Tag: jobs

is college worth it? (part 1)

guinea pig reading a book

Based on a few recent comments on some of my articles about careers (this one, for example), I started wondering about the difference in wealth between college graduates and skilled non-college graduates. A college graduate can usually expect to go into the professional world as a “white-collar” worker, earning substantially more than his non-college graduate peers. However, the college graduate - unless he is very athletically or academically gifted - will probably come out of college with at least some student loan debt. He will probably start earning money several years (4 or more) later than a non-college graduate.

So I decided to do a comparison of the two career paths, and see what those big choices meant for someone later down the road. Specifically I wondered if I could answer a few questions:

  1. Can the late start in saving by the college graduate be overcome through higher salaries?
  2. Does the lower earning potential of a non-college graduate mean that the non-college graduate will be required to “work until they die”?
  3. Who will be able to quit the rat race first?

I made a lot of assumptions and put together a spreadsheet to try to come up with answers to some of these questions. I’ll cover that in part 2. I ignored a few things - I didn’t worry about inflation, for example, since it would affect them both equally. You could argue this is wrong, because inflation moves at different rates in different parts of the country, commuting costs (gas, etc.) might expose one or the other to more inflationary pressures, etc. I skipped that. I also assume that both are highly disciplined savers, always saving 10% of their income and getting decent returns over time. If, of course, both started saving as soon as they start earning and never reduce that amount, they would be in the .000001% of the US population that does so.

My findings were a surprise and weren’t a surprise to me. The main point of the exercise was for me to challenge my own personal context (a concept Robert Kiyosaki talks about a LOT in his book “Retire Young, Retire Rich“). My context is that smart people go to college and get desk jobs. My context is that wealth is created through earning as much as possible. I am trying to challenge my own prejudices about what “building wealth” and “escaping the rat race” actually mean to me. It’s interesting, because I don’t have much exposure to people who don’t subscribe to the “go to college, earn money” credo; but fortunately I’m learning more about the opposite mindset and it’s interesting for me. It’s too late for me to undo my decision to go to college for 7+ years. There were alternatives - I could’ve started a business and educated myself. It’s not too late for me to learn something new.

Stay tuned!

(photo by GirlReporter)

how to take time off from work

I remember about two years ago when a fellow consultant expressed amazement that I was planning to take a Thursday off - after having taken Monday off. He couldn’t understand how I was able to afford to take two days off in an average week - let alone two weeks before I planned on going on vacation.

The simple truth is that I have certain rules that, if anyone follows them, makes taking time off a snap. I have five, off the top of my head:

1. Pay yourself first. I save money every month before it hits our bank account. It’s gone and saved before I even realize it exists. That makes digging into savings tricky. It also means that I’m not worried about grubbing for a dollar at the end of the year.

2. Consider whether you need it. Bubelah and I make dopey purchases - we are not ultra frugal. At the same time, we do not buy useless things on a regular basis. It doesn’t take much - try not buying overpromoted fashion and consumer electronics for a while and voila, savings. A little time off is worth passing on the XBox, isn’t it?

3. Pay in cash. I use a credit card, for the sake of cash back bonuses, but for all intents and purposes I pay cash; we wait until we have cash in hand to buy anything. I mean anything. I paid cash for a new Honda minivan two years ago. I paid cash for new rechargeable batteries last week. We don’t buy anything without the means to pay for it. We never have to worry about the upcoming credit card bill.

4. Diversify your income. I blog, and I work on a couple of other income streams. My “other” streams make up maybe 5% of my income, but at the same time that means I’m making 105% of what I would be making on consulting income alone. Better than nothing, I think. But that 5% away from work means I can take 5% off my normal work and still come out even, right?

5. Pick your battles. I have never understood people who won’t take off a beautiful day in summer. Listen, 20 years from now that extra $100 for a day’s work won’t make a difference. A day in the sun making a stab at accomplishing that wee bitty thing called life will be worth it. Maybe it’s better to stay late in the office in February and ditch in summer.

I feel sorry for so many of the employees and consultants I see around me who will complain about “needing” to work one minute and then about their new plasma TV the next minute. Not because I think they made a bad choice - because it’s not my place to judge - but because they seem unhappy with their choices. Nobody is ever happy trading their time for crap. Put yourself in a position where you can forgo money for time and you’ll be a happier person.

I don’t want to leave this job in a coffin

This post was inspired by a great post over at Money Smart Life called Life’s Too Short for a Crappy Job; I left a comment there, but I felt like I should repost and expand what I talked about there. I’ve been a victim of the keep-your-job-at-any-cost mentality. This is what happened to me.

