I was going to be an architect. Throughout high school I worked for two different architectural firms and this project I worked on won a low-cost housing award, and this other one I worked on and have been to countless events inside of it, over the years. I got out of school about 2:PM, went to work at Michael Moyer Architects or for Angela Danadjieva who is ... rather ... well ... known. I loved that work. But I loved all work when I was 18. I washed the dirty coffee cups in the sink. I built scale models of huge construction projects. I drew presentation drawings - in ink! - on vellum and used a Kroy lettering machine to single-punch out every single letter used on the drawings. I made $8/hr, I think? And was happy to work as many hours as they wanted me around... A week before I graduated from high school I got a job with a tech company making good money doing technical support for a hard disk manufacturer named Jasmine Technologies in 1987. I seem to remember it was $16k/yr. But who knows...? The next time I looked up, it was 1998, I had worked for 6 different tech companies, was in the process of getting divorced, didn't socialize with anyone outside of work. When you moved to a new company you got all new friends, because there just wasn't time (or places) to meet up with people you didn't spend all day every day with. I was making $80k/yr. Moved overseas in 1998. Back to the USA in 2005, or something. After moving back to the US, the Boy Genius who had worked for Apple and NASA and had gotten $5m in funding from Esther Dyson AFTER the dot com crash, couldn't get a job. I had been off the treadmill so long (7 years) I might as well have been a high school student again. (LinkedIn had just started, and was inaccessible overseas. So I was starting from scratch on my job history.) So went to college. Well, trade school. Got a job from the internship. Went on over the next 10 years to get fired from three jobs. Got hired for more. Started my own consultancy. Was a tour guide in Pike Place Market. There's never been a time I was not sure I was totally indispensable to the company... right up to the moment I got fired. The urgency of work and perception of need impressed upon the worker-bees in any organization gives the worker-bees a false sense of importance and value. With the ultra rare exceptions of truly unique souls (who mostly perish from the work they do) you don't matter a bit to your employer. You die at your desk today, and they'll have the job posted tomorrow, and filled by Thursday. "Bummer about Bob. Everyone welcome Wayne to the Corporation Co. family!" When I started work in the late 1980's, two of the previous generations worked with me at every job. And they'd been there for a decade or more. My current company is VERY proud of the fact they have kept their employee turnover rate to just under 25%, which is unheard-of low in the Seattle tech industry. This is something they boast about... that only a quarter of our employees leave every year! We are a company of 400 people. I've been here for 5 years. The number of people who have been at the company longer than I have I can count on two hands and one foot. AND, HR professionals in this market say that if you spend more than 2 years with a company, you are literally losing money. Because a new company can hire you for more money than your existing company can match with raises. And I'm looking to retire in 10-15 years. But I may have to involuntarily retire earlier than that, because I can't imagine anyone hiring someone of my broad and ill-defined skill set, at my age, for ANY reason. And the work I do today puts me in a liability hot spot where if something bad happens with one of the contracts I have worked on, literally the easiest thing for the company to do to appease an angry customer worth millions of dollars is to fire my $90k/yr ass, and hire two bright-eyed college students to replace me for a $15k savings overall. Work is already part-time. If you get a new job and take 4 months to ramp up, then at 16 months start looking for a new job, there's a small 9-10 month window of actual work and productivity in there sandwiched between job searches. A local bar just advertised for a door man for $21/hr, and I thought, "Fuck. I'd LOVE to do that! And I could do my day job as well!" Call it OnlyFans or Uber or DoorDash or bouncer or Amazon driver or Etsy or eBay or Mechanical Turk... the "gig economy" started in the 1990's and is only going to get bigger. And it's the workers who stand to lose the most. As usual.
I've been at my company seventeen years and had an interview last week. If they offer it, I'll take it. I think my company would describe be as indispensable, but the problem is I don't discuss my frustrations with the company, I discuss them with three people. Those are the people who could take some action. When I leave, those are the three people who will shrug, go through a hiring process, and deflect work that can't get done without me. The company will keep going. When it eventually comes time for me to resign, I'm curious what the reaction will be. The CEO knows who I am and the senior VP knows me fairly well (though he's a phenomenal people person), but not enough to say "are you happy here," and not enough to review our employee surveys results (which are poor for my group) or if he is, he doesn't care. I think a lot of people will be surprised because they assume high quality enthusiastic work means I'm happy with work. A different long term employee left recently under undisclosed terms. I had assumed it was something medical e.g. a very sick loved one, but I heard she landed a new job immediately. She had more time than me and is probably in her 50s.There's never been a time I was not sure I was totally indispensable to the company... right up to the moment I got fired.
Oof. "When it comes time for me to resign..." There's just so much in that little short sentence, isn't there? I was at this swanky executive club last night having drinks and socializing with some heavy-hitters, and one of them has recently retired. Bought himself a $2.8m beach house to celebrate, and we threw a little party there a couple weeks ago. Last night he tells me, "Retire as soon as you fucking can. There's nothing better. Most energizing, focusing thing I've ever done. It refocuses your entire life and energy, and helps you understand what is really important to you. Get out of the water... stop treading water... and watch the stream flow for a bit. THEN you will know what you want to do with the rest of your life." My Mom retired years and years ago... and has more work now as a garden designer than she ever had running the western region of the US Chamber of Commerce. And she LOVES her work. And her clients. And her gardens and plants. So I try to put myself in this frame of mind... if I retired tomorrow, what would I do on Monday? Blank slate. No To Do List. Just... open possibilities. And I have NO FUCKING IDEA. I graduated from high school - where I worked after school at numerous jobs - and went to work full time. I don't really know anything other than working for a company... setting an alarm... making sure I am available during business hours as a resource for other people in the company... just... what the heck would I do? And why? Right now, it is just a fun thought experiment. But yeah... the retirement thing was never something I thought I would ever be able to do, because I didn't follow the prescribed career path and climb the corporate ladder. So it's an interesting exercise to think about......
I think I'd be great at being retired. I'd do the things I do now outside of work during the day and have evenings to relax. Go swim at 8 am when the pool is less busy with the morning swimmers off to work. Stop at a coffee shop for coffee and a scone, then go out for a 2-3 hour bike ride. Have a lunch and a nap, then go for a walk before dinner. After, read for a bit or watch a movie and head to bed. Or on other days, drive to any of a number of nature areas and hike all morning. Or as long as I can, run the trails. I'd be great at being retired, but none of the things I do would earn extra money. It would be all cash out on gym memberships and bikes and cars and gas. I'd love to travel again to hike when the pandemic is more under control.
We went out to lunch for a coworker who was leaving. She was terrible at her job and was probably leaving before she got fired. She should have been fired long before. It was a pretty awkward lunch with people wishing her well but nobody saying they'd miss her.
The last jobby-job I had, I was let go from after they decided they'd rather burn the high-end business than have a single point of failure (me). So they let me know on Monday I was outta there Friday. Everyone told me to have a going away party at this one bar, so I told everyone to be there. My girlfriend and I sat there, alone, for half an hour.