Tag Archives: jobs

linklings, my ache-y break-y tooth edition

Nothing like trying to prepare a post while dealing with the dull, thudding ache of repaired teeth. I had to have a few (three) fillings removed and replaced today (plus some crown repairs and a small-but-critical preventative procedure that was too technical and boring to explain here). Other than a few fillings - almost all from my distant past - and a lone root canal four years ago, I’ve had healthy teeth. But I guess as you drift on into middle age, problems are inevitable. The fillings, for example, have nothing to do with how I’ve cared for my teeth - simply the product of time. So the pros and cons of filling replacement:

Pros:

  • My teeth look MUCH better now. With the new white fillings replaced the old uranium or whatever fillings, my teeth look good as new.
  • Insurance covered about 70% of the cost.
  • The dentist and his assistant did a great job, and other than the discomfort of having to hold my jaws open for two hours I didn’t feel much.

Cons:

  • Anesthetic wears off, and as I write this I’ve got a dull throb going ka-chuk, ka-chuk right about at the gum line - on both sides of my jaw. Ugh.
  • What the insurance didn’t cover was over $400. Nice to pay as much as I do for dental insurance and still have to kick in $400.
  • The fillings were far enough back in my head that nobody other than me will notice, most likely.

Off to the links:

Democracy, Incorporated: I have steered away from politics on this blog for a while - being, once again, disillusioned and nauseous about the whole thing - and things are just likely to get worse.
Why Do You Want To Be Rich?: Easy question for me to answer - simply to have options. It would be nice not to sweat the cost of health insurance, for example.
Saving for College – An Exercise in Depression: Exactly hits on a point I’ve made before. You will NOT be able to save enough to fund an expensive private college education for your kids. Your time and effort is better spent on preparing your own retirement, so you won’t be a burden to your children. If your kids want to go to a private school in 2026, it’s going to cost more than you could ever possibly save. Be realistic, people.
No More Mondays And Why Everyday Is Friday Now: I like Dan Miller a lot, too - I enjoy his podcast a lot and I’ve started (slowly) getting into 48days.net, the social networking site inspired by his works. More on that in a future post.

the two-income myth

My wife is an intelligent woman who decided to quit her professional career as a management-tracked analyst with a huge investment bank in order to be a stay-at-home parent when our son arrived, and to remain home even longer when our daughter arrived. I would have willingly stayed home in her place but being older and further along in my career I was making twice as much as she so it would not have made sense. She has now been at home for more than four years and I have noticed that there is a subtle campaign against her choice, and it makes me angry. Despite all of the talk about mothers making the ‘tough choice’ to go back to work, I think the tough choice is staying home.

First of all, before I’m jumped upon…I know there are single mothers and poorer families who have no choice. I would maintain this is a small proportion of the population, though. Single mothers definitely have no choice as the primary breadwinner, of course. Some families may have special circumstances that require both parents to work - health care costs spring to mind. I wonder, though, how many times the choice to work is the choice to support owning a second television, or keeping the premium movie channels, owning the house with the extra two rooms, or leasing a nice car - versus staying home with a child.

My family took a big hit to our finances when my wife quit work. We went from two people living in a two-bedroom apartment on two salaries to three people living in a three-bedroom house on one salary. We did it by making huge changes in our spending, and after a couple of years those changes have - surprise - become fairly routine. We understood that we could not afford as many luxury vacations or idle purchases of gadgets and jewelry and so on. The reward was that our children have been able to stay at home with their mother and be in a safe, healthy, fun environment.

This setup has not come without cost. My wife misses adult companionship and the sense of validation that you get from a professional position. We miss having the second salary, which for a while was all being plowed into savings and made for a relatively large down payment on our home. And of course my wife worries about her future job prospects once both of the kids are in school and don’t need a stay-at-home mom. But the worst thing in the past were the assaults on her decision by other women.

