December 8th, 2008 §
I admit – I feel a bit lost being a full-time student, after being in employment for the last 6 years. I no longer have paid projects to work on, a company vision to fulfil, or quarterly performance reviews. At the same time, I don’t have to worry about promotion or about getting a bonus. I am slowly starting to forget all the employee jargon I got so used to like ‘action points’ and ‘agendas’ (I thought really hard to come up with these as well).
More so, I feel lost about this blog. How can I assume to have any advice about work, when I don’t even have a regular job?
Job responsibilities are like scout badges you don’t get in graduate school
All my working friends have very fixed schedules – I understand, because the corporate world lives between 9 to 5. It’s very different executing work in practice than it seems in books. There is constant pressure for employees to perform and meet deadlines – a whole system depends on this. If I screw up my assignments, no one else bears the pain (except maybe those who have put their faith in me).
By not being a part of this pattern of work makes me feel like I’m no longer a part of who I used to represent – the workplace, practitioners, and employees. It’s as though job responsibility acts as a “qualifier” for status – the more responsibilities you have, the better you look in other people’s books.
There are almost no scout badges in graduate school. Previous working experience does blur that line a bit, but there’s almost no politics. To some people, that sounds utopian. But politics is real and unavoidable, and we don’t cover this in class.
The gap between academia and the workplace
I also find that there’s a wide gap between academia and the workplace. Ideally, we want this gap to be bridged well so that we can put into practice the stuff that’s learnt and researched. But this is not always the case.
Company goals and academic goals are two very different things, even though they do contribute to each other at times. This conflict makes it hard for students to compare between what’s taught and what’s practiced.
I subscribe to a lot of blogs and forums in the field I am interested to pursue my career, but I find I have no credibility whatsoever, because I’m not doing the ‘real’ work. The credibility that academic folks impart onto students are often based on academic work, which aren’t always a true reflection of what happens in industry.
Associations, events, blogs, and message boards
I’ve been getting my share of the user-experience (UX) industry goings on through associations, events, blogs and message boards. Even though London is small in comparison to the US UX industry, folks here use the Internet enough to get attention, plan meetups, and share ideas – which are all good to pick up on.
Sadly, though – I feel that not a lot of companies are into making full use of students or interacting with them, apart from getting them to fill up questionaires and showing off how good their brand is, and of course, to attract top talent.
Not all practioners are like that, of course. Associations have student discounts to encourage membership, and their events don’t discriminate between students or practitioners. But students tend to take the backseat – as though we were meant to view things from the sidelines. There’s no PR, no real discourse and interaction, no synergy.
Maybe it gets better over blogs, twitter, and LinkedIn. I have yet to find out.
Reprise
The reason for this post is because I love the brazencareerist community, and I’ve learnt so much from people I haven’t met, I’m encouraged to keep sharing my side of the story – because it is as much as adventure to me as it is to another person reading it. I believe that despite my being in graduate school, my career and life goals are very much alive and kicking – and that’s what this is really all about.
Thanks for reading, and for coming back.
July 1st, 2008 §
I got into an argument with my dad last night. His email wasn’t working presumably because it was running on an older software, so when the installation CDs for the new version arrived, he asked if I could go help him out. I was a bit under the weather so I said I didn’t really want to, and he got upset about that.
I don’t often decline a request for aid, but this has been a common theme with me – I’m the go-to guy for fixing computers. You know the deal.
Recognize if you’re the type who does favors
It starts out when you have a recognizable trait that no one else seems to have. Some cook better than others. Some do the chores better. I just happen to know more about computers than most people.
That’s when everyone and their uncle will want you to come over and cook them dinner, fix their PC, help out with the lawn, and on and on.
That’s all great the first few times… after all, most people start out that way from an interest. Then after the 1000th time, it starts to get old. It takes 2 hours to install Microsoft Office, 3 hours to debug an IP address conflict, or set up an email account. What seems to take minutes can take hours, especially when there’s a tendency for mom to open an email attachment that’s actually a malicious Trojan.
Do it too often, and it won’t get you anywhere
I have a brother-in-law who just graduated with a culinary arts diploma. Everyone and his uncle wants him to cook meals after meals. And now he doesn’t want to cook anymore. He’s obliged to. It doesn’t get him anywhere in life.
I’m probably thinking it doesn’t happen to people who have jobs or careers that are completely undomestic – offshore petroleum engineer, sewage operations manager, mayor, president, pilot, formula one race driver.
