Paradox

Here's a word for you....

Paradox.

I find myself constantly running into them.

Do less to get more....

"Overqualified" for a job that's a perfect fit....

Being "Too Nice"

We're encouraged to do the right thing but often punished for doing just that.  I've found that all too often being reliable, nice and accommodating had gotten me many pats on the back but little progress forward.

It's just not the world we live in.  You can be everyone's friend and confidant but ultimately end up the world's doormat.

That's fine if you're Mother Theresa and have a Nobel Prize waiting for you but the rest of us are unlikely to rise to such lofty heights of perceived selflessness.  Oh and by the way, even Mother Theresa had a strong sense of self-preservation.  She freely accepted medical care but denied any such relief to those dying in hospice.

There's a paradox, a life devoted to ending suffering...most of the time.

OK so she was human after all but for the rest of us unlikely to be elevated to posthumous sainthood what's the point?

For me it just seems natural to want to help but where to draw the line.  I have a problem with saying no to all but the most extreme conditions of self-preservation.

My reward for such contorted altruism is something I frequently have to make excuses for.

I'm no saint.  I'm not perfect but I do always try to understand the other side and in this world that seems to be an anathema.

Killer Instincts and assertiveness, regardless of who gets hurt, are the keys to success.
The other option is just a perversion of the "nice guy" in the guise of the "Yes Man" that acts as doormat in hopes of sneaking up the ranks.

That's just passive aggression.  I'm not about that.

So I suppose my societal fit is a bit off.  I only get pissed off when faced with the reality of my station as disposable because of it.  I know I'm not some unworthy scrap with an overheated sense of fairness.  I am, however, overly concerned with everyone else being happy.  I'm not self-aggrandizing here BTW,  It's something that has not served me.

So be it, I can't and won't be something I'm not.  The payoff isn't worth it.

I do have limits even if they seem generous but don't be surprised if I "push back" when you eventually run headlong into my lowest levels of self-preservation. Everybody does it, eventually.


I'm still a nice guy but I'm working on being less and less of a doormat.

The trick is not to become less and less human.  The definition of which is less than attractive for all those "winners" out there.

Your past experiences can ruin your present so do something about it.

There's nothing you've ever done that wasn't influenced by something you'd already experienced.  

That may seem obvious but the longer we live the more baggage we drag along with us and it can have effects we may not always be aware of.

Every experience, good or bad, has value.  We tend to cherish the positive and bury the negative in hopes that those unpleasant memories fade to oblivion.

Thing is, we can't escape our own history.  Regardless of how hard you try all that we see or do is part of how we approach everything that comes after.

So with that preface I share with you a strange ritual that I participated in with a close friend.

My friend recently started a great job.  It's just about everything you could ever want.  Great pay, great people and a solid organizational structure that encourages individual success.

He's had it for about 6 months and every time I see him it seems his enthusiasm for the position grows.  Thing is, in the midst of all that positive energy I kept picking up on hints of some negative baggage carried over from his last job.

Understandable considering he had his last job for 16 years, the bulk of his career to this point.  

I remember the tension and frustration of those days.  He learned much of what he knows from the experience of working there.  Unfortunately, the last few years of it had burned some rather unpleasant memories into his subconscious.  It was a betrayal of sorts rooted in a misguided bureaucratic process.

For him it became something he never signed up for.  There were demands put upon him that had little to do with his primary function.  Couple that with unrealistic expectations with no support from a management team without a mission statement.

It became hell.  One that finally required drastic action to escape.  In the end he left on good terms with enough of a parachute to get him to his next job.  He was fortunate to have rolled the dice and won and when his latest job came along he won again.

But as I said, we can't escape our experiences.  With all the positives of my friend's new job there were echoes of his past causing interference.  He kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and holding back much as he did in his old job.  

Something symbolic had to be done so that the subconscious hangups from his old bad experiences didn't color his new ones.

Negatives can always be turned to a positive but you have to be able to put them in their place first.  To that end I thought about how we might be able to do something that would create in his mind a clear delineation between his old job and his new one.

I had it!

A few years back he had given me a shirt with the company logo on it.  It was a token gesture of thanks for helping him out on a project we worked on together.