Bubelah relayed conversations to me from her friends and ex-colleagues and so on where the subject was inevitably “when are you going to get back to work?” Aside from the obvious insult that caring for a child is not “work”, this had a very negative effect on her state of mind. She usually laughed it off, but the simple fact is that she doesn’t really interact on a daily basis with anyone but me who supports her decision to make child care a full-time job - although since we’ve moved to Florida the support has been a bit warmer. We never felt that the trade-off of getting another salary was worth having our kids in day-care 10 hours a day before they were two years old, but that’s what we felt was expected, sometimes.

Do we need the money? We may not be able to spend freely like our friends do (particularly since we also don’t take on any debt) but we really don’t NEED any more money to meet our current expenses. I understand that sometimes both parents want to work. That is fine, but just be honest about that choice. Many people claim to be “forced” to work two jobs to make ends meet, but is it really “making ends meet” when you drive a new car and have premium movie channels and take a vacation to Aruba every year?

Assessing What is Important in Your Life

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By Curmudgeon

You may have read on Steve’s blog a few weeks ago that I spent time in the hospital for a potentially life-threatening condition. It was my first time overnight stay in a hospital since I had my tonsils removed, almost forty years ago.

It was a seminal moment in my life; I had never had a health scare before, and as such things go, this one was fairly serious. Among the contributing factors where the stresses of my day job, which at extreme levels can produce damaging enzymes that wreak havoc with internal organs. My typical work week over the last two years lasted eighty hours, including weekends. I did too much, drank too much, and kept my stresses inside, until my body cried enough.

Steve has a wonderful post that first attracted me to his site – 8 Steps to a Six-Figure Career. Through my day jobs, freelancing, and independent consulting, I’ve made six figures since 1992. Last month, I suddenly came to the realization that a six-figure income was a poor goal to strive for if it were killing me to achieve it.

So I quit the day job, which was the source of 80 percent of my income. I am now entirely dependent upon independent project work for my income. I don’t know how I want to spend the next ten or fifteen years of my working life, but I do know that it’s not going to be as an office slave, working for The Man. My plan is to spend at least through the middle of next year working on discrete projects no more than forty hours a week, until I figure out what I want my future to look like.

In one way, it is easier for me than most people. I never got into the race to have the most toys (well, I did own a classic Corvette, years ago), and year after year saved around a third of my gross income. Money is not a problem, although I would prefer keeping the portfolio largely intact until later in life.

However, in other ways it is more difficult. Unlike Steve, I don’t have a discrete and definable set of skills in a single recognized field. Over the last 20 years, I’ve had a number of different jobs in several very different career fields. No recruiter would touch me for contract or permanent work.

Also, I am not a sales person. My social skills are probably below average, and while I have to spend a lot of my time interacting with others, it takes a bit of energy and focus on my part. Yet I have to market my difficult-to-define services, write proposals (I’d always undervalued my independent work when I didn’t have to make a living off it), and close deals.

Well, a month later, it seems to be working out just fine. It turns out that I know more people than I thought, and others are reaching out to me with offers of projects. I have several thousand dollars worth of short term projects over the next month, and later in January begin a medium term contract that by itself should make up for most of my forsaken income, while working far fewer hours.

Even though it puts me on the road for another possible six-figure income in 2010, it’s not a goal, or even a desire. In planning the tradeoffs of your life, don’t trade off your health for money. It’s a bad deal.

photo by Untitled blue

My Up Close Look at Health Care

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By Curmudgeon. Just to make sure none of my anxious relatives read this and think this is me, I’ll repeat - no, I didn’t write this. That having been said, Curmudgeon has a few important notes about health care in America that we’d all be better off thinking about now rather that later. My family is also struggling with this with some of our family members, as well - the good and the bad.

I was just discharged from the hospital. I went in through Emergency, with a life-threatening condition. I had my wits fully about me during most of the time (when not on painkillers), and tried to pay some attention to what was going on around me. The hospital was a mid-sized facility in a small city in New England, and is probably fairly typical in that regard.

I’ll start with a couple of neutral observations.

