Does your work say anything about you anymore?
What does your work say about you?
Waiting to re-insert myself into the job market, having rejected the temptations and un-unionized thanklessness of the corporate world, I decided to do some “networking” on Linkedin. If you don’t know what Linkedin is, then you’re either somebody’s Grandparent, or have been living under a rock for the past 5 years. In any case, Linkedin is a professional networking site, just like facebook, but with a more “professional” twist – no pun intended.
Growing up, I learnt that it was just not a socially acceptable thing for one man to ask another about what he did for a living. I remember my father’s curt message, “Never ask a woman her age, and a man his salary!”. I grew with up that. But with time, things have changed. They’ve gone from simply telling people that “Yeah, I’ve got a good job.” to over-blown job titles and company histories, elaborate unnecessary details about the careers and over-exaggerated half-truths about wages and the job importance – elaborate stories that seem like they’ve been rehearsed and repeated to convince the speaker more than the listener.To top it off, if someone isn’t being pompous and obnoxious about his job, then he has to deal with coming across as jobless, in-between jobs or working for poor pay. If a person doesn’t speak about his job or business, but still has all the amenities of a highly successful individual, then he’s austrasized as either being corrupt, or into some “shady” business.
In direct opposition to the disciplined corporate worker is the entrepreneur. The world has a whole slew of entrepreneurs who may be running mildly successful ventures. But unfortunately receive no respect from the Corporate denizen. “CEO” of “Akram and Sons” will generate many laughs amongst business school graduates and Marketing Managers. Simply because of the perceived notion that in Pakistan, everybody is a CEO. It doesn’t matter if Akram and his Sons may be earning more than say “CEO” of “Standard Chartered Bank Pakistan Limited”. And that is the real truth. “Akram and Sons” is more likely to be more successful, more quickly, and for longer than a business graduate strung up on a corporate ladder.
The case of the self-enterprise versus the attachment to an organization is part of the selling of the “Corporate Dream”. This corporate dream is planted within us (us of the Middle Class origin i.e.) at a very young age. Notions of “status”, “job security” and “wealth” are used to replace our childhood desires of being “creative”, “educated” and “inspired”. Skill-less individuals are churned out from the school systems by the millions and are assimilated in an increasingly competitive environment. But, any corporate worker will tell you that his/her education was useless because the real learning happened in the job environment. So then why spend years if a system is so useless? First we create our own perceptions of what our status should be and then we spend more than half our lives trying to fulfill our own perceptions. In essence we trap ourselves in our own web. So, the only way left of distinguishing ourselves is by languishing elaborate stories of self-importance through titles, work environment, employer standing and wages.
As I went through searching for friends and colleagues, I couldn’t help but feel a little voyeuristic even more so than facebook. On facebook, you can choose to ignore certain details about people. But on Linkedin, they’re right there in your face. The “Headline”, the current job position and company, past companies, past education etc etc. What I found common amongst all the people I searched for were their job titles. Each and every job title seemed less like a real job and more like a few words strung together to fulfill a person’s own expectations of his status. In effect just one of the strings of the spider’s web. I’ve been guilty of the same. And I will continue to remain trapped in this web, because I choose to. I want to feel trapped, because being trapped gives me the security I need. I call it a spider’s web. You may call it job security.
In the end, the work we do no longer defines us as people. Just as Marx predicted in his brilliant works on worker estrangement / alienation. The worker is no longer associated with what he produces, but rather the menial under-pinnings of various functions required to produce. In most cases the worker no longer even knows where production occurs let alone understand the whole system of production. The financial worker can no longer even define the word money, let alone define its value.
Perhaps there are still a few enterprises and professions left that we can be proud of. And interestingly, as pointed out by Marx, those are jobs that requirecreativity. However, the corporate world pisses on the artist, steals from the musician (or creates carbon copies and mass produces him/her till he/she again becomes worthless). I just hope that one day people will wake up and remember that it’s not where you work that defines you, it’s what you create that defines you.