I vividly remember about 12 years ago working at a consulting firm I hated. The hours were ridiculous. During the busiest part of the year 80-90 per week was standard. I broke the magic 100 one time; I’ll save you the math and point out that’s 14 hours a day, 7 days a week. In at 8 or 9 am, out at 11 pm or so.. The pay was pathetic (on an hourly basis less than minimum wage, since I didn’t get overtime). I worked so much that my girlfriend at the time dumped me after one too many cancelled dates. And worst of all, my hatred for the job and exhaustion started to cause me to make mistakes, which made me work even longer hours to fix them. But worse problems loomed.

In the story at Money Smart Life, a few of the people sticking out their terrible jobs develop tooth-grinding conditions that require dental care and maybe even surgery. And here’s what killed me about that: someone develops a teeth-grinding condition and doesn’t realize their job is killing them? They complain about their job, they suffer terrible illnesses, and don’t DO something about it? Like quit, right away?

I thought “that’s ridiculous” and then I remembered that close to the end of my awful consulting job I developed an ulcer and threw up blood a few times…. and didn’t quit. I was throwing up before and after work and thought it was just because I was stressed. Think about that and wonder why I’m not crazy. Or why I am.

What finally made me quit was this: I was getting ready to go to work one morning. I had a cold and was feeling a bit woozy, but it was a big meeting. As I put on my tie, I fell down on the floor and passed out for a few minutes. When I got up, I STILL went to work (not the hospital). I waited until after the meeting to go to my doctor, who informed me that I didn’t have a cold - I had pneumonia AND bronchitis. And that I would probably be dead in six months if I didn’t address my health.

Really - he said that. Dead in six months. He wasn’t kidding. He said it in a very doctor-ish tone, so I knew he was serious.

It took that to make me quit. And I was single and didn’t have a mortgage or car payments or anything that really tied me to that job, other than the idea that this was MY JOB (in all caps). I had destiny, and the Protestant work ethic, and I would NOT QUIT (again, in all caps). There was no reason I couldn’t quit, though, except that I was career driven. I’m not in that line of work anymore, by the way. What a waste.

I look back on it and wish I could go back and punch myself in the head and tell myself “life’s too short for a crappy job.” Completely true. Well worth remembering here, close to the start of a new year. If you’re having health problems because you hate your job that much – don’t kid yourself. It’s not you… it’s the job. Quit.

Photo is Some rights reserved by longhorndave

Insufficient Education: Then and Now

Steve writes about the “31 Causes of Failure” included in Napoleon Hill’s seminal work on financial success, Think and Grow Rich. High on that list, holding down the #4 slot, is education. The discussion of education tends to center on keeping your mind active with constant learning activities, or on “continuing education,” which can amount to community college classes, seminars, or self-help books. There are many professions, nursing and teaching among them, that require some element of continuing education as a prerequisite for retaining a professional license. Accounting is another, and you can get a degree like Warner Pacific’s bachelors of accounting for adults as a great start before pursuing advanced degrees.

But there is also a case to be made for redefining insufficient education within the context of the economic changes that have swept this nation over the past decade. The last three years have seen a prolonged financial and employment downturn, but in both cases they are signs of trends that have been underway for some time. The offshoring of the U.S. manufacturing sector has been devastating to millions of wage earners and (former) homeowners. Nonskilled jobs have been followed to the developing nations by skilled positions including IT jobs, accounting and actuarial jobs, many other white collar support roles, even freelance writing: I am constantly underbid on writing gigs by people in Bangalore or some other exotic time zone.

It is not unreasonable to suggest that insufficient education today may be because a job for which a bachelor’s degree was sufficient a decade ago now requires a master’s degree. That may be due to the increasing complexity of some professions – civil engineering comes to mind – or it may mean that employers can be more selective in their baseline requirements for professional employees. The IT requirements for many jobs have shot up over the past ten years; today you can find graduate degree programs in nursing informatics and financial engineering – two examples of professional niches that didn’t exist for the last generation.

For someone who is currently unemployed, has gotten through college and put in several years of successful work experience based on those undergraduate studies, the suggestion that they lack sufficient education isn’t a fair statement. The education that many of us obtained prior to entering the work force simply isn’t applicable in today’s domestic economy or doesn’t meet newly established benchmarks for professional advancement. Fixing a situation like may require a more concerted effort than continuing education.