  • Health care, and health care delivery, are highly complex and involved. The machines used for diagnosis and treatment are big, highly sensitive, and expensive to operate and maintain. Yet because my hospital had them on site, I was able to get a diagnosis within two hours, rather than days.
  • The machines are not compatible. They produce paper as output, and are not wired together in any sort of process as we might understand in business. This result in a huge paper file that must be available to the caregivers, and must be read and comprehended.

The processes involved are enormously complex and individualized. No two persons’ care is identical, and while individual steps are well-known and practiced, the process as a whole is driven by the needs of the patient.

Now a couple of positive observations.

  • I was attended to by a large number of dedicated and caring professionals. I can’t say enough about the people who attended and assisted me.
  • In the hospital no one is asked how they are going to pay for a particular test, procedure, or treatment. This is a really good thing; patients are in a poor position to make economic tradeoffs with their health.

Next a couple of not-so-positive ones.

  • At my estimate, approximately a third of the time of these dedicated professionals was spent checking and correcting errors, omissions, or inconsistencies caused by others, or by the system itself. Some of this is to be expected; the processes involve humans, after all. But not this much.
  • As a patient, you deal with a confusing array of care providers on a daily basis. For example, I counted a dozen different types of nurses before giving up, and that doesn’t include specialty nurses. No doubt these distinctions are made to differentiate both function and skill set, but to the outsider it is pretty opaque.

The number of specializations concerns me, but perhaps is justifiable by the complexities involved. However, I’m much more concerned by the lack of a seamless and accurate flow of information between them. There is also not one “master truth” in the system, as many professionals hold many different understandings of what tests were conducted and what treatments administered. I had to go through a stress test, for example, because the admitting doctor’s offhand remark that I seemed to have a mild heart murmur lead others to believe I was experiencing chest pains, which I was not.

I would like to think that much of the confusion and misunderstanding can be eliminated. As a computer guy, my inclination is to think of a set of automated solutions, but that may not be the full answer. But there are inefficiencies in the system that can be corrected, letting the health care professionals do the jobs they need to.

photo by Rodrigo Basaure

How to Fix Up Your Resume (guest post)

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In a job market like this, it’s not surprising that one open position can receive many, many resumes. Often, your resume might have just a few seconds to make an impression. And that can be difference between getting in your foot in the door or getting that door getting slammed in your face.

Here are a variety of ways to make your resume better:

  • Formatting - When used appropriately, bullets and bolding make a huge difference. The perspective employer isn’t going read one long paragraph. You may have noticed that this article is written with scannability in mind.
  • Grammar and spell check - Microsoft Word provides a very good grammar checking tool. Spell checking tools are so abundant that there’s no excuse for not using one. In such a competitive landscape, one spelling error could get you labeled as lacking attention to detail.
  • Consistent tense and use of phrasing - This is one that a lot of people miss - and the one I have the most difficulty with, myself. Sometimes I don’t know whether to put older jobs in the past tense and current jobs in the present. That’s where it helps to have experts like those at Pongo Resume to help. Always stick either full-sentences or fragments. Switching back and forth between the two will only confuse the reader.
  • Have more than one friend review it - Sometimes you spend so much time on you certain parts of your resume that you miss the obvious. Your friends will be looking with a fresh eye, just as a potential employer would.

Even if you have great form to your resume, there’s no guarantee to you’ll get the job. Experience, education, and the interview process are very important - the key is to make sure you don’t get passed by before you get show off those skills.

How To Fix covers a wide-ranging set of topics including household repairs such as how to fix a toilet and How to Fix a Lamp as well as computer topics like how to speed up your computer.

photo by dbdbrobot


photo by

7 Ways to Build & Maintain a Personal Network that Works for You (guest post)

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This post is a guest post from Brian who blogs over at In The Money. To get an idea of why he’s started a blog, you can check out his about page or subscribe.

