a system implemented that allows the user to apply to the jobs without setting up an account with the website where the listing stands. This can be time-consuming and inefficient.


3) LinkedIn.com is a business-oriented networking site that connects potential employees to employers through a unique database.

  • Pros: LinkedIn’s unique networking capabilities can lead to interesting results. Reaching to one employer will lead to another, which leads to another. LinkedIn acts like Facebook for the job search market.
  • Cons: LinkedIn is typically utilized by professionals in any given field, so it is not as welcoming to those looking to break through in a new career.

4) Careerbuilder.com is a job listing database that allows the user to apply for jobs right through its website.

  • Pros: Like monster.com, Careerbuilder details job listings through a search that can be narrowed to suit the job seeker’s needs. The interface is simple, efficient and noteworthy because the site makes job recommendations for the user.
  • Cons: Not much makes career.com stand out from its major competitor Monster. Monster has a higher installed base of recruiters and job listings.

5) Dice.com is a job search hub website that is specificially taliored to jobs in the tech field. I’m not as familiar with this site as others, but tech-y friends of mine refer to it all the time.

  • Pros: If a user is seeking a job in an information technology field, for instance, this is the best website to start at because it details recent firings at firms, wage standards, advice, as well as job listings.
  • Cons: Dice’s advantages are also its downfall. There is nothing here that stands out from its major competitors other than a focus on tech jobs. Users may want to search other job listings, which they cannot do on Dice.

Although each website provides a service that can benefit job seekers, some are tailored for specific audiences while others have a broader appeal. Job seekers need to figure out what they are searching for before they create an account at any given site. The beauty of the internet is that they can sign up for more than one website. Personally, I’ve found one job through Careerbuilder, two through Monster and one through LinkedIn. The other two came from my college and from a cold call I made to a company I really wanted to work for. These days you’ll hear a lot of disparaging remarks about certain job sites - particularly Monster.com - but I’d still recommend keeping half an eye focused on them. They still exists because people can, and have, found jobs through them. Don’t discount any avenue towards finding work.

 

the dead end of home ownership

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the American dream

I’ve known more than one guy with the following life story: working at a corporate job as a middle manager, married with young-ish kids and settled in normal sized house in an acceptable neighborhood. Maybe the kids are really young, even though he’s in his forties; like me, a lot of men (and women) are waiting until later in life to have kids. The house is comfortable but small. The job is OK but if the guy’s honest with himself he knows he’s not likely to soar to the CEO floor in the 15 or so years of working life he has left to him.

So here’s the question: if you make X dollars at age 40, say, and 40% of your income goes to your mortgage that you took out at age 38 - a 30 year fixed mortgage - and you’re expecting a 5% raise every year (if you’re lucky) - when will you reach the finish line?

I know the common perception is that if you own instead of renting there will come a blissful moment when you burn the mortgage documents and skip off into sunset worry-free. In my mind, two things will be happening in 30 years when my mortgage is paid off that will throw a big monkey wrench in those plans.

Property taxes

Perhaps you live in Cheyenne, Wyoming. If so, your property taxes are the lowest (on average) in America, probably around $1000 per year. That’s $83 per month, a doable figure. However, if you live in places like Garden City, New York, your taxes run closer to $9000 per year, or $750 per month. One thing I can guarantee about both Cheyenne and Garden City that holds equally true for both is that 30 years from now, those taxes will be higher. Will they have grown at a rate faster or slower than your annual raises at work? With the strains looming on the US economy - an enormous national debt, rapidly ageing population, and so on, I’d be willing to bet those taxes will eat up a big chunk of your post-retirement income after you’ve paid off the mortgage.

Shoddy construction

On this point I only have my own limited experience to go on, but I remember laughing out loud every time someone asked me in New Jersey if I expected to pay off my mortgage on my townhouse in 30 years. I laughed because I really didn’t expect my townhouse to last 30 years. We moved in while construction was going on in the community, and I saw how these homes were built: pressboard and 2 by 4s. Not stone, not metal. K. Hovnanian put them up fast, using what (ahem) APPEARED to be workers who might not have been entirely legal citizens. These were not structures built to last. These were not cheap places, either; it was a very expensive gated neighborhood with fancy homes (think elevators installed in the homes, riverfront views, etc.) Most American homes will need substantial and continuous maintenance and repair work in 30 years. So think about that mid-70s guy dealing with a crumbling home. Again, no mortgage, maybe, but those bills can mount up quickly.

