Tag: contract consulting

job junkie

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/

what a week at work feels like

charlottenc

Having just returned to a contract consulting position after seven months “in transition” (as the career coaches might say) I’m struck by how nothing has changed. In my case the locale is different - Florida, not Manhattan - and the timing has meant a lot (when I was last working, George Bush was still lame ducking to retirement). But I’m still working, more or less, in the financial services industry. I’m still doing contract consulting. I’m still in a cube, drinking the free coffee and cursing Word 2007.

Corporate employees are an oddly stressed but relaxed bunch. Stressed because they feel the need to create the appearance of great activity, stress and therefore accomplishment. Relaxed because they don’t want to finish TOO much, TOO fast. They know they need to put the face time in to stay past the boss’s departure. They get some perks - free coffee, for example. A lot of adult companionship, too; maybe not the friends you would choose in the normal course of events, but still people of similar backgrounds and ambition.

I was nervous for the first 30 minutes that maybe over my long break my mind had turned to jelly, but it hadn’t. I can still do all the work AND stare out the window AND calculate how many days until I can retire on a spreadsheet. The work, like most contract consulting work I’ve done, is a mix of the mundane, the boring and the challenging. Mundane and boring are self-explanatory: if you have staff and a consultant, the consultant will get the less interesting work. Staff need to develop. The challenging work mainly arises from the assumption that I know more about the industry and the company than I do. That can actually be interesting, learning about a company on a rapid basis. As an auditor, you’re expected to understand the company well enough to question someone who’s worked there forever. It’s not easy spending a few hours boning up on a subject then interrogating someone who’s been working on that subject for 20 years. But at least it’s not boring.

So nothing changed. I have a different attitude towards contract consulting now. It helps me keep a “professional career” active, which is useful in securing mortgages, meeting people and establishing a network in a new city. It doesn’t have to be 100% of my work life, but it’s the part that can generate big chunks of cash in short order. If I can handle health care - and I’ll be writing about that more over the next month - contract consulting could be a nice way to dip in and out of mini-retirements, a la the “fourty” hour workweek. So while I’m staring out the window at the tree, I”m trying to imagine the end of the contract, and another couple of months on the beach.

photo by jacreative

early retirement or meaningful work?

endlich himmelblau


For years I have dreamed of early retirement. The idea that someday I would be free to pursue leisure, and have time to do what I wanted, haunted me. It was the driving goal of my investing and saving plan. That was after I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad (yes, I know, but it gave me a new perspective) - but before I left my last employer to become a consultant.

What I’ve realized since then is that I don’t want early retirement. I don’t want to stop working at all. What I do want is to find work I enjoy, or at least tolerate. There are a lot of advantages to work. I’m not talking about 9-to-5 corporate work, but just work in general; freelancing, public service work, contract consulting, whatever you like. If you like 9-to-5 corporate work, fine.

Work gives you a structure and meaning - if it’s good work. Work provides you income, of course, which isn’t a small factor. Work gives you a sense of self - again, if it’s work that you can identify with. Work can sometimes provide colleagues, or challenging opportunities.

Work can also drag you down. If you don’t like what you do, early retirement is the best escape. Getting away as soon as possible is the only exit. I don’t think this applies just to people who work in white-collar jobs, either. Some people work at heavy labor or in non-white collar jobs who love it. My father-in-law is happiest doing manual work, for example - gardening or building things. I think he would detest a desk job now, although he worked at one for most of his life. Work doesn’t have to be high-tech or “cool” - just something that makes you happy.

For me, meaningful work is something that you enjoy. I know people who love accounting, for example. They like the complexity, the challenge of figuring out the interplay of accounts and the theology of GAAP. I don’t. I know people who love making things, and corporate politics, and writing, and teaching, and a myriad of occupations. I also know people who do work they hate, and people who do work they love. Most of my life I’ve been someone who worked at something I hate while seeking something I love. I think - but don’t know - I’ve found something I love in writing, but it comes and goes in spurts. I started writing this blog to practice writing, then morphed into a personal finance blog. Putting myself in that box has hampered my writing a bit, so I’m going to try to write on a broader range of topics in the future - because I still want to find work that means something to me.

If you can find something that makes sense to you, as a person, early retirement is pointless. I honestly believe that if I ever find my groove as a writer - I haven’t yet - I could be happy writing up until the day I die. Early retirement would be pointless. I’m not a good enough writer to earn a living writing yet, so I have to supplement with other work. I suck as a writer. I have a long way to go to be - by my own measure - creative, although I tickle my own ego by thinking I’m technically proficient. But I have realized that my real dream is not early retirement, as I often thought it was. I dreamed of days of leisure. I’ve had those days now, as I’ve been unemployed. I don’t want leisure. I want work with meaning. My real dream is finding meaningful work, and it should be everyone’s dream.

photo credit: extranoise