Today a wealth of online graduate degree programs designed for experienced and/or working professionals exists. Many are part time, for those of us who are still working; others are accelerated programs that can get you through a master’s program in a hurry. And today, most of them are offered by traditional universities that have expanded into distance learning. The morphing job market can be a frightening situation, especially for people who have embarked on a career track. Sometimes the best insurance for someone who has to change direction is an advanced degree to bolster those years of experience.

Article Source: Bob Hartzell is an in-house editor for Masters Degree Online.com. He writes about the current state of traditional and for-profit education including student loans, scholarships and distance learning.

the passion of the hobbit

It’s a subject I waffle back and forth on – the idea that passion needs to rule your life. It seems obvious, of course, that you should have passion for your spouse, children… then maybe a bit less obvious but still reasonable to have the same passion for relatives, friends and interests. Even less obvious would be the very abstract things like country, career, sports teams and so on. If you’re passionate about something lower on the list like that – say, American Idol – reexamine your priorities. I was passionate about Buffy the Vampire Slayer and I recognize that it wasn’t a good direction for my passions. I got a lot of entertainment out of it but my life is exactly 0.0% improved because of it.

But if you can’t focus on something, it’s a shortcoming. In my case, I don’t have a lot of passion for my work. I view it as a mechanical activity that provides food, shelter, clothing and Netflix for the family. I wouldn’t view this as ideal, although I realize at the same time that 99.99% of the human population wouldn’t view sitting in a quiet, air-conditioned cubicle for 8 hours a day for an income in the top 1% of the planet’s population as a hardship. Many of the “seize your passion” bloggers do – they assume that everyone can seize their internet business bliss – nobody has to make the computer, only to live off of them.

But that’s fine – of course some can and some can’t. Whether any of us choose to do so is of course a choice; if you love taking care of horses and instead choose to pursue a career as an account receivable manager, you’ve made a choice. Whether you can live with it or not is the problem - many can, and a few can’t. I’d guess that the time when all of this questioning really came into play was when the social contract that said companies would handle retirement broke down. If I worked for IBM for 25 years and knew they’d take care of me during those 25 years, and after, I’d be a lot more inclined to give up on the need for passion. But nowadays, that’s not true; just recently a colleague of mine got laid off from a company he’d worked for over 20 years without even a thank you. Your future is not secure.

I realized all of this tonight while reading to my son. For about a week we’ve been reading a few pages of “The Hobbit” by J. R. R. Tolkien every night. I’ve explained the general story to him – a little hobbit goes with a bunch of dwarves to steal back their gold from a dragon – but I don’t have many illusions about how well a four-year-old can follow Tolkien’s esoteric prose. It’s not exceptionally complicated, but it’s not Goodnight Moon.

But tonight when I asked him if he wanted to try something easier, he said no. I asked whether he understood most of it, and he said no. I asked then if he wanted to stop, and he said no. I asked why, if he couldn’t understand all of it, and he gave me an answer that should make things clear (to paraphrase): I’m excited about it because you’re excited about it, Papa. He liked listening to it because I liked reading it. Something was in my voice that wasn’t there when I was reading Goodnight Moon or I’m A Truck.

Some of my fondest memories from childhood are of my father reading The Hobbit to me from the same book at a slightly older age. I remember being a little confused by the language and the complex plot, but loving the fact that my dad thought I was ready for something so amazing. That passion translates easily, and makes reading something like The Hobbit far simpler than struggling through Goodnight Moon for the 100th time. Sitting down at the desk in the corporate office for the 100th time is much like that; coming up with new ideas, starting new jobs or developing new ideas is much like picking up The Hobbit.

I don’t like to think that work – and through that, life – is bleak without purpose. It’s not; other things should put life in balance even if there isn’t purpose in one’s work. But work and parenthood and friendship and one’s relationship with parents, community, school and whatever else are, in fact, intimately tied up with passion. Without the passion to pursue something – church, charity, community, work, parenthood, etc. – life is going to be a little less exciting. Excitement is its own reward.

life strategies, and links

I’ve been attempting a slightly different life strategy recently - “if it hasn’t been working so far, change.” I’m taking a shot at things I have told myself I’ve hated in the past, like watersports and (just yesterday) crew cuts and so on, and giving them a shot. It seems a reasonable thing to do: attempt the previously unpleasant, in the hope that it will work out better this time. So far so good; maybe I’ll expand this line of thinking to other aspects of my life.

Links!

5 Best Websites for Job Seekers

 

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.