The shirt didn't mean much to me other than preventing nakedness.  I hadn't worn it more than twice and never felt quite right about having it since I never worked for the company.  The interesting part about it is that he never wore it and made a point of giving it to me as though he were trying to rid himself of it.

It occurred to me that since we both had some level of discomfort over this shirt that maybe it was time to bring it to a dramatic end.

So I brought it back to him but not to rejoin the rest of his wardrobe.  No, I had a far more dramatic end in store.

We were going to burn that bitch....

A week went by when my friend surprised me.  There was the shirt still rolled up in the plastic bag I had returned it in.  

We were going to do this and without a moment's hesitation on a particularly dark night we took the shirt to his back yard and set in on fire.

As we watched it burn and tried to stay out of the toxic smoke that can only come from a 50/50 polyester/cotton blend we gazed transfixed at what was meant to be a dramatic and graphic bookend to a bad memory.

It was a gesture to put the memory in its place.  My hope is that the image of that shirt ablaze supplants all those subtle little naggings that can sabotage his new job.

It's not unlike the story I was once told of the guy who bought a new pickup truck.  The story goes that a man bought a brand new pickup truck to replace one that was old and beat up.  He was getting ready to leave when a salesman came up to him and told him admiringly how beautiful it was and how he was sure the man would probably want to try to keep it that way.

On hearing this, the man turned, thought about what he said and then proceeded to pick up a huge rock and throw it in the bed of the truck causing a huge dent and of course a number of scratches in the paint.

The Salesman, horrified, couldn't believe what he just saw to which the man said, " I need this truck for work and can't afford the distraction of keeping it pretty.  Now I don't have to worry about it."

Ok, a bit extreme but the lesson is relevant to the message.  You can't let irrelevant things distract you from what you're trying to accomplish.  If it takes burning a shirt or throwing a rock at a brand new truck to get the BS out of the way then do it.

Unlinking from LinkedIn

I find zero value in LinkedIn...

The concept isn't even original.  It's been called a glorified Facebook for business professionals and LinkedIn doesn't deny it.

As I poke around my own profile I'm inundated with prompts to "upgrade" my membership to enjoy all those "premium" features like being able to actually get useful search results (instead of "professional at xyz") or send a colleague an "in-mail" message on the site.  

Screw it, I'll just text them...

But you have to ask yourself, Why? 

Why would I pay a subscription fee to get even more email from people I don't know?  What most people consider spam, Linkedin considers a "feature."

I know, I know, these are supposed "business contacts" and "networking opportunities" not Viagra ads but that's rarely the case.  For example, I've gotten more requests to "join someone's network" from cold calling "staffing specialists"  (resume stackers)  than anyone I've ever had an actual professional relationship with.

In other words, you'd get less spam from a Monster.com account than from an active LinkedIn profile.  In fact, Monster.com is more useful which is something I never thought I would say.  Yeah, they want a paid subscription too but at least the search function works!

LinkedIn has been having an identity crisis for at least the past 5 years with most looking at it as a job search site while others look at it as an expanded CV while still others bought into that whole Facebook thing.

I sincerely hope nobody is pinning all their hopes on the job listings.  Most of them are out of date and/or list jobs that have little to nothing to do with your own skills.

If you do find something, expect to run into the service's many roadblocks including blocking the ability to share the position with anyone who doesn't happen to use the service.  Worse, many ISP's consider email messages from LinkedIn as ACTUAL Spam so your friend probably wouldn't get them anyway...

If you think it works for you chances are you already had a deep contact list without LinkedIn's help.

Meaning that those at the top of the heap likely get deluged with "connection" requests from complete strangers unless they choose to block such communication.

Which kind of defeats the purpose...

I admit, I do check in now and again just to see who got fired.  If you have enough information you can piece together just how flaky any given corporation's management is by watching how often different names show up under the same job title. 

So I guess it's good for something but not for what it professes to be. 

If you think LinkedIn is doing great things for your career you're just not giving yourself enough credit.

Never give yourself the opportunity to do nothing.

At times I get annoyed with myself.  Maybe I didn't get the house cleaned up or the car washed, it doesn't matter.  It's not the thing that I should have done so much as I didn't do it when given the opportunity.

Which is my point.

When you've got a lot of down time it's tempting to just resign yourself to a lifestyle of procrastination.  After all, there's always tomorrow right?

