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Sixteen tons, whatdya get?

9 comments on Sixteen tons, whatdya get?

Sixteen tons, whatdya get?
: Glenn Reynolds has a followup column looking at the impact on politics, crime, and family of the new cottage-industry, self-employed economy emerging from the never-ending restructuring of American industry. There’s one more thing: It has an impact on mood.

Last weekend, I was talking with two local friends, one who was laid off about six months ago, the other who was laid off two weeks ago. They were comparing notes about what to do next; that’s a conversation I hear often these days, in many different quarters and it often sounds the same: These people don’t want to go back to work at the big company; they’re younger than I am but they’re burned-out (“disillusioned,” is their word); they’re not looking forward to working for the next boss; they’re fed up. There’s a chicken-and-egg question in this: What causes this mood — the reality of the job situation these days or age? There’s a followup chicken-and-egg question: What impact will this have on the work ethic of this and the next generation? Will work for companies continue to become less appealing? Will our children see that in us? Will we work harder for ourselves? Will be work more sanely for ourselves?

9 responses to “Sixteen tons, whatdya get?”

  1. TweezerMan Avatar
    TweezerMan

    “What causes this mood — the reality of the job situation these days or age?”
    If I had to pick just from those two, I’d have to say age. It goes deeper than that, though.
    In my experience, employers tend to consider employees as disposable resources instead of people working hard to support themselves and their families.
    Employers expect and demand loyalty from their employees but have none for them in return. An employer will lay you off or fire you at the drop of a hat, no matter how hard you work nor how long you’ve worked there.
    I’ve had my share of jobs with employers who have no problems screwing their employees over financially or otherwise, whether it’s legal or not.
    Idiot bosses, emotionally unstable bosses, asinine company policies, company politics, and poor to non-existant management and human resources skills are some of the things I’ve had to deal with in a number of my past jobs too.
    There is no reward for hard work from these types of employers other than your paycheck, however long that lasts – and eventually even the paycheck is not enough of a reward.
    After you have enough jobs from these types of employers, you don’t look forward to the next one – and for me, that came with age and experience.

  2. Steve Avatar
    Steve

    Let’s see, a big corporation pays me a paycheck which is a small fraction of the profit I bring in to the corporation. With that paycheck I buy things that the corporation makes more profit on. There won’t be enough paycheck to buy everything I need to live, so I’ll have to borrow money from the corporation at a rate of interest which is eight times what they would pay me to put my money in their bank if I had any left. When I’m too old or sick to work anymore they’ll ship me off to a trailerpark in Florida to die. What’s not to like?

  3. Tom Avatar
    Tom

    Hey, I live in Florida. Don’t come here!

  4. Giasen Avatar
    Giasen

    I guess the moral of the story is: Buy the company! :)

  5. Mark L Avatar
    Mark L

    “What causes this mood — the reality of the job situation these days or age?”

    I was laid off following 9/11. At the time my sideline hobby was freelance writing. I wasn’t making a whole lot, but. . .

    It took me 10 months to find another job. Unlike the stereotype, the new job paid more than the old one. It is working for a really good Fortune 500 company, and they treat their people pretty well.

    While I was unemployed the writing bridged the gap. My income was from “pay on publication” magazines, and the work had been done before I was laid off, so that did not affect my unemployment. (And yes, I was busting a hump trying to get a new job — the better one I eventually did land.)

    For me being a freelance writer is a lot more fun than being an aerospace engineer. So while I am employed in a secure job, I am using that as an opportunity to build up my writing career and pad it out with something to fill the gaps (12 graduate hours in Comp Sci, so I can teach at a junior college). Once the income gets high enough (2007, if my plan goes right) I will quit the day job and go into business for myself. I would rather be self-employed than a wage slave. Even a well-compensated wage slave.

  6. Rick Bruner Avatar
    Rick Bruner

    Last summer, I attended a reunion of a large group of college friends. We’re all in our late 30s now, and one thing that really struck me was that of 35 people who showed up, about three had “straight” jobs. The rest were entrepreneurs, freelancers, consultants or working in weird little niche businesses, ranging from me, as an Internet marketing consultant, to a furniture maker, a stone mason, an adventure photographer, a response-TV marketer running his own biz, a professor, a bartender, a web developer, and so on. Virtually not one of us with a corporate job.
    Similarly, here in NYC, my circle of friends are jouranlists, starting their own businesses, in film making and a range of other non-traditional occupations. I don’t know if it’s me and the circle I run in (probably in part) or the economy (certainly a part) or a generational thing, which is what I really think is the answer. I’m of an age where I grew up never expecting to have a job for life, having the company take care of me.
    When I got laid off in early 2001 from my last job(a small consulting company I helped found that went bust not long after I left as a result of the downturn), I fell immediately into freelancing. It was second-nature to me, as I’ve freelanced before and am on my third startup company. I know for sure I could never work at a “real job” again. I’m the wrong personality. But it’s served me well in this downturn, because I know how to land assignments, just not a job. Takes some nerves to live paycheck to paycheck in teh freelance world, but I wouldn’t trade it for a 9-5 routine.

  7. hugh macleod Avatar
    hugh macleod

    My old company had a policy: “We’ll screw you over but we won’t fire you.” Then they changed their policy to “We’ll screw you over and fire you gladly.” Now they can’t get any good people to work for them.
    A company is either growing or it’s dying.
    To be fair on the corporations, I’ve had plenty of cottage industrialists try to screw me over as well.

  8. Mike G Avatar
    Mike G

    Jeez, Steve, didn’t you notice that it’s the old folks who are the richest in this country?
    Far from being upset that the corporation makes more money from my work than I do (last I checked I wasn’t paying rent on my office, they were), for me the kicker has increasingly been that I do not want to spend 40+ hours a week at someone else’s office. In other words, it’s not the excess money that bugs me, it’s the excess time that they don’t use profitably but nevertheless expect me to spend on their premises.
    When I work at home I can get the same work done in a fraction of the time, and do it in the hammock with the laptop, and shop for groceries and play with the kids and all that other Lileksian stuff.
    When I do work at an office all day it’s at an unsustainably high day rate. But mostly I work at home. What I’m trying never to do again is let someone take over my whole life the way my “real” jobs did before I wised up.

  9. Tom K Avatar
    Tom K

    I’m with Mike G. I can live with the Dilbert management, the complaints about pay, etc, etc, but this foolish requirement to have me in the office for some arbitrary number of hours drives me nuts. If I can get the work done in under 8 hours, why get mad at me because I’m not there 10 hours a day? Is there something magical about me sitting in my ass in an office chair, rather than being at home?
    I guess I’m like a lot of the people talking or being talked about in this thread. I’m trying to start my own business. I don’t mind putting in 10-12 hours a day (which is much less than my combined regular job work hours + new business work hours I’m doing right now), but dammit, I don’t want to do 50+ hours a week for no reason other to impress some boss who doesn’t hammer others for getting next to no work done in that time.
    I may not become super-rich, but if I can maintain my current living standards and also be my own boss, I’ll be one happy bastard. I wouldn’t be surprised at all to find that lots of other people think the same way. A major downturn in the job market seems to be as good an excuse as any to act on those feelings. If you don’t have a job, there’s nothing to lose, and if you do have a job, you’re probably scared of losing it and want to have a fallback position.
    I wonder… Will this trend create a mini-boom of new business in the US? Sure, 90% of us striking out on our own are going to fail, but what about that successful 10%?