But for the rest of us, we’re be cajoled into cooking, fixing PCs, doing the accounts, fixing pipes, mowing the lawn… and the payoff isn’t very rewarding, simply because it’s not part of a career. It’s like a reset button because you’re constantly being reminded that you’re only valuable to most people as a tax accountant, a tech support guy, an assistant chef…
Play it to your advantage, not the other way around
If you have an unmistakable trait that everyone recognizes in the office, you need to be aware of how favors and paying it forward can be a benefit as well as a deterent to you. I’ve personally experienced both the positive and negative aspects of it.
In my first job, I set up the company’s first source control system, and initiated changes that slowly took place within the company, but nobody paid much attention. Everyone else was so busy with their work to realize they were working 10 times harder than they should. But the company rewards them for hard work, not for shortcuts that get the same work done faster.
In another job I took, everyone was pretty much knew how to look after themselves, and we would help each and other out if there was a lack somewhere. We did it because it was teamwork, not because nobody wanted to do the job. If there was something repetitive, we would work to minimize it, by documenting or simplifying or ensuring things were understood.
Solution: Speak up, know what you want in life
Most people won’t reward you much for the little things because it seems like such a small thing, it’s so common sense that anyone can do it except no one wants to. So, sometimes the job gets pushed around until finally someone does it, and that person ends up with a ‘permanent’ role. The rest get to sit back and do the work they need to do to get ahead, and everything seems to happen like clockwork.
If you’re the guy who constantly gets the simple jobs, you need to speak out. Getting the job done is important, but make sure you’re heard, and if it’s not difficult for everyone to play a part, then call for a reassessment of roles. Make sure you’re being rewarded for your extra effort, and if not, you’ll need to assess your situation to see if this is working out for you or not. The message has to get out, and it has to make sense to everyone. People get trapped in tunnel vision all the time.
If you don’t want your career to be full of fixing small things and doing small jobs, then quit. Spread the work out, do a work rotation or let someone else do that job – people will learn to adapt with outsourcing, hiring temps and so on. If it’s necessary work, it’ll get done somehow – everyone just needs to know what needs to be done and have a spirit of teamwork.
I’ll still fix my parents PC because I love them, and the amount they’ve invested into my life can’t quite compare to the little help I do with their computers. But that’s not the same as doing favors all the time in the office and not getting anything back for it.
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June 29th, 2008 §
I just got back from a family vacation. And not just any family vacation, but an extended family vacation – where my uncles and aunts and cousins are all in.
I think that in the West, this might seem like a relational nightmare. This is the equivalent of big family Thanksgiving dinner three days in a row. But somehow, it sort of works out in the East. At least, that’s how it has been for many families here.
Culture has a big part to play. Everyone knows the rules. Some fit in really well. Some just stay by the sidelines. Some are there to make sure everyone gets along. In a social game where there are different players, everyone needs to know the rules. Anyone who doesn’t seem to fit in won’t get included, or force may be applied.
I feel it’s the same in any social setting. Take for example corporate culture. There’s obvious work to be done. There are departments that seem to take on certain forms, which helps us decide how employees relate to them. There are managers, who each have their own personalities. Communicating well with them requires specific skills and opportunities.
Culture is hard to change, and most people learn to adjust and get along instead of rocking the boat. But the good news is that they get to go home at the end of the day.
If I had a choice, there would be certain things I would change about culture, but that would be to suit my selfish needs. Learning to adapt is an entirely different thing altogether, and a more appropriate skill to have, especially when things need to change.
The three options I give myself involve self-initiated productivity, communication and exiting.
Self-initiated productivity is the most active thing I can do as an individual that is healthy and doesn’t require a lot of convincing or persuading. In a way, it’s about doing the work you think needs to get done in your own way, and making sure it fits into the business. It can shape the way you perceive a business, and the way a company perceives you and the work.
Communication is about expressing my opinions, that may or may not change the way people think or work. It’s often subtle, but necessary. Communication is about expressing how the work I do impacts the business, and how effective I see this work plays a part in everything. Sometimes communication is all it takes to shape a healthy culture. Sometimes, it does nothing. But it’s necessary, so that people are aware to make the appropriate decisions.
Finally, exiting happens when there’s no room left to grow, or that the direction you want to move to is going against the grain, or that it may just be time to let someone else take your spot. Whatever the reason, people come and go all the time in the corporate world. But it’s often beneficial for exits to take place, even though it may sound like a sad ending in a story. Exits can shape cultures too. People learn to adapt.
My experience this time round with my family hasn’t changed much over the last few decades. Unlike companies, this particular group of people will never change. The players won’t leave, the rules won’t change, but we’ll all have different stories growing up and that’s just how things will be. The only difference is that there’s a longer time-out, instead of the day’s end where people pack up and go home.
It’s during this long time-out that we go back to playing the game of life, in ways we think it ought to be played, according to our own rules.
