``Career'' is a Misnomer

The weekend just passed was a particularly long one that is an even more accurate rendering of the sabbatical to come.

I had taken leave from Thursday till Monday (i.e. today) inclusive, and it was definitely a very different feeling to be waking up with little to no dread on what it was that I needed to do at work to justify the eight hours of pay that I was to be given for that day at the end of the month. I also did not have to face the other type of dread of having too much of something disagreeable to work on, wondering if the twenty-four hours of a day was sufficient for me to complete all that needs to be completed.

Why should the working life be oscillating between these two extremes with nothing in between is a mystery that needs to be solved at some point. For me, the solution is simple: re-think what it is that I want with my life.

``Career'' is a misnomer. The more I think about it, the more I am forced to acknowledge that the concept of a career is misplaced. At the risk of sounding like a supporter of communism, the idea of a ``career'' seems to be the capitalistic way of ensuring that people are forever stuck within the capitalistic system of work through the dangling of rewards in the form of a more important sounding title, with the dangling of supposedly increased monetary compensation [that is steadily eroded these days as the corporation becomes increasingly top heavy].

``Here! Work harder, like 9-9-6, so that you can earn that salary that will be the envy of your peers! 40-hour work weeks are for chumps---you must have the passion and work over and beyond the 40 hours [that I am paying you] so that you can improve yourself to take yourself higher into your career! Everyone should know how to manage---managing is the epitome of success [because only chumps and eggheads will try to maintain technical excellence]. Everyone should be well-rounded in all aspects of infocomm technology---be ready to handle devops, cloud deployment/management, back-end development, front-end development, customer requirement analysis to be a great engineer [so that I don't have to hire the 5 other people needed, and can justify why I am only paying you 40 hours while you are working 80]. App making is easy! See that kid? He already published his 20-million-dollar app while he is only nine years old!''

What is a career? Why does everyone seem to believe that it must always be vertical in nature, and that if one does not become a leader/manager, then one is not good enough? This is the type of industry that I am currently caught in, where the knowledge workers are getting heavily exploited by the business people who do not see knowledge workers as semi-creative value-adding people, but as expendable labour to churn out the type of low-value widgets that manufacturing had perfected more than ten years ago.

It is a race to the bottom. A somewhat creative field that is now heavily promoted in a way to artificially increase supply, so that the competition for the demand is raised to the point that companies can lower the price point while simultaneously appealing to ``passion'' as the magic bullet to squeeze out more labour hours.

I think that working as a so-called knowledge worker is worse than working as a so-called blue collar worker. At least the latter group has labour laws and unions on their side to protect them from the most egregious forms of exploitation.

Also, at least the tasks that are done by the blue collar workers can be intuitively understood by those business types who make the decisions. The level of misunderstanding of what machine learning, data mining, and artificial intelligence can do among the business types shock me beyond what I can imagine. ``Oh let's just use AI for this! Let's use machine learning for this! Let's toss in a blockchain!'' Why? How would it help? What is the business case that requires such technologies?

``But that's a technical detail---you tell me if it can be done!''

It's akin to asking can one use the word ``nictitate'' inside the business prospectus. ``I don't care---`nictitate' is the new hotness, and I want it to be inside our business plan. I don't know how to fit it in, but it's just a technical detail, so you technical folks figure out how to put in the word `nictitate' into the business plan. And have it ready for roll out within one month, mmmkay?''

As workers, we are all disposable---this is something that I have accepted. But to be disposable due to the incompetence of those who are making decisions is not an easy to stomach outcome. I think eventually more will see the world for what it is rather than through the rose-tinted glasses that have been promulgated through the various mouthpieces.

``But MT, if you don't like the status quo, you can always change it! So why aren't you changing it?''

I am. That is why I am on a sabbatical. To really sit down, to think, to pray, and to figure out what is really important in my life. I am not trying to change the world---the world can go sort itself out since I have no sphere of influence over it. But I do have a sphere of influence and responsibility on what I think, do, and whom I influence, and so I will do what I can within those fields.

It is the only way forward.