…the dead end

I still think you ought to own if you want to own, and you ought to work for a corporation if that’s what twirls your pigtails, but this scenario just looks like a dead end to me. This house I’m in now needs to be my last one, or else I’m going to need to move into a place where I can pay off the mortgage substantially sooner than 30 years or I’ll be working to pay the mortgage (and other costs) into my 80s. If you don’t think that’s a dead end, I don’t know what is. I for one don’t want to be struggling away at age 75 to finally pay off my mortgage just to get stuck in a crumbling house paying exorbitant property taxes. Figuring out how to stay out of this dead end ought to be a high priority for anyone who looks to buy a home in their late 30s or later.

job junkie

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Dr. Drew - the famous radio/TV addiction-specialist doctor of Loveline, Sober House and Celebrity Rehab fame - has a layman’s definition of addiction: it’s any activity that you continue engaging in despite adverse conditions. Hits it right on the head, I think. If you keep drinking after a DUI, you’re addicted. If you keep doing drugs after going to jail, obsessively playing online bingo after your spouse has threatened to leave you, eating sweets after developing diabetes or smoking while you have a cold, you’ve got a problem. You don’t have to experience the adverse condition to be addicted, of course, but the adverse event is the proof, if you will.

I like this definition because you can apply it to many other areas of life. For example, if you keep charging crap on your credit card after you’ve started being charged interest for past purchases, you’re continuing in the face of an obvious adverse event. The interest is a fine, a continuing adverse event that would cause a normal, non-addicted-to-credit person to stop using the product. And many, many people have a far more severe addiction: the addiction to their job.

Just to prove I’m not preaching, I’ll use myself as an example. I have a good job - although, strictly speaking, it’s not a job. I do contract consulting and I am able to charge substantial rates for my work. I flatter myself sometimes that it’s because I’m just that good, but the real reason is that I offer my services to giant corporations for whom my fee is a footnote to a footnote to a rounding error. They don’t mind flinging some cash in my direction to avoid the hassle of hiring a permanent employee to finish their projects; they don’t have to train me, give me benefits and then file endless mounds of paperwork before they let me go. I can come in, do the work with a minimum of supervision, and leave with no fuss. So I get paid at a premium.

And because of that I’m addicted to my job. I’ve continued doing it for years, despite many adverse events and conditions, some obvious, some not. The job is stressful due to boredom, physically uncomfortable working conditions, long commutes, inflexible working hours and sometimes unpleasant coworkers (overworked, underpaid, and overstressed themselves). Audit often results in uncovering illegal, unethical or simply incompetent work by other employees. Stress comes easily when others around you are constantly suspicious, frightened or hostile that you are “out to get them.” And despite being freer than the the average employee to direct my work, I still have the adverse work conditions that arise from a direct exchange of my time for the client’s money: my income increases and decreases directly in proportion to the hours I work. Stress if I work too much and stress if I earn too little. Could you pass some cheese, by the way? I need it to go with my whine.

But how many people are addicted to their jobs? I know the argument is always that a job is a job in this economy. Fine. I am sure all of the people who stuck with their “good jobs” at now-shuttered assembly lines throughout Michigan are patting themselves on the back that they stuck with a good job instead of getting out and getting training in a new field before GM and Chrysler imploded. I’m sure that all of the finance guys who were putting in 80 hour weeks at my Wall Street clients are happy they put in all that unpaid time doing a job they hate before being laid off in 2008. Sometimes clinging to a job to the bitter end is a bad thing, even if it provides some temporary financial security.

It’s not just financial security; that job addiction can impact your long-term health. Many of us are happy to be moderately fit, moderately overweight and to have a job that doesn’t make us throw up before going to work every morning. Whitman’s quote about most men living lives of quiet desperation is not any less true for being massively over-quoted by people like me. I don’t think any parents dream for their kids to grow up to slog through life delivered in two-week increments when a paycheck arrives. Nobody wants to have a slow trickle of stress poured down their throat for 40 years. Your health - physical and mental - will inevitably suffer. True health is being free of addiction to any behavior that hurts you - be it alcohol, gambling, drugs, violence, TV, a bad job, on and on. It’s not enough to be fit and hate your job, either. It’s not enough to hate your job but endure it simply to make money. Whether you’re literally prostituting yourself for another puff off the crack pipe or figuratively prostituting yourself to break your spirit for 40 years so you can visit the beach twice a year for a week, you’re a junkie.

photo by Dominic’s pics
http://www.drdrew.com/

networking is not about quid-pro-quo

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rome

Quid-pro-quo means “something for something” and in a capitalist society we’re trained to think about this rule governing almost all transactions, both commerce and personal. Just as we expect to hand over $1 for a pack of gum, the guy selling the gum expects to receive that $1. Most people say “I love you” with the expectation that it will be returned with “I love you, too.” Very few transactions escape the quid-pro-quo “law”: maybe doing things for your children, or working overtime for your employer (but even there, you might argue you’re hoping to keep your job in exchange for unpaid work).