A personal network is one of the most valuable things you can have. You’ll often hear people say, “It’s not what you know, but who you know.” If you are well connected, you are more likely to succeed in almost anything you pursue. We cannot do everything on our own and often times, a connection can help significantly. You never know who can help one day, so the larger your network the more you will benefit from it. However, just because you know a lot of people, it does not mean that they are going to help you. Your network needs to be well maintained. Here are some ways to build and maintain your network:

  1. Social Networking - In the age of social networking, it is astronomically easier to stay in contact with people. Instead of having to call people or even taking the time to email them, you can just keep tabs on contacts on social networking websites. The two main websites would be Facebook and LinkedIn. Use these tools to stay in contact with friends and classmates.
  2. Networking Events - There are many organizations that have networking events. Some of these cost money, but a number are free. It is likely that your company has networking events. Try to be involved with those to build your career. Your alma mater probably has a local alumni chapter that hosts these events as well. Class reunions are also a good way to network with people you might have been acquaintances with, but never really knew that well.
  3. Getting Personal - Merely meeting a person is not enough for them to feel comfortable with doing you any favors. If you do not already know the contact personally, try to get to know them on a personal level. The next time you talk to them, mention something that shows you care about them on a personal level. For example, ask how their wife and kids are doing or ask them if they have had a chance to improve their golf score. Friends will be a lot more compelled to help you out.
  4. Constant Contact - Keep in touch often enough so that it doesn’t become awkward to talk to each other. If you don’t talk to someone for years and then ask them for something, chances are you will get nothing. The people who you think are your top contacts (possibly those who refer you the most business/have the best relationship) should be in contact at least every couple weeks. Those whom you think are good contacts to have should have contact every couple months. Everyone else could possibly get a holiday card once a year or get an email/message every few months.
  5. Help People Find Jobs - With the current unemployment rate at a high, many people are without jobs. If you are ever in a position to help someone find a job, let them know about a position or connect them with someone you know who can place them. They will never forget that you helped them when they needed it, and will likely return the favor one day.
  6. Talk to People and Be Open - As an entrepreneur, I quickly learned how important this tactic can be. I have always been a quiet guy and prefer not to tell people too much, but it is so important to tell people what you are doing. People want to help you and if you don’t share things with them, you might never get that help or connected with someone who can help you. My business partners and I have been connected to a number of potential investors and people who want to help our business, just by telling our friends and sometimes even strangers about our business. Next time some asks you how you are doing, be open and tell them more. It’ll pay off in the long run.
  7. Create Goodwill - Do as many favors for other as possible. Not only does this make you a good friend and a good person, but it creates goodwill. One day, people will return the favor and remember that you have done them a favor in the past. This doesn’t just apply to your career, but can benefit your personal life as well. If I go out of my way and give a friend a ride somewhere today, maybe if I need to go to the airport in a few months, that friend will return the favor. Never underestimate the power of goodwill and helping others.

Comment from Steve: #6 could also be titled “ask for help.” I’m always surprised by how reluctant I am - and others are - to ask for help in a job search. I also always surprise myself by how often I agree to do it for others, and how often they agree to do it for me. People enjoy helping others out when they can, so never be shy about asking for help.

photo by Cormac Phelan

linklings, auditors and stay-at-home parents edition

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Unless you’ve read brip blap almost from the very beginning, you probably missed some of my earlier posts in which I talked about the field I work in most of the time (audit). I wrote this about Dell:

… my profession of auditing does not seem to be well respected. We do, however, serve a purpose, as was made dazzingly clear Friday :

Dell Inc. will restate its earnings for fiscal years 2003 through 2006 and the first quarter of 2007 after an internal audit found that certain employees had changed corporate account balances in order to meet quarterly financial targets, the company said Thursday.

from “Dell auditors shake things up“

I was reminded of that article after reading this bit from Going Concern: Gun to Head, Dell Implements an ‘Accounting Code of Conduct’. Yep. Pigeons come home to roost. We call them accountants. I am Spartacus.