So isn't it strange that when our lives are consumed with the demands of career and family that what we wish for the most is free time.  Then when we have it, we squander it.

It's human nature to adapt to our environment so it's no surprise that when we're busy we tend to stay that way and when we're not...

Newton's third law comes into play here.  Just as it's hard to stop a speeding train without a lot of effort the same can be said for getting it going.

The problem is that trains aren't people and while the long term effects of a train sitting idle can be corrected rather quickly, idle people take a bit more of a push.

It's far too easy to just lie around and put things off.  After awhile we go from relaxation to atrophy.

That's not a good thing.  The deeper we descend into inaction the more dire the consequences.  Things pile up and as they do you feel worse about them.

The distance between disappointment and depression is dangerously small.  Like anything else a condition left untreated won't improve on its own.

So I'd suggest that instead of bringing that train to a stop to watch the weeds grow around it that you at least try to keep it in motion even if you can't crank it up to full throttle.

Speaking of weeds, I bet there's some that need pulling or a floor that needs washing.  It doesn't matter what you do so long as your engaged with something other than your sofa.

I've seen it in myself and my friends.  That awful limbo between jobs or projects can work on you like an ice cube on a hot sidewalk. 

So if you're an IT guy maybe it's time to populate one of those VM's with the latest Linux distro.  Turn wrenches for a living?  I'm positive there's a neighbor that could use some help.  Maybe even deal with those weeds that mock you as you try to enjoy your morning coffee.  No matter what you do, the simple act of doing it pays dividends that far surpass the task.

The only people who are meant to do nothing spend all their time in a box, they're called corpses.

Don't go to work

I've always believed that the work you do should matter to you.  If you're just plodding along day after day counting the hours till the weekend then frankly you're just wasting your and everyone else's time.

I know it's not always possible to "follow your bliss" but life's too short to only enjoy the weekends.

After over 20 years in the field I've come to the realization that the closest I can come to cubicle dwelling bliss is to either run the IT department or just blithely take my marching orders at its lowest rung.

Anything else just has me spinning my wheels.

So while my credentials include jobs in system administration, support and  project management not to mention creating a successful IT consulting business, my dreams of sitting in the big chair are about as likely as a winning lottery ticket.

So as I scan the job boards and the occasional craigslist posting I keep a vigilant eye open for positions that match the other end of my proposed  bliss...

I had thought I found one the other day.  It was a support job that was described as being part roving admin and part helpdesk.  The nice part was that if I had to go  anywhere the company provided the transportation. 

It seemed perfect.  The pay rate was a little low but if I wasn't shouldering the cost of transportation that was a leg up on anything else I'd seen. 

My application had apparently impressed the hiring manager enough for him to schedule a short phone screen.

In the course of the subsequent conversation the manager told me that the job would involve around 80 hours per week at all hours.  The prospective employee was expected to be available round the clock 24/7/365 and work from the office, home and wherever else he/she was required.

Believe it or not I was still considering the position even after I did the math and figured out that I would be making $9.61 per hour before taxes.

But that wasn't what really turned me off to the job. 

It was the realization during the Q & A part of the interview that this company, like many others, was built on making bad decisions.

Decisions like:

• Attempted "Cleaning" of rootkit, malware and virus infections off of PC's instead of reloading from a backup image. 
• Not providing adequate training to your technicians
• Not staying current with technical advances
• Supporting 20 year old servers with no hope of replacement parts
• Installing software that was no longer being supported by the manufacturer
• Not informing the client as to best practices or upgrade options
• Accepting liability for an SLA at a client where meeting that SLA is impossible due to the previously mentioned reasons.

It all amounts to billing for work that isn't really being done and I have a problem with that. 

IT is an uphill battle and if you're not moving forward it won't be long till you're moving the other direction.  It seems that most of the major players disagree, however, as they've built their IT support businesses off of doing what amounts to little more than "busywork"

It's one of the reasons I don't make the money in consulting that many think I should be.  I like to fix the problem once and move on from there.  I'm not one to keep beating a dead horse.  

The client is the boss but I'm being paid to know things they don't.  That's a level of trust that I refuse to betray.  That means that sometimes you have to have an uncomfortable conversation but I'd rather lose a client that wants me to do shoddy work than continue on and sacrifice my own integrity.