But networking isn’t (exactly) like that. You can’t expect someone to return something of equal or greater value every time you help someone through networking. If someone puts you in touch with a new client that generates six figures of income for you, do you owe that person a six-figure client? Do you owe them anything? No, you don’t, but you do owe someone something. At the risk of sounding like I’m using a movie to establish my point, you have to pay it forward.

If all networks operated on a quid-pro-quo basis, many people would find large networks a full-time job. The advantages to helping out newer members of an industry or smaller businesses would be minimal, because you couldn’t count on them to return your help quickly or easily. That’s not how a network should work, though. You’ll often read in career advice books/blogs/columns that you should give help in a network (or on Twitter or whatever the social media darling of the day is) without expecting an automatic equal return of the favor. That’s true to a point: you should give help without expecting a return of the favor from that person, but you do have every right to expect a return of the favor from the network as a whole. It may not be immediate - and it certainly may not be obvious - but that return over time has to occur to make the network worthwhile.

Look at how you help people in your network, be it social, professional, educational - whatever. If you aren’t receiving at least equal value back out of your network compared to what you put in, your network is broken. There will always be those who take more than they give, but on whole the network has to provide more value to you than you put into it. If it doesn’t, get out.

Of course value can be companionship or fun, not something as quantifiable as clients or services. But value has to be there. If you find yourself putting more of yourself into any of your networks - and I’m including ‘social media’ such as Facebook or Twitter as well as traditional networks like professional associations, churches or friends - then maybe you should consider finding a new way to spend your time and effort. If it doesn’t make you money, then it should be fun. If it doesn’t make you money and it’s not fun, why are you doing it? There are many other activities you could be doing that make you money or let you have fun instead. Go do them.

photo by ** Maurice **

full-time employment is uncertain, and links

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One of the things I’ve learned over the years is that most people want to hold on to their own idea of reality as long as they can. If you believe in a particular religion, or you have particular political beliefs, or dietary beliefs, etc. - you cling to it as a matter of fact rather than opinion. Even in the face of reason or fact, most people will choose belief over reality. It’s a sad phenomenon, for the most part, although it’s comforting in the short run. You want to think that what you believe is true, regardless of the facts opposing those beliefs.

I see this in my work environment all the time. It’s a tired story, but for the millionth time I’ve been asked how I can stand to be a consultant despite “all the uncertainty.” I had to hold my breath and then point out that I’ve outlasted 50% of the employees in the department I’m in. Employees are uncertain. Full-time employment is rapidly becoming a burden to companies - short-term expert consultants are far more valuable and cost-effective than full-timers. I’m not saying that’s a good thing - but it is what it is. I’m just amazed, again and again, that I have to explain to employees that my job as a contract consultant is just as secure, if not more secure, than theirs is.

A few links from around the web - including congratulations on this one, Blogging for U.S. News & World Report; frequent commenter Syd has a cool new gig going at a “real” media publication - go check it out!

work-life balance is a false choice

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Creative Commons License photo credit: pshutterbug

Everyone understands that being engaged in your work, life, family and self is key to a happy life. Nobody thinks that you’ll be perfectly fulfilled without a balance - everyone needs to be happy with their family, but you also need outside interests. Everyone needs to feel like they are a contributing member of both a family and a society. It’s not an easy balance for most of us.

I struggle with it - I make good money but I still have less free time during the week than I’d like. Bubelah struggles with it, too - she spends a lot of time devoted to child care now that we have two kids, although having my son in preschool has helped. This imbalance is something many single-income families face, because the roles end up being so sharply divided.

Yet at the same time most of us feel that we have to struggle with work/life balance. You will not gain financial independence quickly as an employee. Employees are performing a straight-up swap of their time for money; the possibility to increase the money-to-time ratio is at the employer’s discretion, never the employee’s. If you want to be rich and therefore gain some measure of independence in your financial choices - and therefore in your life, you have to start a business or buy real estate or become a person who understands the market in its current sickly state. Alternative income is key to building wealth. But I am not just talking about figuring out a way to get rich.

