Alpha male moves and one-upmanship are unfortunate side effects of casual discussions involving pay.
People boast about their salaries, wear their degrees like a badge of honor, and are proud of the long hours they put in at work.
They even disregard many others who do things differently. They then hope that it’ll work well for them, only to be surprised soon after when things don’t.
Here are the 3 uncomfortable career truths.
Earning A Salary May Be Taking More From You Than You Thought
The goal of a corporate or business is to pay you the least amount possible so they can maximize profit.
I have an entrepreneur friend who is about as old as my uncle. After about a decade of working for a corporate, he branched out. He started as a sales consultant and today, he leads a modestly sized business.
He has owned some of the nicest homes I’ve seen, taken some of the best vacations I have heard of, and has enjoyed his time with his family. He even gave me my first fine dining experience.
My uncle on the other hand has a fancy job title, “Director of something”, but that’s about it. Over the last 30 years of his career, he has never been able to buy a house, has never owned a car, and has never been able to take my cousins on a vacation. His company has been extracting their pound of flesh from him but has never given him enough in return to do more for himself.
Things might change for him in the future. But by then, he might be too old and crusty to enjoy himself.
Educational Qualifications Are Overrated
I interviewed for a job at a small startup back in 2018. They were developing connectivity hardware.
The interviewer was some dude named Adam. For the first round, we had an hour-long chat over the phone. He had carefully selected questions to test my critical thinking, hard skills, and ability to charter unknown territory.
Adam had no LinkedIn profile. So when I visited the office for an in-person interview, I was taken aback when I met him. He was only 19 and was leading a critical engineering division of the firm. I was to report to him and I was impressed!
I graduated from a state-run university but work shoulder to shoulder with bright minds from Stanford, MIT, IITs, and other top institutions. My inputs are equally appreciated, my pay is as competitive and my performance is as good as theirs.
As I have learned, a person’s ability to perform is independent of their college degree. Be respectful of others, irrespective of where they graduated from or whether they did. You never know who your next boss will be.
Hours Spent In The Office and Value Created Are Unrelated
Several of my boyhood friends lead a lazy lifestyle. They go into the office early and stay back well past housekeeping has left.
Spreading themselves too thin on their job and 15-minute cigarette breaks almost every hour endlessly increase their hours spent in their cubes.
Most of them have progressed in their career at a snail’s pace. They complain about it without fail on the rare occasions I meet them.
It’s clear as day that they aren’t getting much done. So they have to put up with the meager annual 2% raise that their employers give them year after year.
Focus on value. Forget about time. Compress your efforts into a short period and leave quickly.
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Face these uncomfortable truths. Treat others with compassion. Get out of the office as soon as you can to be with your family. Do this and you will notice your life change.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism | Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box | The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men |
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Photo credit: Thomas Park on Unsplash