Daycare vs. Stay At Home: A Mom’s Perspective: A thoughtful response to Jim’s post on the costs and benefits of daycare (as opposed to having a stay-at-home parent). I have written on this subject (kids, stay-at-home parenting and work) quite a bit: I was actually surprised, flipping back through my archives. These are just the articles I had off the top of my head - I imagine I’ve written more…

  • Ho w to work from home with small kids: After Bubelah and I have tried to do this sporadically for a few years, I’d say that even if you can, it’s unpleasant. You can be substantially more productive hiring a babysitter and then going to a library or Starbucks to do your work.
  • rich mom, poor mom: I managed to annoy a lot of people with this article. You could misinterpret it slightly to think I was saying stay-at-home parents were inherently better, but as I re-read it I think I just meant that you’re better off being around your kids than you are working like crazy to give them things - hardly a controversial statement in the personal finance blog world.
  • the myth of the parent that NEEDS to work : Many couples claim to be “forced” to work two jobs to make ends meet, but is it really “making ends meet” when you don’t live a frugal lifestyle? I still think this is true. We’ve sacrificed over the years so that Bubelah can stay home, but when she goes back to work - probably in a year or so - it’s going to be because she wants to have the mental challenge, not because we need the money - our lifestyle has been configured for a single income (plus some wealthstreaming).

unrelated photo by omniNate, not Bubelah or Little Buddy - just though it was a nice photo on Flickr

Technorati : dell, linklings, stay at home parents

how to poison attitudes towards work in young children

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My son Little Buddy isn’t so little anymore. He’s at an age where he can make observations and draw conclusions - often amusing - about the world around him. One of the conclusions he’s probably started to draw is that ‘work sucks.’

It’s not an attitude I’d like to instill in anyone’s child, least of all my own, but it’s almost inevitable. From his point of view, here’s what he thinks when he thinks of ‘work’:

  • ‘Work’ means Papa will be gone all day.
  • ‘Work’ means Papa will be tired and less likely to play when he gets home.
  • Not often, but quite possibly, it means Papa might have to go out of town
  • ‘Work’ means his Mama will have to split her time between him and Pumpkin, his little sister

He understands the association between money and work. He knows I have days I don’t work and days I just choose not to work. But what I wonder is not so much whether he understands the work/money dynamic, but whether children form an idea that ‘work’ is a negative activity before they really understand the positive.

Take a famous writer or a motivational speaker or a pro athlete. The children of those people might of course have a great lifestyle, but speaking tours or away games or book signing tours must surely upset them, too. Maybe part of it would be the closeness of the parent-child relationship. I read quite often that people who leave their corporate jobs do it out of a desire to spend more time with their children. Yet if I quit my corporate job to become a famous problogger, for example, I’d probably still have to spend time away from home to write. I’d probably need to do a better job of attending industry events and travel to promote the inevitable book, and so on.

That’s not to denigrate that lifestyle, since I think it would be preferable. I just remember a conversation I had with my parents shortly after I returned to the States after working in Moscow. While living in Russia, I had received six weeks of vacation per year. Twice a year, I flew home for three weeks and lived with my parents (this is before I was married). When I returned home, my mother was happy that I’d be living closer and they’d see me more often - but they didn’t. I never counted up the days, but I certainly doubt I came anywhere close to staying 42 days at their home in a given year.

I would like my children to have a healthier attitude about work than I do. I don’t know if that’s possible. My parents both had what seemed to me to be fairly good jobs growing up, and although they had their fair share of conflicts and troubles I never got the impression that they hated what they did, at all. I don’t know if my dislike of my profession leaks over into my attitude towards work. I may be saying the word ‘work’ with an undercurrent of unease that kids can sense.

I also suspect that in some ways I might HOPE to poison my children’s attitudes towards work, as long as it’s focused on a certain type of work: work that’s not at least vaguely fulfilling or rewarding. That’s a tricky path to go down. I’m sure many of the motivational types whose work I read might wince if their children gave an honest opinion of their work: ‘my daddy spends all day speaking and writing to inspire others, and hasn’t thrown a baseball to me in three years.’