Why is it that we view work/life balance as a struggle, a conflict to be resolved? I worry about it more than I worry about most things in my life - and I’m a worrier by nature - but I am trying increasingly to focus not so much on work/life balance but on how to move towards integrating work and life together in the future. I don’t think balance is truly possible. If you work a long commute away from home, most of your waking time is spent away from “life.” If you spend all of your time at home, it’s hard to develop your career or interests. Again, figuring out a way to get away from selling your time for money is key. The key is not to strive for balance, but to find work you enjoy and can integrate with your “life,” instead of working hard then retiring early, or thinking that working an eight-hour day with a three-hour commute and having a few hours at home is balance. Figuring out a way to do it in a blended way is better than trying to figure out a balanced way - because if you sell your time for money, there will never be balance.

Preparing for Your First Post-Grad Interview: The Importance of Being Well-Read

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(Steve’s note: This is a guest post; I thought I would point it out since the references to Russia might make it sound like me!)

Funny story: Less than a year before I graduated from my alma mater, I studied abroad in Russia for a semester, and encountered some-needless to say- bizarre experiences. One that stands out in my mind was when I was sitting at a café, reading a book and sipping on wonderfully grainy cup of Nescafe instant coffee.

During my stay in Russia, I found that it was surprisingly unusual to hear English spoken in public, even in a city as big as Saint Petersburg, so my ears instantly perked up when I heard two people across from me speaking English. There was some Russian speaking involved, but from my reasonably proficient background in the language, I understood the situation—a woman, presumably working for a multinational company, was interviewing a Russian man for a bilingual job. Half of the interview was to be conducted in Russian and half was in English. When the English part started, the woman asked the man, “What are some of your biggest weaknesses?” The man looked slightly confused and nervous, then perked up and confidently answered in a thick Russian accent, “Nu, I drink too much, and I smoke too much, and sometimes I cheat on my wife.” His expression was completely blank, so I knew he wasn’t joking.

The woman’s face turned beet-red instantly; she was obviously not expecting that answer. I couldn’t help but burst out laughing. I suppose you could chalk up the man’s response to a case of “lost in translation”, but for me this example stands as the ultimate obvious no-no in an interview situation. Initially, I brushed this experience off as one of the many funny incidents during my time in Russia, but later the image of the man making a deal-breaking mistake would come back to haunt me as I prepared for job interviews after college.

Sure, I knew I wasn’t going to make a faux pas to such a grave extent, but still, I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect. Of course, for my first interview, I researched the company extensively, I practiced with a friend on eye contact, and she even threw at me some of the more bizarre questions to help me think on my feet. When time for the actual interview came around, however, the experience was like nothing I anticipated. There were the typical interview questions, like why I was best suited for the job and what did I expect to be doing in five years, etc. But what really surprised me was the extent to which my interviewers were simply curious about my intellectual interests.

What came in handy—what really saved me in this interview—was the fact that I had diverse reading tastes. Steve has written about the importance of reading before, but I’d venture to argue that reading a lot can do more than simply further enrich your intellectual life. Believe it or not, it can actually be useful in your career. During the interview, I was able to defer to several different theories and current events in economics, philosophy, technological advances, and even literature, simply because I read voraciously in my free time while in college.

And I don’t think that my experience was a singular one—many of my friends, all of whom are, to a certain extent, intellectually curious, also had similar first-time interview experiences. While I’m not sure if gauging intellectual curiosity is a newer trend in recruiting practices, I think it’s great that hiring managers seem to be taking this direction.

So in the final analysis, it pays to read. It is certainly worth your while to soak up ideas, from whatever angle or perspective. Being educated—and keep in mind, I’m not necessarily referring to formal education here—will make you a happier, more confident person. And it may just help you land that job, too.

About the author: This guest post is contributed by Emily Thomas, who writes on the topics of online college degree. She welcomes your questions and comments by email at emily.thomas31@gmail.com.

how to avoid giving gifts at work

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That’s right: how to AVOID giving gifts at work. A pet peeve of mine, for a long time, has been the corporate office “pitch in for a gift” routine. If you aren’t a corporate employee, let me explain. What happens is that there’s one perky busybody in every department who decides to buy a flower basket when co-workers gets sick, or a teddy bear when they have a baby, or an item from the registry when someone gets married, or even a little gift for everyone’s birthday. This busybody goes around and asks everyone for a “donation,” knowing full well that for most people refusing is an embarrassing proposition.