We're getting back to my original assertion that your work life should be meaningful and anything less is just a waste of time.

Making money off not doing the job your clients are trusting you to do is the ultimate expression of that and I can't stomach it.

www.sentrytechnical.com

The disability of a narrow mind

Anyone who knows me well has heard me utter the phrase, "mediocrity is the standard" more than once and usually with disgust. 

So what do I mean by that?

To be blunt, the standard of mediocrity means blundering through life never attempting to do more than the bare minimum.  It's a fallback position that many in the working world spend their entire careers operating from. 

It usually happens when someone takes a position they may be qualified for but have no real interest in.  How such a person can rise to power when a more engaged candidate doesn't is usually indicative of a systematic problem within the organization.  In short, everyone up the management chain is similarly disinterested and will protect themselves from discovery.   

If one operates under the standard of mediocrity for a long enough period of time they eventually assume that it's the status quo.  This is the disability of the narrow mind within the context of employment.  Note that racism, elitism and other societal 'isms are similar in that all effectively cripple higher reasoning.

Thus we see the initial stages of the "dominos of disaster" when practitioners of the mediocrity standard run headlong into more engaged individuals.   

When confronted with a potential threat to the status quo of mediocrity, the disability becomes readily apparent.  It surfaces in confrontational behaviors and rejection of information not contained within their narrow focus even when compatible with stated organizational goals. 

In effect, the inability to think "outside the box" regardless of how beneficial the outcome will prevent the afflicted individual from acting reasonably.

If it sounds like a medical or psychological condition it is.  In fact it's pathological in an organizational sense.

This is the dilemma that the long term and formerly self employed face when interviewing with afflicted organizations.  Candidates with such a backgrounds are considered inferior and suspect regardless of experience, accomplishments or evidence to the contrary.

Take the example of the former self-employed consultant now interviewing for a regular full time position.  In this case the candidate may get through HR and lower level managers but find opposition from senior management.  Even before the first handshake is extended the candidate is already in a diminished position.

Overcoming the condition is virtually impossible as any concession the candidate asserts is assumed to be suspect if not disingenuous.   The only recourse for the candidate is to try to frame their qualifications within the narrow context of the organizational pathology.

At this point it's usually a pointless exercise to proceed any further since the organizational dysfunction curtails higher reasoning and shortens attention spans.  This is most blatantly evidenced by repeated questioning about the same topic, yawning and in some cases snoring.

Unfortunately, most organizations suffer the affliction and have even elevated it to a de facto mission statement.  It's a common pathogen meaning you're going to encounter a lot of it in the corporate world regardless of your job function. 

If you do encounter such an organization (and you will) and still  wish to persist in your efforts to join it you can employ the following tactics.  Note that they will likely be unsuccessful but more productive than attempting to alert the afflicted to their condition.

• ·         Lie -  You can hope they won't check your background and enter the organization with stealth if not outright deception.  With the easy access to information and most organizations requiring a formal background check it's likely you won't succeed past the first interview.  If the organization is dysfunctional enough, however, they may respond well to a cleverly crafted deception. 
• ·         Debate- This tactic will likely have even less of a chance of success than deception but at least you'll be comforted in the knowledge that you were completely truthful.  The tactic involves countering objections to your qualifications by crafting your responses to fit the narrow focus of the afflicted organization.  For example, when confronted with a concern about work ethic especially if your career consists primarily of self employment try this.  Assert the merits of personal responsibility and client satisfaction necessary to run a successful small business.  It also wouldn't hurt to mention that you're a firm believer in trickle-down economics and would jump at the chance to be standing on the bottom rung with awaiting arms outstretched.  Keep in mind, however, that afflicted organizations and their management have limited capability to engage in higher reasoning so keep your responses short and at roughly the 6th grade level.
• ·         Violence - Only useful if the prospects of arrest and incarceration hold no fear for you. 
• ·         Submission - In short, be an apologist for your entire career and essentially "throw yourself on the mercy of the court."  In a severely afflicted organization with candidates less qualified than yourself this may be the most effective tactic.  Be aware, however, that should you secure the position you will likely find it unfulfilling.  Still, the knowledge that mediocre performance is the status quo may eventually make your stay more tolerable.  Beware the danger of becoming infected with the Disability of the Narrow mind, however, as it will alter you on a cellular level.  Then again, once infected you will likely become anesthetized to its ill effects and become blissfully unaware of it.  This is especially true if  the position offers a good prescription drug program.
• ·         Defiance - This is similar to the Violence option above except the authorities aren't involved.  It's not so much a display of emotional outbursts as an attempt to make the hiring manager feel stupid.  The desired outcome of this tactic is to temporarily shock management out of their disability by forcing undeniable logic on them.  Your ultimate goal is to convince the hiring manager that you are the change needed to further organizational goals.  Unfortunately, this tactic has only been shown to work in the movie Office Space.

