The World's Smallest Violin
OK, so I will admit that yesterday's post On Working Life was a squeensy bit melodramatic. David ticked me off good and proper this morning.
However, that doesn't mean I'm taking the thrashing just like that. I'm going down swinging. Here's my reply:
Firstly, I did not intend to suggest that I regretted or resented my education simply because it did not result in instant fame and fortune. I did not attend the school I did merely to obtain fame and fortune either. I went there to learn, and to learn how to learn. In that respect, I am forever grateful. I owe far too much to my time at university -- gaining greater analytical maturity, being part of a different culture, finding the best group of friends ever -- to be superficial about it.
However, my academic life prior to university put me in a rat race even before the corporate one. Attending an Ivy League was to be my Golden Ticket; in fact, I was accepted to Harvard. I one-upped that by going somewhere even more special. All efforts were focused on getting to university, like it would somehow be the magic bullet for my life.
Turns out, it's not the magic bullet. Especially here, where I am convinced most people still think Oxford is in London.
There is a difference between intrinsic value and economic value. The intrinsic value of my education -- regardless of institution (and may I remind you, David, that you attended an equally prestigious university in England) -- is matchless. Economic value, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter.
One only seems to attain maximal economic value when the education is combined with personal ambition, effort, and/or character. In fact, one could argue very well based on plenty of evidence that education may be altogether unnecessary! This is an incredibly hard lesson to learn for someone who has a high degree of ambition but lacks the correct character and is sodding lazy. The fall to hard ground has taken some time, and the pain signals reached my brain later than expected.
Of course, some could care less about economic value. I envy them for their laissez-faire approach to life. I wish I could be that way too, but a gnawing fear of poverty got hard-wired into me sometime early in life. My angst is not aimed at my university education, it is aimed at a disappointing revelation about myself: that I just haven't got what it takes to completely remove my fear of being penniless. I am a corporate slave; the income that I earn, respectable as it is, only exists by the grace of people who judge me to be worthy. I am a piece of friggin' meat.
To remove the fear entirely would mean becoming the butcher, but that takes something else I haven't got or figured out yet. You are right, life is what one makes it. I don't think I've got the right set of tools for me -- at least right now. Won't you grant me that reality? Is it whinging just because I am facing up to facts? Is it whinging because it makes me feel slightly sad?
I really do believe this.
Secondly, I feel compelled to clarify my frustration at being one of the Grey Masses working in just another corporation in just another outcrop of suburbia. After years of navel-staring, I have boiled it down to one basic desire: meritocracy. Do good work, get good work. Add value, get value. Work hard, get respect and loyalty.
This is far less about money than you imagine it to be. Let's take money out of the equation. Isn't every person who slogs their guts out and displays creativity, dedication, and care in their work entitled to job satisfaction, respect, and loyalty? Well, here's breaking news: the odds of finding that in most of corporate life are slim to none.
Ways to find greater pools of meritocracy, as far as I have been able to determine: climb up or get out.
My inability to be a Machiavellian Yes Man has ruled me out of the former; my lack of unique brilliance and death-/poverty-defying chutzpah have temporarily locked me out of the latter.
If the free market worked as it should in the space below upper management, I would be perfectly happy to be a cog. I just cannot believe that those who squander millions of dollars, treat fellow human beings like chattel, and who bask in doing as little work as possible get rewarded in equal or greater measure than those with purer goals and more capable minds. Over and over again, I see this pattern perpetuated.
Yes, the broken system burns me up. But my own shortcomings don't help matters much.
Of course, that's not to say I don't have perspective. I feel incredibly blessed every day for my home life. I am busting a gut at work to do my part in fighting pervasive negativity and nastiness. I am still trying to build my own magic bullet.
But I'm not here to compromise. I'm not here to be some namby-pamby apologist. I'm here to tell some (thinly disguised) truths that should make all of us feel uncomfortable about the way many companies work. Along the way, I will tell some truths about me that make me feel uncomfortable. And in many respects, this telling is the beginning of the launching you speak of. I would never feel prepared to change the world if I didn't understand the source of my discomfort.
Now let me ask you a question: Why do you so readily suggest a life swap when you left behind a career so equally full of advantage and promise? I'm guessing that if you look in the mirror, you may see a little green potato staring right back at you.
It's awfully hot down here in the fryer, isn't it?