I do know that if I have any influence at all on my young kids I’d like it to be this: work is not bad. Work you don’t like is bad. Work that makes you feel bad is bad. But working, in and of itself, is good, for a variety of reasons. It provides for you and (eventually) your family; it can provide a lot of meaning to your life; and it can provide a lot of value to people outside yourself, which is no small feat. I hope they learn that work is not a thing to be dreaded. I hope they learn that it’s tough to work, it’s hard to work, and it’s often a struggle to work - but I hope they never learn to hate working.

photo by Mai Le

the professional hitman

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Considering the amount I get paid for consulting, the expectations are usually quite low. I tend to work in project-based roles. What does that mean? I tend to put it this way: some jobs are task-based; for example, a factory worker who puts the windshield in a car on the assembly line. The car moves on, and the factory worker puts the next windshield in - the job is only done once the assembly line shuts down for the day. A project-based job, though, would be more like someone who builds the car by himself - when one car is done, the job is done.

What’s strange about project-based work is that most companies still treat it like task-based work. I can understand a salary or an hourly wage for task-based work. You’re paid X dollars to sit in a chair in your cube and do your task or tasks. If the task is held up elsewhere - the guy in accounting hasn’t signed off yet - you can’t do your task, but you are expected to be around once it’s ready. Project-based work may be held up, too, but the idea is that you’re supposed to deliver a completed project as soon as you can. If it’s going to take 500 hours, fine. If it’s going to take 8, fine. But the project is not about attendance.

Teaching is a good example of task-based work, too. Teachers can’t really ‘hurry up’ their ‘projects’ (students). The work of a teacher is completed over a 9-month period (at least in the States). A home-builder, on the other hand, just needs to build the home. The model ought to be a salary for a teacher, and a fixed fee for the builder. If the builder can get his job done more quickly or efficiently, he makes more money, because he can go build other homes.

I work on projects. I have a client, I audit the client (or do something similar) and issue a report. I’ve often wondered if I suddenly asked clients for a fixed fee instead of an hourly rate what the response would be. I imagine this scenario:

…

“Listen, I understand audit is an amazingly hidebound profession - as are its cousins, finance and accounting - but let’s try something. Instead of paying me $100 per hour (for example) on a project you expect to take 640 man-hours (about 16 man-weeks at 40 hours per week), just give me $50,000. That’s more than a 20% discount.”

“What’s the catch?” grumbles the client.

“I get to do the project the way I want. I can use technology how I want. If the client’s located in Kansas City, instead of going there I’ll have documents emailed to me. I’ll outsource the one day of on-site work to a contractor there instead of traveling there. I’ll use free tools like Skype and Open Office and Google Docs instead of fancy video-conferencing and Microsoft Office. And I can do it when and where I like.”

“But you need to come into the office - how do we know you’re actually working?” the anguished client replies.

“You won’t,” I’d reply. “I may be washing my socks while you’re having a meeting. I may be collecting information by email while you’re stuck in traffic on the way home. But you know what - I’ll deliver the project report to you within the same number of weeks - or less - than I would have in the office. You’ll save money and smell like roses to your boss. And I’ll save money, because I’ll be able to do the work more quickly without the handcuffs of an hourly billing rate that encourages me to perform tasks as slowly as possible.”

…

The conclusion, of course, should be obvious: that’s how I need to run my contracting business. That’s how anyone who does project-based work should do it. I may just give it a shot - and why not? The world of audit, finance and accounting is a hidebound profession in many ways. Most of the time these kinds of professions are resistant to growth - but fertile ground for growth once the resistance is broken. Finding clients who are willing to take a chance might involve some sacrifice at first - traveling to meet them face-to-face just to convince them I know what I’m doing (the only real purpose remaining for business travel, as I see it). But I’ve wondered a lot recently why I’m being paid like the world’s most expensive burger-flipper when it might work out much better for everyone if I was paid more like a hit man: use the best tools, work stealthily and finish the job - all on a flat fee.

photo by nathaniel.andre

lying in the workplace, part 1

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Years ago I supervised two young women on two different projects. Both were about three years removed from college; I was a new manager being given some guidance by an older and almost comically disinterested manager. The two young women had a problem in common, even though they worked on separate clients and seldom crossed paths. Both were liars.

