Re: Make life more stable with more frequent job changes
- From: Straydog <asd@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 12:49:12 -0400
On Fri, 5 Oct 2007, Marco wrote:
The flexibility message is generally useful, but this career coach/
cheerleader/whore absolves companies of any negative effects of career
instability.
Its like a religion: since you can't do anything about it, ignore it, don't learn anything from it, etc. More below...
Instead, it's "cheer up, instability is a growth
experience, it's good for you, it's healthy, be pro-active in it !!
RahRahRah"
Sounds like deliberate preaching of "stick your head in the sand" and all your problems will go away. And, that is BS.
Marco
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Make life more stable with more frequent job changes
from Penelope Trunk's Brazen Careerist
February, 2007
It used to be that finding a good paying career was the path to adult-
life stability.
Wrong. The path to security "may not be" those civil service, military, govt jobs (forget tenure), but make as much money as possible because if you don't have a secure job, then maybe the only other option is a secure pile of cash.
Those days are over. What we think of as stability has
to change, and how we get to that stability has to change.
As long as you have to pay rent for housing and money for food, you will need stable source of money (or a big piggy bank).
Here's a summary of the new employee of today's workplace: Most will
change jobs every two years.
And, after they reach age 40, the unemployment intervals get bigger and the employement intervals get smaller.
Most will start their adult life by
moving back in with their parents.
They are called boomerang kids.
Most say that money is not their
number one concern in evaluating a job.
Bad thinking.
You think it's a recipe for instability, right? But what else is there
to do? Work at IBM until you get a gold watch? There are no more jobs
like that - companies are under too much pressure to be lean and
flexible (read: layoffs, downsizing, reorgs), so workers have to be,
too (read: constantly on the alert for new job possibilities).
Heavy think into secure jobs: move into rich neighborhoods where your customers have that nice big secure pile of cash, and offer services to them.
In fact, stability is a big goal for new workers today, precisely
because the old paths to stability don't necessarily work.
For example, staying in one job forever is today's recipe for career
suicide.
My old California buddy, who was BSME, had one job in his life at LLNL, retired recently at $85K per year plus a sponsored health plan for retirement. Not suicide at all.
At the beginning of one's career, it is nearly impossible to
find something right without trying a bunch of options. After that,
you will experience more personal growth from changing jobs frequently
than staying in one job for extended periods of time. And if you
change jobs frequently you build an adaptable skill set and a wide
network which are the keys to being able to find a job whenever you
need to.
You also look more unstable to future employers, too.
Another example of the fact that common paths to stability no longer
work: Professional degrees used to be viewed as a safe path, but now
they box you into uncomfortable spots. PhD's are having lots of
trouble finding work due to the documented glut of qualified
candidates, and the MBA is not a huge help to your career unless you
go to a top-ten school.
Some of the undesireable work out there is counseling. Many court cases give court orders to defendants to get mandatory counseling. Divorce, alchohol, spouse abuse, drug rehab, ...lots of stuff....guaranteed work. You just might want to have a bullet-proof window between you and the client, theough.
Doctors are having a hard time working a
schedule that accommodates kids and pay back school loans, which is
creating a surge in interest in the field of opthalmology - probably
not what your parents had in mind when they were encouraging medical
school.
The lack of stability is affecting people across the board: "All well-
educated workers, even those at the top, are at much greater risk of
economic reversals than they used to be," wrote Jacob Hacker,
professor of political science at Yale.
You only have to look at the Forbe's "400 richest people in America" to notice fairly low attrition out of that group. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are still the two richest guys in the USA.
Have any of you seen that advertisement showing BG and WB on the couch in an airplane with no other seats or people? And, both with tall drinks on the coffee table? And WB with a giggle and BG with what looks like hes' laughing hysterically? I've seen it in two different magazines.
Finally, tried-and-true paths to financial stability are no longer
reliable either. This is the first generation that will not do better
financially than their parents.
The rich are doing fabulously well. See the recent issue of Forbes.
Anya Kamenetz describes in her book,
Generation Debt, that young people today are in a much worse financial
situation than their parents were, so the expectations for stability
have to change.
But the banks are in a much better financial situation.....
This financial situation is due to increasing college
costs and decreasing parental ability to foot the bill. And real
salaries are decreasing for entry level jobs. So new workers start
life with more debt and less ability to pay it than their parents'
generation.