However, that doesn't mean I'm taking the thrashing just like that. I'm going down swinging. Here's my reply:
Firstly, I did not intend to suggest that I regretted or resented my education simply because it did not result in instant fame and fortune. I did not attend the school I did merely to obtain fame and fortune either. I went there to learn, and to learn how to learn. In that respect, I am forever grateful. I owe far too much to my time at university -- gaining greater analytical maturity, being part of a different culture, finding the best group of friends ever -- to be superficial about it.
However, my academic life prior to university put me in a rat race even before the corporate one. Attending an Ivy League was to be my Golden Ticket; in fact, I was accepted to Harvard. I one-upped that by going somewhere even more special. All efforts were focused on getting to university, like it would somehow be the magic bullet for my life.
Turns out, it's not the magic bullet. Especially here, where I am convinced most people still think Oxford is in London.
There is a difference between intrinsic value and economic value. The intrinsic value of my education -- regardless of institution (and may I remind you, David, that you attended an equally prestigious university in England) -- is matchless. Economic value, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter.
One only seems to attain maximal economic value when the education is combined with personal ambition, effort, and/or character. In fact, one could argue very well based on plenty of evidence that education may be altogether unnecessary! This is an incredibly hard lesson to learn for someone who has a high degree of ambition but lacks the correct character and is sodding lazy. The fall to hard ground has taken some time, and the pain signals reached my brain later than expected.
Of course, some could care less about economic value. I envy them for their laissez-faire approach to life. I wish I could be that way too, but a gnawing fear of poverty got hard-wired into me sometime early in life. My angst is not aimed at my university education, it is aimed at a disappointing revelation about myself: that I just haven't got what it takes to completely remove my fear of being penniless. I am a corporate slave; the income that I earn, respectable as it is, only exists by the grace of people who judge me to be worthy. I am a piece of friggin' meat.
To remove the fear entirely would mean becoming the butcher, but that takes something else I haven't got or figured out yet. You are right, life is what one makes it. I don't think I've got the right set of tools for me -- at least right now. Won't you grant me that reality? Is it whinging just because I am facing up to facts? Is it whinging because it makes me feel slightly sad?
I really do believe this.
Secondly, I feel compelled to clarify my frustration at being one of the Grey Masses working in just another corporation in just another outcrop of suburbia. After years of navel-staring, I have boiled it down to one basic desire: meritocracy. Do good work, get good work. Add value, get value. Work hard, get respect and loyalty.
This is far less about money than you imagine it to be. Let's take money out of the equation. Isn't every person who slogs their guts out and displays creativity, dedication, and care in their work entitled to job satisfaction, respect, and loyalty? Well, here's breaking news: the odds of finding that in most of corporate life are slim to none.
Ways to find greater pools of meritocracy, as far as I have been able to determine: climb up or get out.
My inability to be a Machiavellian Yes Man has ruled me out of the former; my lack of unique brilliance and death-/poverty-defying chutzpah have temporarily locked me out of the latter.
If the free market worked as it should in the space below upper management, I would be perfectly happy to be a cog. I just cannot believe that those who squander millions of dollars, treat fellow human beings like chattel, and who bask in doing as little work as possible get rewarded in equal or greater measure than those with purer goals and more capable minds. Over and over again, I see this pattern perpetuated.
Yes, the broken system burns me up. But my own shortcomings don't help matters much.
Of course, that's not to say I don't have perspective. I feel incredibly blessed every day for my home life. I am busting a gut at work to do my part in fighting pervasive negativity and nastiness. I am still trying to build my own magic bullet.
But I'm not here to compromise. I'm not here to be some namby-pamby apologist. I'm here to tell some (thinly disguised) truths that should make all of us feel uncomfortable about the way many companies work. Along the way, I will tell some truths about me that make me feel uncomfortable. And in many respects, this telling is the beginning of the launching you speak of. I would never feel prepared to change the world if I didn't understand the source of my discomfort.
Now let me ask you a question: Why do you so readily suggest a life swap when you left behind a career so equally full of advantage and promise? I'm guessing that if you look in the mirror, you may see a little green potato staring right back at you.
It's awfully hot down here in the fryer, isn't it?
posted by Little Green Potato at 8:21 PM
3 Comments:
Hey, this is what I like! The blog should be renamed ‘When Potatoes Attack!’