In short, afflicted organizations should be avoided if at all possible.  Otherwise damage to your career and possibly your psyche could result.

Are you out of your F'ing....

Are you out of your F'ing mind??!

I just read this article and while I admit it is a bit old (March 2010) the premise is utterly preposterous.

Here's the link...Perspective: Keep working (Even if you don't get paid)

The author suggests keeping the same work routine you had before you became unemployed.

This assumes quite a lot such as; the work you were assigned was still relevant ( dubious if you've been downsized) and that you'll develop bad habits if you break your worker bee routine (god forbid you figure out that you'd be better off contracting.)

There's no doubt in my mind that this individual has never had the misfortune of going an indeterminate amount of time without a steady paycheck. Being a science publication it's also obvious that the author has benefitted from working in the public and/or education sector as well (tenure anyone?)

It's natural. When things are going well your mindset is totally different than if you're scraping the bottom of the barrel just to find enough money to keep the lights on and enjoy a hearty meal of ramen noodles for dinner.

There's almost a sense of euphoria among those who've never stared the specter of financial disaster in the face. They just don't understand how things can go wrong often asserting that they would never stoop to such degradation as taking unemployment or letting a credit card account go bad.

I'm unsure of the source of the quote (and I do paraphrase) but someone once said the measure of a man wasn't what they did in good times but how they weathered the hard times.

Yes, by all means do what you can to keep your skills up but this article suggests working for free for the company that canned you. I'm sorry but if you're let go for whatever reason consider those bridges burned. If they valued you you'd still be there. It's been my experience that once you've been escorted to the door there's no longer a desire to see you walk back in through it, even for free.

I could care less what the U.S. Bureau of statistics says about the bad habits of the unemployed. For one thing nobody I know or have ever known (including me) has ever been interviewed by them so I'm suspect of their findings.

The second assertion came shortly after the quote from a supposed hiring manager, "I have no problem hiring the unemployed. But I will not hire people who are not working"

Really? well thank god for that because you sir are not looking for a resource, you're looking for a slave.

I see the perspective of a taskmaster here. Perhaps because I'm someone who's spent most of his career as an independent contractor I have trouble playing devil's advocate in this case. I'm more about the product than procedure to make it which runs contrary to the prevailing 19th century work ethic.

That's the mantra that says no work gets done unless it's closely monitored and controlled.

The reality is that if you can't get work in your field, working for free won't pay the bills and at some point you're likely to end up pushing shopping carts around Home Depot to pay the rent. This isn't unlike the advice given in those outdated self-help books about how to land the perfect job. You know the ones that say to go work as an unpaid intern for a year hoping to get an entry level position. That's fine if someone can afford to support you but that's been a rarity for a couple of decades now.

The other thing that's not addressed is the cost of working. If you continue doing what you did before you got canned you'll soon find that you're going through an awful lot of cash.

Take the work for free at your old employer jazz. 

You still have the costs just to get there. Fuel costs, bus fare, etc. Then there's the costs for unimportant things like lunch, parking fees and dry cleaning. After all, even if you're sadistic ex-employer does take advantage of your "work for free" offer they won't be happy if you show up in shorts and flip flops. 

Let's also not forget that as a non-employee you will no longer have access to company resources like computers or the internet so you'll have to provide your own. That's at least $100 a month outlay tethering a laptop to a smartphone.

I'm suspicious of this entire article and find it almost insulting. What is even more insulting is the fact that it's on a site called, "sciencecareers"

I'm not the flat earth type but this type of advice makes everyone in the discipline look a bit naive.