Both had a problem which is common to the field of auditing. Imagine you have a document to audit - an invoice, for example. Your audit test may be something as complicated as tracing prices back to authorized price tables, or something as simple as verifying that the person who was supposed to sign the invoice actually did. If everything is fine, you put a note in the audit workpapers saying “no exception.” If you find problems, you put a note about the exception. What you don’t do is say everything is fine without checking to make sure it is fine.

Both women had done something along these lines. I’ll call one Mary and the other Veronica. Mary lied because she often didn’t understand what she was doing. Mary would look at her assignment and miss the point. I would explain it to her, or another manager would, and she’d miss the point again. To start covering for her lack of comprehension, she simply glossed over problems. She lied to make everything look fine. But she always was hard at work, and deliberate to a fault.

Veronica, on the other hand, was young and gung ho. She was in a rush, hurrying through her jobs and trying to look fiercely efficient. She was sometimes sloppy - maybe she’d look at 30 documents and then assume the other 10 were fine. She’d take a calculated gamble that she wouldn’t miss an exception. She lied to make herself look fine.

Both were caught. I caught them, the senior manager I was working with caught them, and tears were shed. Both pleaded for their jobs. I was still too young to understand myself that the loss of a job is not the end of one’s life. There will be another job. But both women were distraught. They made promises, they begged. One was fired, and one was not.

I know who was fired, but I wonder what you think. Mary struggled, but she only needed more help. Maybe a lot, but she was always trying to do her best. Veronica didn’t struggle - she knew what she was doing and was a driven and focused young woman.

Tomorrow I’ll talk about the outcome.

Photos by Cushing Memorial Library and Archives, Texas A&M

the myth of stable employment

My father was a college professor for the same university his entire career. My mother, although switching schools several times, has had pension-laden and tenure-secured positions at public schools for decades. All of my grandparents worked for the government in one form or another other than my father’s father. All of them held jobs that were stable. They never expected to be laid off. They never anticipated being a casualty of a shortfall in a quarterly stock price target. They never expected to be part of a failing institution. They thought they had - and did have - stable employment.

I ask myself a question before my first day at every new client: how many days will it be before someone asks me if I’m scared of the lack of stability as a consultant - or some variation of the question:

“Don’t you want a stable job?”

“Aren’t you worried you might not find a client after this contract?”

… and so on. It’s usually followed, a month or two later, with a question about whether I’d like to come on board as an employee. I’d have a “regular paycheck.” I’d have a limited choice of expensive benefits. I might get promoted. I’d be part of a team.

To these statements, I reply:

  • “Regular paycheck? Right now, my paycheck is irregular because if I work 55 hours instead of 40, I get paid overtime. If I get that regular paycheck, I get paid 40 all the time - and there’s an incentive for my boss to MAKE me work those 15 free hours.”
  • “Benefits? I get benefits. Fifteen years ago, I didn’t pay for health care, I had a huge 401(k) match, two weeks of vacation as a lowly staff member and even had a vestigal pension. Today, most companies’ benefits are only marginally better than my own. A 401(k) with no match is WORSE than an IRA because of the 401(k)’s fees. Most employees pick up 50% of their health care premiums, but don’t give a choice about coverage. And pensions? Hehehe.”
  • “I might get promoted, be part of a team? Swell. That means I have to get out my rusty corporate back-stabbing knives. I have yet to see the corporate organization where you can put your head down, work well with your staff, deliver results to your manager and move up the totem pole. You have to play politics. You can play politics with a smile or with a frown, but if you don’t play them, you’ll hit a ceiling.”