I have never liked this business of pitching in. I like it even less now that I’m a consultant, and anyone with half a brain should be able to realize that I have even less interest than the average employee in participating. Plus:

  • 1. I don’t always like the person for whom the present is being purchased.
  • 2. Sometimes the reason for the gift is trivial - someone is having a birthday? What, are we 12?
  • 3. There is a subtle discrimination - someone who has been around longer, or has a better position, or is simply more popular gets bigger or better gifts.
  • 4. If the busybody is encouraged, soon you are shelling out $10-$20 a week for “voluntary” gifts.

I am also very uncomfortable accepting such gifts, and have often said point-blank that I don’t want any gifts. Maybe I have a distorted view, but to me if I receive a gift I feel an obligation to return it the next time I’m asked to contribute. Then I’m “stuck” as a regular contributor. And I won’t do it. I often make a point early on to tell people that I do not participate with any “optional” offerings – gifts, flowers, etc. I don’t give to the boss’s favorite charity, either, another pet peeve. Going around soliciting for your daughter’s Girl Scout cookie sales is soliciting, plain and simple. So is Yankee Candle and anything else the boss brings in and coos about being “fun, you should try it!” Imagine if I started bringing in sales brochures for my consulting business and handing them out to people in the finance department.

Now that I’m a consultant - and technically not “part” of the department - I find it easier to refuse. I am stingy enough with gift-giving for my family and friends (and myself) that I resent any “required” gifts for my co-workers. I know, in a sense, that this just reflects the realities of most people’s lives - that they spend more time with their co-workers than with their friends and families and therefore want to contribute to the morale of their workplace. Yet every time I’m asked to pitch in $10 for a co-worker’s cheese-and-sausage gift basket I see $10 that could buy my son some books, or $10 to add to my nieces’ and nephew’s custodial accounts, or even $10 that Bubelah and I could put towards an occasional evening out. I am selfish that way. I want to give money to charities of my choice, not to a charity chosen by a coworker who had a great-aunt pass away.

So am I crazy? Do you have people asking you to contribute to “departmental” gifts at the office? Do you participate? Am I just being a jerk?

As we know it is always something, whether it be anniversary, birthday, or new born baby gifts.

how to learn to love your job

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Q: Did you always dream of drawing and writing, or were you about to happily settle for a so-called normal job? Was it the misery of “humiliating and low-paying jobs,” or the joy of drawing and writing, that pushed you this way?
A: I pursued a normal job so I wouldn’t starve to death while figuring out how to have an extraordinary job. I just didn’t know how it would play out. –Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert

How can you find a great job? What’s the secret to a fulfilling career?

The perfect job. Who doesn’t dream of finding a job that’s not just good, but great? Flexible hours, massive responsibility (or lack thereof), high pay, interesting work, friendly and interesting colleagues, travel with perks, and a corner office overlooking the city. Chances are that it’s just that – a dream. Most of us who work for a paycheck are stuck working at something less than our dream. The need to pay the rent, the mortgage, the medical bills and so on makes the necessity of a paycheck too much to disregard. But before you despair, here are 9 things to remember about your current less-than-perfect job that might make you feel just a bit better:

1. You don’t have to go out feet first. I pose this question to coworkers often: do you plan to die at your desk after decades of working for this company? The answer is always no, so I say “then you plan to quit at some point – it’s simply a question of timing.” Remember that your job is not forever. The drama and politics that seem so real now will be gone in 10 years – probably even less – from your memory. Look forward to quitting – someday.

2. You are not your job. Albert Einstein was a patent clerk. Nobody remembers Einstein for his year-end patent clerking evaluation, or the patent clerk staff meetings he skipped. He was not defined by his job, but by what he did besides his work. If you love to paint, don’t let the fact that you work in retail sales discourage you from painting.

3. Take pride in your paycheck. It may seem like a small thing, often dismissed as “not following your dreams,” but there is some value to simply bringing home a paycheck. If you have a family, be proud that you can provide for them. If you are single, be proud that you stand on your own feet without help from your parents. Even if your job is not perfect, take some pride in the fact that through this job you can support yourself (and your family).

4. Never stop learning. Even the worst possible job presents opportunities for learning – even if they are lessons like “I never want to do this again.” Try and find opportunities in your job to learn new skills. Those skills might come in handy at your NEXT job.

5. Your colleagues may change. If you suffer with a particular colleague, remember that they may leave any day. You don’t necessarily HAVE to be the one to blink and quit! Sometimes you can outlast people that irritate you.

6. The next job may not be that great, either. Everyone has experienced the sinking feeling of quitting one job, moving to a new one and discovering it may be even worse than the one before. If you set an expectation that your life will be a never-ending series of triumphant improvements, you may have some too-high expectations to overcome. Even a near-perfect job will have its off days.