Your logic and prose are faultless (as ever), and I will admit to reading that post with my hands over my ears chanting “la la la, I can’t hear you”. But let me comment before I retire to the cupboard under the stairs to lick my wounds and pick my next battle more carefully.
Call me naïve (“you’re naïve!” Thank you.) but I do still believe that if you do good work, genuinely good work, that it has to stand out. This doesn’t mean it’ll happen immediately, in fact the pattern for successful (however you define that) people seems to be not knowing when they’re beaten. But, as you so ably demonstrate with every post in your blog, the world is absolutely awash in mediocrity. Therefore any flame of inspiration, no matter how small, has to burn bright in the all-pervading greyness.
Yeah yeah, actually writing that down makes it sound very stupid. Believing it is just a lot better than the alternative, which as far as I can see is to descend into lazy nihilism. “If my odds of succeeding are so small, why bother?” (Hey – if 99% of the world is thinking that then the odds actually get a lot better!)
Fear of poverty is a great one. I think that all of us who grew up under the Reagan/Thatcher gestalt will be forever marked by the “poor is bad” dictum. You allude to my turning away from capitalist economic slavery, but it should be noted that I only did that when Mrs David’s salary attained such a ridiculous level that leaving work had no practical impact on our lifestyle whatsoever. Outside of the tequila issue.
That’s not to say that monetary comfort isn’t a decent ambition, you’ve already convinced me of that in earlier discussions. I guess it’s the knock-on effect of stigmatising people-on-benefits, immigrants or whoever as lazy and bad when, in fact, the entire free market we know and love is founded on their shoulders. They certainly weren’t given the chance to attend university in any country, mainly because Ivy Leaguers do not want to clean their own toilets or mow their own lawns. It’s the stigma that we fear, rather than the empty bank account. How you combat that I have no idea.
You say that you’re not equipped with the right tools at the moment. But let’s open up that tool box, shall we? You have a degree, you’re up the corporate ladder, you understand its shortcomings, you’re young, you’re multi-lingual, you’ve travelled, you can add up. Exactly which tools are you waiting for?
So, to answer your question to me and hopefully leap out of the pan before I’m completely sautéed…
I set myself a target in corporate life, which I managed to hit pretty quickly with not too many cock-ups along the way and even without upsetting too many people. At that point I thought it was slightly too good to be true, and so shifted the goal posts to avoid failing. I told everyone I was “moving on to the next challenge” and checked out of the world of paid work, happy and content that I’d jumped ship probably a couple of weeks before an iceberg showed up that I would have hit full on, sank the business and been sacked anyway. The secret is timing.
And now inevitably I wake in the night in cold sweats, thinking that had I moved on to another job it might have been the big one. I could have landed a nice position, earning tons with less hands-on technical stuff and less direct people management than before. I could have afforded a bigger house, a bigger telly, a bigger car, a bigger drinks cabinet. You see, I’m in bed with Thatcher (and what a horrible image that is). But then I remind myself that I don’t have to listen to what she, or anyone else, says. I achieved what I wanted to, and that makes me very content (I kick Thatcher out of bed and tell her to go and make my breakfast as I’ll be getting up soon).
So why would I so readily life-swap with you? Well, the weather, Twinkies, your shower, HDTV, Mexican food, The Colbert Report, hummingbirds, In’n’Out, the beach, The Cheesecake Factory, Las Vegas, Ruby’s, the Mojave Desert, margaritas with you and Mr Potato (except you wouldn’t be there as you’d have my life. That one needs more thinking about). You just have so much cool stuff!
And OK, education and a head start thanks to parents etc. perhaps does not mean that we should expect ourselves to change the world but I think having all that, and realising that it’s an incredible safety net stretched above the horrifying pit of impecuniousness, means that we can expect ourselves to be happy. And that’s happy at work as well as at play. In a hard edged cost/benefit analysis does your salary outweigh your work strife? Economically and intrinsically – are you happy?
So you’re right: you and I are not that different. Apart from our nationalities. And our opinions on social welfare. And the war in Iraq. And our views on religion, culture, gender, economics, politics, healthcare, education, cricket…
I just want everyone in the world to be happy, starting with the people I know. Is that too much to ask?
It's a fine wish indeed. I'm already halfway there - but that half isn't the point of this blog. I'll try not to let you down. You'll just have to trust me that I'm working on it and whatever happens, I'll be telling the truth of the matter here.
As long as you're smiling while you're typing I can have no complaints.
(I find tequila helps.)
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