Yep.
So it's not surprising that the new vision of stability is not a
house, two kids and pension. Most young people are priced out of
housing markets in the cities they want to live in, like Boston. San
Francisco and New York are seeing an increase in one-child families
because people can't afford two, and there are no more pensions.
Period. The goals are more fluid - and they do not focus on old tropes
of financial success like a house and a 401K.
Japan went through something like this about 10-15 years ago.
Key values today are time and relationships. Stability means knowing
you can get yourself work that is fun and accommodates those values.
The stable people are those who can manage to consistently get work
they enjoy that pays their bills.
It used to be that you worked really hard and paid your dues so you
could retire rich and do what you love. But we know now that most
people don't really retire, so paying dues in order to get that is
nonsense. Stability is knowing you have a life where you can do what
you love, during your whole life, not just at the end.
I'm retired. But, the next generation is going to be in a world of hurt.
The new way to find a good job - one that creates this stability - is
to change jobs. A lot. And to keep an open mind about what a job
really is, because what it is not is a lifelong commitment to one
company.
Nah, the answer is to find steady work, work that you can change easily, and start a small business doing services in niche industries, and keep your overhead down. I like that electrician who charges $60-70/hour, works out of his house, and works a few weeks, then goes fishing/hunting for 1-2 weeks, then works for a month, then goes on vacation again, etc.
Here are ways to use frequent job changes to create stability in your
life:
1. Build up a strong skill set quickly.
Go to a job to work on a great project, and leave when your learning
curve flattens out. The faster you build up your skills to create an
expertise, the faster you will be able to set yourself apart from
everyone else, and find good jobs quickly.
Nah, build up a loyal clientele and they will stay with you.
2. Get good at making transitions.
Nah, perfect what you already know and build on that.
There are moments in a person's life that typically throw everything
out of whack because you can't continue working in your job. Sickness,
relocation, unexpected wrenches in one's plan. When you are used to
changing jobs, and you have taught yourself to deal with work
transitions, then when your personal life requires huge transition,
your work can accommodate that instead of get in the way. Changing
jobs will be easy.
Get on Medicaid.
3. Make the most of the in-between-jobs time.
You can use job changes to make transition less risky. It's very hard
to know if you'll like something until you try it. If you have been in
corporate marketing for ten years and you want to try
entrepreneurship, that feels like a big risk. But if you think you
might like to start your own business but you're not sure, taking a
pause in between jobs to try this new business isn't such a risky move
at all.
If possible, talk to people, keep in touch with locals, etc.
4. Get out of paying your dues.
The idea of paying dues worked fine when there was actually payoff
(think: Retirement communities in Florida funded by pensions.)
One article says Florida is not the retirement destination any more. More people are leaving Florida than coming in.
But
today paying dues doesn't have nearly the payoff it used to, and in
fact, creates instability by creating unreasonable expectations for a
job you become overly invested in.
Makes no sense unless you have a job with no vesting pension plan. Otherwise stay in the job. Pension benefits usually accrue with time in grade.
So get out of paying dues by
changing jobs frequently. Laura Vanderkam, workplace reporter for USA
Today, wrote a book called Grindhopping about how to hop from job to
job as a way to avoid paying your dues.
5. Keep your finances in order.
As long as you keep your overhead down, so that you don't need a
salary that requires 100-hour work weeks, then job hopping is actually
a way to ensure financial stability. You know you are not going to
stay at a job forever, and you don't know when it will end. But you
will always able to get work when your needs or your company's needs
change if you are good at changing jobs. This won't be true, however,
if you are a financial mess and have enormous overhead.
Better...don't go into debt.
The best financial security today is to have great job hunting skills
that never stop. Go to the best job, do it until you find another best
job. This is the kind of person who will always be able to get money
when they need it.
Better to study the fishing ponds to see how many fish are there and what the ratio of fishermen to fish is.
And don't let people tell you that job hoppers will get penalized in
the marketplace. Generation Y is job hopping every other year, and
they are in incredible demand throughout the workplace. Demographics
are shifting, and forcing hiring practices to shift as well. Take
advantage of this. Create a stable life by getting good at changing
jobs.
I demure.
.
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