Job is a love affair

These days, loyalty no longer has its meaning.

I like to think of the job as a relationship. There is the trial period to find out if the job is compatible with your interests, goals in life. And much like in a jungle when you eye a prey, you put on your hunter instinct and do everything you can to catch it- let's face it, you are hungry and you need to eat. In a life cycle of a love relationship, you care, compromise, and tolerate, then stability comes in. Suddenly, you grow bored and lose the thrill of challenge and mysteriousness - towards the end of the relationship you even know what color of underwear he likes to wear to a certain occasion. You question yourself: am I ready to commit in this relationship for the rest of my life? What if there are better men out there? What if by plunging into the vow, I am about to give up the entire forest? But before we break it off we stick our head out to look for the next best thing. Sure, there will be hits and misses but that won't stop us from peeking. We weigh our options: does he also play the piano because my current one does? We compare each of them side by side. After all, who wouldn't want to leave for better?

Okay, here's my main point. Perhaps this applies more so to the younger generation (I belong to it so I probably know the best). I am not about to generalize this generation entirely because like it or not there is always going to be exceptions. We plunge into our first job; maybe it's love at the first sight or maybe not, whatever it is we took the job and have stayed in it for a while. We know time is on our side and that a few years in a "ok" job relationship will only pay off in the long run, right? The moment we get into the job we begin to look for better opportunity. Let's say we do have one falling onto our lap, just as so in a love relationship, we can't let go the current one just yet. We begin to do a comparison of available options; we expect a certain quality/benefit in the new relationship as in the old one. We want something more on top of everything we already have now, not a penny less. The average period of time one stays in the company is about less than 5 years now and that is considered a stagnation in a sense. Five years and you are still there? Loyalty is overrated. Even while interviewing for the new position feels like that I am cheating on my current job. I am hiding it until I make up my mind that it's a good time to dump it or... if it fails through, I'd just keep the job until another better one comes along.

At which point do we stop looking around? We can care less about being loyal perhaps. Nowadays the trend is dubbed as "professional growth". But isn't that the same as in a marriage? And since when divorce becomes a common excuse to find something better (at least in a love relationship)? I understand that we didn't take a "vow" when accepting a job but even vows are growing to be meaningless. I am beginning to see the correlation if not the similarity between a job and love relationship. We are merely being selfish and because who would look after us except ourselves?

A closure

After close to two months worth of agony, I finally received a solid confirmation of an offer. This has been a bumpy ride, hitting some problems I have never thought of. I suppose in this tough economy, there are many more factors to consider than simply hiring someone.

Moving onto my next stage of waiting-game, instead of checking my email relentlessly, I need to wait by the mail box to wait for an actual offer letter arrive. It should be here within days. The company's HR processing time turned out to be pretty fast and the people reasonable. As of this morning, I had to do my first counter-offer negotiation (seriously, am I out of my mind?). It wasn't that the original offer wasn't great, it was. But the responsibilities expected of my new position just doesn't warrant such a pay. I didn't want to be greedy, especially considering the high unemployment rate in this country currently. So I wrote back and asked them to reconsider my qualification and expressed my sincere belief that I deserve to get a bit pay bump.

I remember how I regretted about accepting a position too fast back in 2007. It was my first full-time job after all. But after two something years, I learned to screen my position better, and to really wait for the right one that suits my interest and personality. Excitement is great, but once it cools down, I need to really think about the career development. I think this pans out alright,....I am doing alright

Outsourced?

Just the other day, there was a campaign commercial telling me why I shouldn't vote for a particular candidate- an apparent fear of job outsourcing to places like China. I am never big on Americanism, given I, like most consumers, buy just anything that's cheaper. For an advertisement such as this one, I wasn't swayed just yet.

Going global suddenly became a black curse among job seekers, regardless of how well multinational companies, like IBM, Microsoft, or Apple, are doing. Rest assure that these companies continue to employ many on the American land. They simply figured out a way to cut back in places that they aren't efficient at. You may think I am writing in favor of globalism, I am not. I am simply writing to rationalize my emotions. Back in 2000, when I was a junior in high school, everyone wanted to be a computer science major, including myself. After the dot-com bust, computer science wasn't cool anymore. Emerged from a business background, I developed a deep appreciation for delicate business processes. But over the years, I held a post in technology field and kept my business background as a backup. With a combination of these two, I have become a master of efficiency, with Internet technology as my tool and business intuition as my logic.

True, in the recent years there has been an exponential increase in technology and many jobs are diminishing. American companies have access to high quality labor at a low cost and better technologies; when efficiency is gained, jobs are sometimes impacted. A new resentment soon rises towards globalization and the dollar value return on a technology job rises to new skepticism. Politicians have raced to accelerate this fear and voters are encouraged to act on it.

But let's get a bit creative here. When a dollar is invested aboard, the margin of profit increases and the salary for the American workers becomes more generous. We take this salary to purchase goods- actually affording more goods made aboard, benefiting from the already low-cost structure there.

I am not worried but I recognize the pressures placed on technology jobs. Even so, technology workers aren't the only ones susceptible to the outsourcing trend. I emphasize on the concept of efficiency. When a company realizes how to do more for less, any one in any field is affected. For example, the primary function of my old job was to create a more efficient production line. And reducing headcount by far yields to high cost-avoidance. Then there are ways to reduce headcount- eliminating processes, combining processes, or introducing technology. These jobs are vanishing, not outsourced, not replaced with foreign workers. Whether this process improvement yields more productivity is irrelevant, the company in the end saves money to achieve at least the same result. Increased productivity does not necessarily mean higher profit for company- as you may learn from the theory of constraint, you're just producing waste.

Some people propose that a better education in science and technology will help America regain its competitiveness. I do not think this as a smart solution. As more students are studying science here, so are the students aboard, and education out there is just as good as over here. And producing talents excessively without parallel demand gives inventory and it is costly to maintain it (I am reluctant to call it waste, but it might as well in manufacturing's term). The work ahead involves equipping one with more than one skill and often considering both hard(technical) and soft(creative) skill. I see my business background as my emotional side- this is part of me that gives me creativity, expanding my perspectives; next my technical skill as my rational side- allowing me to judge the worthiness of my perspectives.

Now, revealing the true intention of this post. I hesitated to make one decision recently because of the term "outsourced". The position I applied for was to be outsourced to a global company for budget reason. I debated if I should partake in the outsourcing nature, but eventually I accepted it. It is for the greater of these two companies, and myself of course. If you look at globalization as a whole, the free flow of knowledge across regions should icon the free flow of goods worldwide. I am happy with the decision I made and truly embrace it.

Boeing Job Hunt Timeline

I even have time to plot this timeline chart... I know I am being impatient since this is a big company. But we all know the agony of a waiting game.

I am only doing this to see if my wait is justified and how silly I am to be waiting by the phone and email, that 425 area code telephone call. I don't really know the complete process of hiring and I am trying really hard to recollect my past experience. And times like this, your brain just seems to be blank.

I am guessing it will take longer than one month this time.