7. Working on the side is only possible if you have “a side.” Writing the next great American screenplay is a terrific idea (although you’ll be crossing the picket lines if you do). However, nobody has ever said that you have to do that and nothing else. There is no shame keeping your day job to support yourself and working on side projects meanwhile. Scott Adams kept working at the phone company in a cubicle even after Dilbert became a syndicated comic strip. Keep at it. Success will come.

8. Don’t discount the social aspect of a bad job. Sometimes the job duties may be bad but the people you work with are great. If you have a bad job but you like your co-workers, keep in mind that a rewarding job doesn’t always guarantee like-minded, friendly colleagues.

9. Motivation isn’t always positive! Sometimes keeping that not-so-perfect job is what spurs people on to avoid “jobs” altogether. Maybe the employee lifestyle just isn’t for you – use that frustration with your current job to inspire you to discover your real passion and break away!

9 reasons international business travel was fun…back then

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A few days ago at work, I was reminded after telling a few stories about the glory days of travel across Europe, South America and Asia that business travel back then was significantly more prestigious/luxurious/etc. I don’t think you’ll see the kind of treatment I got back in the flush days of the late 90s and early 2000s ever again.

So what was fun about travel back in 1999/2000?

  1. Traveling first or business class: I never traveled coach. The thinking of most of the companies and/or clients I worked for or with was that heavy-duty international business travel demanded business class travel. It probably did - I often rolled off the plane, showered and headed to the office. You want to try that after spending 14 hours in coach from New York to Istanbul?
  2. Charging “actuals” for meals (in other words, whatever you spend, rather than being allotted $25 for dinner). And by meals, I include alcohol. If you took clients out the expectations were that you’d slam that Amex down like you’d just won at dominos. A dip in the martini wading pool was part of the evening.
  3. Staying at luxury hotels. It’s hard to define luxury, but to paraphrase Justice Potter Stewart’s views on porn, I know it when I see it. My favorites? St. Martin’s Lane in London; the Grand Marriott in Bucharest and the Swissotel in Istanbul. Nowadays I think business travellers are lucky if they don’t have to double up with their coworkers at the Best Western.
  4. Drivers. I won’t say I always had drivers; depending on the location I might drive myself or take taxis. In Russia, I frequently hitched a ride. But having a dedicated driver was not unusual in places like Indonesia.
  5. Freedom from connectivity. Today, no matter where you travel in the world, it’s hard to claim a lack of connectivity. BlackBerries, GSM, and omnipresent Internet access in most modern countries make it hard to hide. This freedom was starting to die when I was traveling; toward the end of my career I received a GSM phone that worked in Europe. But I was able to set myself free in the evenings: once I went out to eat, I could legitimately claim not to have read emails.
  6. Isolation. Related to the freedom from connectivity, isolation gave me the opportunity to make a lot of decisions that today’s traveler has to run through supervisors. Much like a 19th century ambassador, I represented the home country while overseas; I didn’t have conference calls and video conferences making me into a staff gopher.
  7. Airport security. Before 9/11, crappy and pointless airport security existed. I am sure if I totalled up the hours I’ve spent in visa control at Sheremetyevo in Moscow I’d cry. But most of the delays were due to stupid red tape, not airport security guards trying to defend against yesterday’s terrorist tactics.
  8. Novelty. When I visited Romania, I was still unusual: an American. Not that there weren’t Americans there, but it was still a small novelty for many, many of the people I met. I’d belly up to the bar in the evenings and be surrounded by Germans, Russians or Italians, but seldom Americans. I imagine by now Americans are swarming over Eastern Europe.
  9. Before the end of the love affair with America. I’m sure many Americans sneer and scoff “so what” when I say that most of the world hated us - bitterly - after the Iraq War kicked off. I’m glad I traveled at a time when we had a president who was beloved even more than the current one overseas. I’m glad I didn’t have to say I was Canadian, like our security department warned us to say post-2003. I’m glad I traveled when people clapped me on the shoulder and asked me to tell Madonna and Bill Clinton that Czabo from Hungary said hi.

Even considering all of these advantages, I still got tired of business travel. I’ve told my colleagues many times that the tenth trip to Paris is just another stupid business trip. The novelty wears off. But times were better, and I’m glad I got my chance to enjoy the corporate excess when corporations were still excessive.

the 5 o’clock test

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You’ve probably heard the saying that “we’re all in business for ourselves.” This statement resonates with me. Everyone is, in effect, an entrepreneur. You may be an entrepreneur with a narrow set of expertise and only one client: an employee, in other words. Yet you are not a permanent part of your employer’s company. As you move on through life, you will be an entrepreneur of your own brand, seeking to move from one client at a time to another. You may become increasingly specialized in your services, but the brand - you - is still something you’ll attempt to promote and improve upon as you move from client/employer to client/employer.