 

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/

how to learn to love your job

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!

linklings, sneezing leads to a CAT scan edition

I’m a bit late with this week’s link roundup (surprise) but I have an excuse. As I was driving to work for an early morning meeting on Tuesday, a heavy, driving rain broke out. The pitch black, heavy rain and early hour (about 6:30) would have been bad enough but my windshield wiper chose that moment to whip off the car. I had to go retrieve it in the pitch black, driving rain and 70 mile-per-hour traffic and then use a small pair of pliers to try to work it back on - all in cold weather with a light windbreaker on.

Needless to say I was soaked. Traffic accidents on I-95 extended my cold, shivering wait in the car to two hours. After spending 20 minutes in the gym locker at work with a hair dryer on me, I felt more or less OK. Then…. bam. About 24 hours later, I felt sick. I visited the urgent care clinic and got some help. 24 hours later, with my blood pressure soaring, severe sinus pain and serious weakness, I was off to the doctor. I had to get a CAT scan to rule out a stroke, but apparently it was just my body’s reaction to the infection. My blood pressure’s been normal for 7-8 years, and was just checked about 3 weeks ago so the surge was weird, and made the doctor double-check with the CAT scan. Not a fun experience. On the bright side, with some antibiotics and a brief course of blood pressure medicine I’m back to feeling more or less normal today (120 over 70 type blood pressure, and sinus pressure greatly reduced).

Too much information?

Well, just wait til you see the boatload of links I’ve got:

  • Running Up Debt: Never having been in debt other than mortgage debt in my life, I’m always slightly fascinated by other people’s stories of debt spiraling out of control.
  • Are Over Half of Workers Really Dissatisfied with Their Jobs?: Doesn’t surprise me, simply because most of us believe our job should pay a bit more, the boss should be a bit nicer or the guy in the next cubicle shouldn’t tap his pen all day long.
  • Do Something You Love, Before You Have To Do Something For Money: Amen - which is why you should go to an inexpensive college, preferably public, and get out of school without needing to go to work immediately to pay off $80,000 in student loans (or more).
  • Crock Pot BBQ Pulled Pork Recipe for Under $15 – Easy and Frugal: We just got a Crock Pot (actually the exact same one Jeremy has in this post) so I’m going to have to give this a shot. Nothing like pork for healthy eating!
  • To Succeed Financially, You Must Know Yourself and Know Thy (Financial) Self: Closely related articles, and both worth considering: you need to understand yourself before you attempt to change yourself.
  • What Happened to Patrick? A Few Thoughts About Blogging Anonymously: I’ve written about my struggle with anonymity before, and Ryan (who is the “real Patrick”) over at Cash Money Life finally gave up on anonymity, giving out his full name right there on the blog. Not a bad idea. You can find my real name without much trouble, but I still haven’t just slapped it up on the blog. Patrick Ryan’s probably right - anonymity won’t do much for furthering your online “brand.”
  • The Curse Of Making Too Much Money And Not Pursuing Your Dreams: I sympathize with Lyndon in this post. I make enough money that dropping my current lucrative career seems insane, even to follow my dreams (which aren’t that firmly defined, but that’s a separate question).

Some more good reads, but now I’ve run out of steam to comment…

americas-richest-counties: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance: And finally, a nice little bonus read on a statistic that always kills me. “Highest income” is a radically different concept from “richest.” I had a high income in New Jersey, but my expenses were proportionately higher. If you want to get a true look at “richest” you’d have to incorporate some sort of cost-of-living metric.

workplace violence

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

in the salt mine

Modern corporate life has warped some of my perspectives on careers, the nature of work and even the way people relate to each other. No experience did more damage to my sweetly naive belief in the goodness of humans and the purity of the capitalist model than my time with a company I’ll call The Salt Mine. One lesson in particular stands out: the importance of visibility (or lack thereof) versus the importance of output.

At The Salt Mine, we did large projects for clients. We estimated the number of hours we would need to finish a job, then take the “official” rates of each of the people assigned to the job and come up with a rough estimate of the total cost to complete the project. We’d make sure to shoehorn in plenty of hours for the highest paid consultants, and despite long, stern lectures on the necessity to report all hours worked we’d see staff, again and again, pressured to report working 10 hours when they were clocking in at 8 am and leaving at 11 pm.

To make the whole thing just a little more unpleasant, the managers (an intermediate role between the staff and the executives) were required to bill so many chargeable hours per week. As a manager, you had an odd choice to make - under-report your time and risk looking like you couldn’t keep up with your peers, or overreport your hours and risk making the projects you were shepherding less profitable (and it would be illegal, a la Tom Cruise in The Firm, but that’s just a minor detail).

