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Would You Hire You?

April 17th, 2009
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Would you hire you? Are you still worth it? Do you still deserve your job? Would you lay yourself off? Would you fire you?

I just read a post over at Outspoken Media that really resonated with me. It talks about people blaming the recession for everything and not themselves for their own failures. One phrase in it: “you allowed yourself to become expendable” rings truer than it ever has for me because recently I came close to being laid off, but thank God I wasn’t. I don’t really know for sure exactly how close I came, but I do know that I had left myself (and my family) too exposed.

Success.

I’m going to be frank here. I’ll be 32 this summer which means I’m no longer the “new kid”. When I started out as a developer 10 yrs ago I kicked a$$. You needed it, I coded it. I didn’t know it today? Well I sure as hell did by tomorrow. I could not suppress the urge to learn more and my desire to be the best. I was always looking at the guy higher up saying “what can I do to be better”? And it wasn’t about the money either. It was me just proving to myself that I could, and I did. 

Blindsided.

But I got so busy looking up that I never looked down. I didn’t see a whole wave of new talent slowly rising up below my feet. Even when I did I wasn’t worried at first. Like many who have learned the hard way “objects in mirror ARE closer than they appear”. All of a sudden I realized that I was just like any other developer. I did excellent work, buts lets face it, Google wasn’t going to be calling me up to go work for them. I had lost my hunger to learn and thus settled into “the routine”. I was great, but so was everyone else. I had become average and was on a path to being  expendable. This realization filled me with fear and disgust. I hated that feeling. (I can only imagine how the guy that actually lost his job felt.) 

Feel.

mountains

Mountains - Photo by Palerider_2008

But I didn’t ignore how I was feeling. I thought about it night and day. I had to embrace it, to know it, to hate it. I did this so much that the thought of failure was enough for me to finally say “enough is enough”. I started craving again, slowly. As the months went by this hunger grew more and more. And now I’m finally on my way back to being the overachiever that I used to be. I’ve read and learned more in the last 6 months than I did in the last 6 years. It feels great.

Do.

How did I do it? Well think of your journey as climbing a mountain. To make progress you have to move. Eventually you’ll reach the top. “Reaching the top” didn’t mean that I was now CEO, it just meant that the particular journey I was on, had ended. Whether your journey is to be a senior developer, get 1000 subscribers reading your blog, loose weight…doesn’t matter. Once at the top you realize there is no more “up” to go and you naturally stop moving. So you have to do the only other thing you can do. Find a bigger mountain. (Or at the very least, a different one.) So I decided to set new goals for myself and with as much energy as I could muster, went for it.

Defend.

Don’t bother doing any of the above if your vision is only short-term because you’ll be back at the same place in a few months. So as a practical matter I suggest you try this little approach. Constantly set new goals for yourself. Go put a reminder in your Google Calendar now that recurs every 3 months. The reminder should simply state “How are you better now than you were 3 months ago?” If you can’t answer that question then that’s your red flag to immediatly take action to defend any progress you have made so far. Simple yet beautiful.

Gratitude.

Just as a word of caution to not pass judgement on anyone. Getting laid off doesn’t mean that you got lazy. Sometimes thats just the way it is. Many have learned these lessons by having to endure much more pain than I did. I was very lucky and I’m grateful each day that I still have a great job. I’m taking away as much as I can from situations like these to better prepare myself for the bumps in the road of tomorrow. Now I just have to learn to balance my (once innate) desire to learn more and be better, with life with the family and kids (and of course with my incessant desire to watch The Mentalist).

How about you? Where are you on this scale? The new comer? Settled in your routine? Or just in between? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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  • Chaaalz, You are very correct. Life journey may be equated to climbing a mountain and one needs to prepare for all eventualities to make it to the top
  • Hey Chaalz,

    I love this post. The subheadings are great - they really capture the inevitable ups and downs that come with a job or career. There's the learning, the success and then one day BOOM. You realize how much farther you have to go, or that you better start learning twice as fast to keep up with everyone else. It's good though! I firmly believe that if you are not learning you are obsolete. It's like the Henry Ford quote: "He who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty."

    Keep up the great work :D
    Jenny
  • Thanks Jenny. I really like your quote, especially since one of my pet peevs is dealing with people who refuse to learn anything new! lol.

    But yeah, the past few months have been the months of learning a few of life's lessons the hard way. Sometimes we choose to learn, other times we are forced. As long as we embrace that learning its all good. Now lets see how 2009 goes!

    -Chaalz

    ps: Writing a post now that I think you can relate to from a personality development standpoint. Will keep you posted (literally). :)
  • Hed
    brilliant blog! Very introspective and profoundly thoughtful.
  • Thank you for the support, but I am confident that I either will find something soon or will be able to use this time to become a entrepreneur. I am a Mechanical Engineer with two and a half year's experience. I will send you over my resume, it would be pretty random and cool if you heard of something. It would be a real testament to the power of blog communities.

    What is good about this recession, as you were saying in the post, is that it has forced everyone to reconsider their skills and career. I heard in a twitter post that 25% of the people getting laid off are starting their own companies. I feel that those companies will help to improve the economy in the long term.
  • @Benjamin Sorry to hear about the job loss. Its rough out there. With these struggles I've learned to only look for the lesson in them, otherwise I'd just be depressed wondering woulda-coulda-shoulda. I'm glad you are taking action too. Reconnecting with everyone you've talked to in 5 yrs. Now thats some serious dedication. I have no doubt it will pay off. Thanks for the reply.

    ps: I have no clue what you do, but go ahead and send me your resume if you like (blog@justtoological.com). Hey it can't hurt right?

    pss: I LOVE the movie Rudy too. :)
  • Great post, I really think that it describes the kind of attitude that is needed for the tough times we are experiencing. I have recently lost my job and am currently looking for a similar job with no luck. Although I wasn't complacent, the job loss has giving me a renewed drive and energy for self improvement. I have a stack of books on my desk from the library that I have been plowing through at a record pace. I have started a blog and meet several interesting people through it and also through commenting on others blogs. I am a networking fiend and I think I have reconnected with every person I talked to in the past five years.

    The recession has changed many things, including costly many people their job. I would hope that in the future when we look back on this time, we remember it as when we learned the skills and habits that made us successful. The perspective in this post is going to be key in reaching these goals.
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