But after I run through all of these objections, the client uses what - to the corporate mind - is the trump card:

But it’s a STABLE JOB!”

Somehow that’s the final and best stuttered argument in favor of employment. It’s a myth that continues from previous generations.

It’s not true anymore.

I always ask people whether they expect to be working for the same company in five years. Do they expect to work in the same organization - no mergers, no layoffs, no new bosses with their own teams forcing them out, no acquisitions forcing them to move to the other coast? Really? Let alone the possibility that they may just get sick of the job on their own, or find a better one, and quit.

Without exception, employees stop and think for a second. With a nervous laugh, they may claim sure, they’ll be there in five years. But that hesitation and that laugh tell the truth: they won’t. Nobody will.
Of course you know the lifer: someone who’s hung on like grim death. My wife, Bubelah, knew someone like this at her last job. This person was not leaving. She would change departments, move cities, do anything to stay at her corporate job. I’ve known people like this, too: they’d do anything - accept demotions, move their families at short notice, take pay cuts, ANYthing - to keep their job.

If that’s stability, I don’t want it.

The recession has made “stability” the hot term, even while it’s harder to obtain than ever (and less certain even when it is obtained). Stability will never again be a perk an employer can offer. I know someone is thinking about the federal government, or teaching, or union jobs or some other exception. If there is an exception, the days they’ll offer stability are numbered. The work of the future will be unstable. Accept it, adjust your career to fit it and move on.

And by the way, don’t kid yourself - there is no stability in being an entrepreneur, either. If you are a small business owner, and you have all your eggs in that basket, it’s not a stable setup. An entrepreneur’s life may be more challenging, or more personally or financially rewarding, but it’s far from stable.

Stability is a thing of the past in the work world. The only stability is the creation of multiple streams of income, elimination of personal debt and spending less than you earn, while always thinking of ways to earn more than you spend. You have to build income streams whenever you can; nothing else can guarantee stability. Stable income is something that, in the past, your employer gave you.

Today, it’s something you build.

—-

And just in case you wonder, at my current client, I had this conversation not in a matter of days… but the first day.

photo by Cold Cut

it doesn’t have to be so

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Back in the mid-90s, when I was working for a big US consulting firm in Russia, I remembered having a feeling of inevitability: I had to keep working. I had commitments, I had clients, I had a contract, I had staff and managers and partners who all depended on me. My landlady needed my rent. My friends and family would be upset if I bailed. Everything depended, in short order, on me. I was the pivot on which the world turned.

It doesn’t have to be so.

I spent more than a decade in New York City, working at increasingly stressful jobs trying to support my family. I always knew it might be easier elsewhere, but I knew I couldn’t do it. I had commitments, I had clients, I had contracts, I had people who depended on me. Everything pointed to me staying. I couldn’t forge a sensible exit.

It doesn’t have to be so.

The ease with which I sold my house (in a horrible housing market), moved (in a terrible job market), found a new contract (in a more depressed job market), and found a new house at a good price have all astonished me. The lesson I’ve learned - and it’s a powerful one - is that you can’t assume that you cannot improve your own life. Events may conspire to create a better future for you whether you expect them to or not. Whatever your current circumstance, if it’s not what you want: it doesn’t have to be so.

If you want to make a change in your own life, you’ll hear tons of arguments against it. You may even make the arguments yourself. It’s too risky, too drastic, too far, too northern, too western, too conservative, too liberal. Don’t listen to any of it. I have always loved the phrase “is this a test life”? I’ve too seldom lived that. Whatever your current circumstance, if it doesn’t work for you - it doesn’t have to be so.

Take what doesn’t work for you and make it work. Need to change jobs? Need to move? Need to change your relationships or your diet or your mindset? Do it. You’ll get pushback, that’s human nature. But it doesn’t. have. to. be. so. Nothing is preordained, and the best chance you’ll have in this life is the chance you make for yourself. Whatever obstacles you face and whatever circumstances you’re living under today - it doesn’t HAVE to be so.

photo by lrargerich
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