For a while that practice created an uneasy balance between insane working hours and a reasonable, measured approach to working effectively until you were tired, then giving up for the day. Deadlines had to be met, too, and many of the staff were junior, inexperienced people, requiring mentoring and training. Time spent training was not billable, though. So we muddled along, trying to keep projects profitable while making sure we billed enough hours to justify our jobs.

Fade to six months later.

The executives had a wonderful idea. Business was good, but hiring good people to execute projects cost money. Managers were getting the work done, and for the most part everyone left work at a reasonable hour by Salt Mine standards (7 or 8). So let’s take this environment, and start publicly shaming managers by posting their billable hours by week on a big scoreboard visible to the whole office.

Keep in mind these were billable hours, not just hours worked. If a manager spent a day in training either for himself or training others, it wasn’t billable. Billable meant you did work on a specific project for a specific client. Billable time suddenly became very important. The rumor went around that top billers would be promoted, and bottom billers wouldn’t. The rumor was soon converted to policy, and the mayhem commenced.

You might think that ruining the profitability of the projects would bother the executives, but the simple truth was that revenue from the clients was based on a fixed fee. The profitability was merely an internal measuring stick, but since all of the consultants were on salary, 8 hours worked cost the firm exactly the same as 14. Managers, though, were faced with the prospect of eating their own hours to make the project appear more profitable - but then looking shabby on what we called “the leader board” - or overbilling, making their billable hours look good but having horrible profit margins on their projects.

a separate piece of crap

The managers quickly separated into two groups. One engaged in mutually assured destruction. The idea for this group was to work 120 billable hours per week, and to hell with profitability. Face time, especially in front of the client, became the single goal of this group. We’ll call these The Bloods, for the colors of their eyes. The second group collapsed, effectively. They knew they couldn’t keep up the manic pace and decided to work like they’d always worked - work 6 hours when 6 hours were necessary, get training, go out for lunch, and so on. We’ll call this group the Crips, for the crippling of their spirits as they watched the leaderboard publicly declaring that they weren’t carrying their part of the load.

Stop and consider what you would have done. I’d argue almost everyone in corporate America thinks of themselves as Bloods. They’d like to think they could just “do their job” but too often face time becomes critical for middle management. I thought I could laugh off the pressure. I was a mercenary, and had never considered even for a second making a long-term career out of The Salt Mine; it was a stop on the journey there and back again. But that leaderboard changed things for me. I had one of The Salt Mine’s largest clients to manage. With tens of thousands of billable hours budgeted, I had the ability to create vast amounts of work for myself (necessary or not) and proceeded to do so.

So as time went on, the leaderboard settled into a bit of a pattern. I managed to hang on near the top - never the most hours, but never down in dreaded less-than-60-hours-per-week time. My health suffered; my relationship with my girlfriend at the time wound down; and the patient mentoring I had done with my staff turned into barks of “just give it to me I’ll do it hell’s bells am I the only one who can get crap done around here give me that bottle of Tums yes you make yourself useful.” I was Madonna, in other words.

I’d like to say the story has a happy ending, but it doesn’t. My stress level went through the roof. After a serious illness my doctor told me, without humor, that I was killing myself. Despite hovering towards the top of billable hours and winning new business right and left, I was given a backhanded promotion (promoted in grade but not allowed to refer to myself by the new title for another year for headcount reasons). Colleagues who had coasted along at the bottom of the leaderboard weren’t fired, or held accountable, or given last pick of clients for the next year, or stripped of staff: nothing happened to them except that they went home at 6 like normal people. After one or two near-physical altercations in the office and one more health scare, I jumped ship after my demand that my salary be doubled was laughed off.

It’s a funny story - not a funny ha-hah story but a funny stepping-on-a-rake-and-putting-out-an-eye story. I like to think of myself as an intelligent person, but I look back on those times and wonder. It’s not a great mystery, if I’m honest with myself. I lost sight of the forest for the trees, too immersed in day-to-day details to step back and wonder why I was submitting to this treatment like I was some kind of corporate Andy Dufresne (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_dufresne) - except I was tunneling for freedom. That period of time might have been one of the best times in my life to talk to a career coach, or read 48 Days to the Work You Love, or even read The Four Hour Workweek. But I didn’t - but because I didn’t, I’m able to share a cautionary tale with you. If you’re in that same situation, let me know and I can point you to a resource that can help you get out of that mess. Like a soldier in a dated war movie, I can gasp out “go on, save yerself! I’m done for, but you can still save yourself!” I hope you do.

And maybe it does have a happy ending; I learned my lesson and got out.

(photo by kevindooley)
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