Even if you buy into this mindset, though, it can be tough to think like an entrepreneur in a 9-to-5 job. An employee has a fundamentally different way of viewing the world than an entrepreneur does. One of the main ways you can tell if you’re an employee with an entrepreneurial mindset versus an employee with an employee mindset is this: do you worry about being at your desk at 5:00 PM (and also, 9:00 AM)?

If you have the employee mindset, you’ll want to make sure you’re a team player. You’ll have a contract specifying a minimum of 40 hours per week, and you’ll watch that clock to make sure you are in your seat 40 hours (at a minimum). The employee mindset says that the “where” (sitting at your desk) is more important than the “what” (getting results). The employee is banking on ‘face time’ being the critical measurement of success. If you have ten hours of work to do or two hours, the hours will be the same.

The entrepreneurial employee’s mindset is different. If you’re in at 10 and leave at 3, it doesn’t matter as long as you get the job done. If you need to be there at 5 (or 6, or 7), fine. If you can leave early, also fine. The employee with the entrepreneur’s approach knows that his or her “brand” is based on whether or not goals were met. Whether you sat in your desk an extra two hours after your work was done for the day, just so you were there at 5, doesn’t matter.

Has anyone in a professional career has ever bragged in an interview about how they could always be counted on to stay in the office until 5:00? Employers don’t care. Clients don’t care, either. Skills and results are the only thing that matters, right?

Unfortunately that’s not true. A lot of lip service is given in the corporate environment to work/life balance and the idea that only results matter, but anyone who spends more than a day or two in a cubicle knows this isn’t true. Whether or not you have butt firmly planted in chair at 5:00 matters nothing to your next job, true. But in office politics - the business of surviving in and flourishing in your current job - ‘face time’ is critical. Look around the office and see how many people are coasting, working at less than full potential, simply so they have their tired face visible when 5:00 rolls around. These people may understand, deep down, that there is no real reason to be adhering to a 9-to-5 schedule, but that’s the corporate culture and it seems unlikely to change.

If you feel the desire to be in your seat at 5:00, fine. Many people are more comfortable not rocking the boat. But if you feel that you NEED to be in your seat at 5:00 or you’re going to be disciplined, you’re not in an organization that values results. You’re being paid to fill a budgeted position so a manager can move up the corporate ladder by pointing to his management of a team of 20. And before you think you can just coast along showing up at 5:00, remember this: managers with that mindset weren’t born. They were sitting in your seat 20 years ago, waiting for the clock to move past 4:59…

workplace violence

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If you spend any time working with a small group of people on intense, timeline-driven projects with limited resources you’ve experienced some - or maybe a lot of - tension. You’ve probably also read, with some trepidation, stories of people showing up at the office with an AK-47 dressed all in black. How likely is it that the person next to you will snap? Recent events showed us that even mild-mannered professors can snap (although the “mild-mannered” part might have just been a cover for a seething, troubled pysche). What flips the kill switch?

Anyone who chooses to strap on steel-toed boots, load up an automatic weapon and go shoot at Suzy because she didn’t help him on the March budget presentation would have gone crazy working on a horse farm, too. I’ve never killed anyone, but I’ve wanted to “kill people” in fits of anger. I never came close to translating that fit of anger into an actual, concrete series of actions to kill that person; for example, going to the gun store, buying ammo and studying schematics of the fourth floor. Yet office shootings do occur.

I’ve been in arguments in the office over the years. Occasionally profanity-laced and often with raised voices, only twice did they reach the level of actual physical violence. One was not surprising, the result of a fraud investigation I was leading; the subject threatened me and I had to be escorted by security in the evenings after his termination. It was all bluster, though, and nothing happened.

The other incident, I’m sad to say, was initiated by me. A fellow manager and I had argued over responsibilities on a shared project, ranging from staffing to budget to the question of “ownership” of the results of the report. The argument escalated over two days. On the second day, I was working at a client’s office about an hour by public transportation from my company’s office. A phone call from the other manager (I’ll call him Jim) came late in the afternoon after a stressful afternoon working on a particularly difficult set of audit items. In the middle of the Russian winter, I was in the midst of (yet another) semi-cold/semi-bronchitis episode and in no mood for yet another go-around with Jim. Jim - at least in my opinion - was a bit of a Crip, and I was hanging with the Bloods (you’ll have to read my article on life in the salt mine to fully appreciate that reference). Jim was everything I disliked about expatriates in Russia; disdainful of the language, the people, contemptuous of their education and unable to stutter out a single word in the language of the country in which he lived.

