Your career curve - part 1

I have been visiting a lot of business blogs lately and I am amazed at the panoramic breadth of topics covered. Almost every aspect of business organization, motivation, and leadership is analysed exhaustively. Most business blogs focus on those things that will bring success to an organization. Few target the career aspects or the personal cost of being an employee.

Although Ripples occasionally gets listed as a business blog, my primary intention in discussing business matters is to provide insight on the hidden costs and benefits of working for a living and how to optimize the results for yourself. In the end, the most important thing about your work is whether it actually helps you to live a more meaningful life.

I truly believe that the work opportunities of the future will become both more distributed and more concentrated. There may be many millions working remotely or in small enterprises, but there will be many more laboring at workstations in vast hives at a machine-paced rhythm.

This will place even more of a premium on useful education. Failing to learn useful skills will result in relegation to the mills of the future or to minimum wage status. The future will go to those determined enough to teach themselves skills which will enable them to choose a career path that is right for them.  College is not the only alternative, but it can be a door opener.

A career path generally follows a curve. You starts out with promise, have a few false starts, but if you persist, you finally reach a point where you enjoy a modicum of success. Then you eventually fall out of favor, either with your management, the Board of Directors, or with stockholders, and you go off to lick your wounds and try again. It doesn't matter whether it is your fault or not, you reach a point where your interests and management's are no longer in alignment.

Some of you will repeat this cycle many times before finally hitting the wall. At this point, you either reinvent yourself or somebody does it for you. When it becomes evident that you are no longer in demand as an executive, or as a designer, or a system analyst, or as a marketing manager, you will need to find work as something else.

Like it or not, there eventually comes a time when your convoluted career curve finally tops out and goes into gentle descent or sudden free fall.

Very few employees go happily off into the sunset with a severance package or a pension. Most will find themselves facing hard decisions tht will require a lot of soul-searching. Get ready now for eventual long-term self-employment.

It will mean a change in lifestyle, but it may be easier than you expect. The important thing to keep in mind is that it will happen to you and you have the power to make it work if you start preparing now. There is life after corporate employment. You just have to be ready for it.

Living a meaningful life includes planning for your future as well as enjoying life as it happens.

Comments

[Avi Solomon]

Thanks to you, David, I have been inspired to create work that is meaningful. What could have taken 10 years in the school of hard knocks has been accomplished in 2 thanks to learning from Ripples!
P.S.:Am Busy starting up an Indoor Plants Business:)

[David St Lawrence]

Glad to hear it, Avi!

Send me some pictures when you get a chance.

[Chet Chin]

Hi, I came here thro the Slacker Manager site, and will be back for more!

Chet Chin
Malaysia

[saihoong]

hi, I'm from the other side of the globe,Singapore. Internet had made it a small world indeed. Recently I heard about this Blog phenomenom. After browsing thru' and searching for a site about how to be a independent software developer, I'm came across your site and came to learn and share the same situations I had right now. Like anyone of us, I left my last full time job a year and half. Of course, I did most of stuff you mentioned, learning and self trainings. I'm looking for anyone out there
who's willing to spend their and effort to work and think about some software developement ideas!
Contact me if you are interested.

simon