I’d like to say I remember the real initiator of the afternoon’s meltdown, but I don’t. I do remember standing in front of my (mostly female) staff in a conference room, doing that cartoonish move where you hold the phone receiver in front of your face, yelling at the top of my lungs while his voice rang out in an echo from the earpiece. Choice words were exchanged. After slamming the phone down, I calmly put all of my stuff together in my bag and walked out. My staff assumed I was going home for the day.

Instead, I walked the mile to the subway station seething. I walked into the station, got a token, caught a train, sat and seethed. It arrived at my company’s office after 45 minutes. I walked past security, took off my coat and dropped my bags, and walked down the hall. I turned into the cubicle area where Jim worked, and saw him over the low walls. Thunderous yelling between the two of us commenced. I taunted him in Russian, which he didn’t understand. He grew louder and more threatening until I picked up an office chair and threw it as hard as I could directly at him. At his head. All of this I did calmly, premeditated and without any “fog of rage” type of intention. I meant to do it, more than an hour in advance of actually doing it.

I’m not a small guy and back then I was not small at all. I had the strength and body mass to throw something as awkward as an office chair with a great deal of velocity, and I didn’t take anything off of it. I missed, though, and both Jim and I were restrained by several of our colleagues. The odd part was this: the principals of our little company never even came out of their offices. Motivated by fear that I was the guy with the bullet with their name on it? Or just indifferent?

After that, things were better. Jim and I weren’t asked or expected to work on anything together, or even speak. We crossed paths again but had the good sense not to engage in a fistfight in an office building where the security guards carried sawed-off shotguns. Jim drifted back to his home country after a while, forgotten by both the expats and the Russians in my office. I faded away slowly, burned out by illness and rage, until I left Russia for the relaxed pace of Manhattan.

I’m not sure what might have happened if I had access to a weapon that day. Probably nothing; I’m not stupid. In America that would land you in jail, but in Russia I would probably have ended up having a couple of those aforementioned shotguns’ butts applied to my skull - if I wasn’t having my right arm blown off first. But for a while I had a brief glimpse of the level of rage that could be set on fire by something as trivial as work; started by work, fanned by exhaustion, stress and contempt.

I don’t get as angry anymore. By stages I’ve moved away from that type of work to contracting jobs, which demand little and pay well. I haven’t been in a fight of any sort in at least ten years, although opportunities have arisen. Once you’re married and have children, it’s easy to think of the consequences for THEM and to back down; nobody needs daddy in the hoosegow. But I wonder how many people lurk in these high-stress jobs in cubicles. How often does someone spend the hour commute home fantasizing about killing their boss and telling themselves that their fantasy is just “blowing off steam?”

The fantasy occurs more often than we’d like, I bet. The short-term mentality promoted by stock markets and corporations, far-flung “communities” creating longer and longer communities and the pressure to superconsume are constantly testing the stress points of millions of people. If we’re “lucky”, the most vulnerable have health problems or depression and drop out before they hurt someone else. The easy availability of firearms doesn’t help (and yes gun-owners, I know it would have helped if someone else is armed and can shoot the shooter; are you REALLY going to feel better if HR issues you - and everyone else - a handgun at employee orientation)?

I don’t think there’s a solution; there have always been people who kill for their own dark, unbalanced reasons. But at some point as a society we’ll have to look at the way in which fear of unemployment and consumerism and access to firearms will continue to create fearful office environments, leading to more stress and a downward spiral. It’s not a path anyone wants to stroll down. I’m sorry I was part of it. If you think it’s not lurking out there in the dark corners of the office at 3:45 on a grim Wednesday, you’re more optimistic than I am.

Note: A good read on this subject is Going Postal, a book written by Mark Ames, a guy whose writing I much admire (much like his partner, Matt Taibbi) for their writing for the eXile, both in Moscow at the same time I was there (where I didn’t know them although I think based on hazy recollections that I met Mark at a party). Mark’s got some terrifying stories in his book, which should serve as an anthem to anti-cubicle life if there ever was one. Oh, and yes, that’s an affiliate link, if you buy the book through that link I will become minutely wealthier-ish, so please, if you were planning on buying it, do so through that link. Thanks FCC for the requirement to do that extra disclosure: the world is safer in your hands.

photo by darkpatator