A PROSPEROUS WORKPLACE: Loyalty, Professionalism, and Freedom
The opportunities and stability of
the commercial workplace have become, in practice, a major liberty
interest. Yet there are apparently many
numerous paradoxes in effective career management strategy today, and they are
not easy to organize into a structured, syllogistic discussion. As a topic,
career planning and execution is a topic that reminds one of chess middle-game
theory.
The media has focused on economic
instability: the volatility of the stock market, and subsequently on the job
market, previously in normal business
cycles of boom and recession, and more recently as an inevitable process as
corporations, motivated by global competition and technology changes,
consolidate, restructure and downsize.
In the past, labor was seen as an
adversarial topic. The work world was
divided into management and labor, with labor cherishing its
legally granted (not fundamental in a constitutional sense) right to organize
and to bargain collectively. All of this
seems well justified by the history of industrial society, with the middle
classes going through terrible working conditions in coal mines, factories,
agriculture, etc.
In a technological and stock-owning
society labor itself has become even more mobile and
volatile. Layoffs and expansion happen
at the same time, sometimes in the same company. Older workers balance the value of their
stock portfolios against the time they spend at work: the incentive for some
older workers to “retire” and then have two incomes may be a more important
motive for layoffs than has been reported. More recently, the practice of
investing so much in owning an employer’s stock has been questioned, as with
the collapse of Enron in late 2001.
The divisions of labor into
categories—like manager, salaried-exempt, hourly, and independent contractor—is
not keeping up cleanly with today’s workplace.
In the past, there was a sense that a white-collar job (especially one
in management) was a reward of meritocracy. Management and professional status
“deserved” its perks. But this tended to
break down a bit under cost-cutting pressures, as less motivated professionals
(especially those less inclined to make themselves technically indispensable
and to handle problems by themselves) found themselves looking down at people
with the same basic skills making much less.
At the same time, the tension over disparity in incomes, working
conditions and professional mobility, especially in many fields involving
personal service to others, seems to grow.
So, people felt compelled to take
control of their own careers. Loyalty is
a two way street, and particularly in a salaried or management position, a
company is supposed to own complete rights to all of a person’s labor
potential. But with the job market so
volatile even in relatively prosperous fields like IT, employers no longer
expected this “Man in the Gray Flannel Suit” kind of loyalty, at least with
regard to outside activities. The idea
of venturing out on one’s own with entrepreneurial ideas came into great favor
in the early 1990s, particularly with the growth of the Internet.
Ultimately, the wild pendulum would
swing as far as it could. Troublesome
questions began to surface. Moonlighting
could still create legitimate conflicts
of interest. Writing and publishing
as a free-lancer or self-publisher attracted me, but ultimately I could see all
kinds of issues ranging from professionalism to fair competition (and a
professional conflict of interest over the way I was making a name for myself
with writing editorial content) as possible legal issues down the road.
A fashionable piece of advice was to
be loyal to what you do, not to a company.
This makes a lot of sense up to a point.
A 25-year-old software developer may find it in his best interests to
spend 60 hours a week on crash projects with meticulous technical skills and
fire-fighting. A 55-year-old will be concerned with what his or her life says
and may well reject most corporate goals developed by others.
There is more controversy about what
is meant by keeping skills current. The old paradigm was promotion to the point
that one was “high above” the need for mundane skills and regimentation. Should managers be able to do what their
subordinates do? The downsizings and
rise of entrepreneurialism bring this idea back. In the past, people could be comfortable by
managing a personal work world that they could control. In an age where there is more emphasis on
fast-paced 24x7 interfacing with the external customer and where presentation
means a much as the substance underneath, mental agility, in tandem with
techniques like object-oriented systems and
connectivity rather than sequential processes, becomes a premium. People are expected to jump into situations
and solve short-term problems reactively with less mental control on their
own. There is a certain superficiality
to all of this (making the “geek squad” and giving up a certain self-direction),
a curiosity for its own sake, a receptiveness to instreaming
information that seems unrelated to the contents of one’s own mind. It takes a certain psychological humility, to
maintain a curiosity for knowledge that one will not have repeated personal
gain from—until learning itself becomes a habit. Curiously, many people find a kind of
freedom—and relief from the expectation of any untoward political loyalty—in
working this way (as if working pragmatically in minimum wage job). The modern
workplace is not Socratic. It used to be
thought that information technology people could do anything that they wanted
with their lives publicly, but now absolute political neutrality is coming to
be viewed by some as necessary for integrity when having access to sensitive
information in systems that one supports. In my own attitude, there has been a
paradox: I have found it difficult to
get into curiosity over what seems like geekolator
trivia just for the manipulative fun of it, until I have something “to do” (like
write a book – there goes my ego) with it; but I criticize others on a
different level for disinterest in political or social information that does
not affect them or their families immediately.
Laws against discrimination on the
basis of race and gender, for example, seem proper and necessary today but
other areas are more complicated. Take
age. You could argue that a person ought
to plan his career well enough that he can do “what he wants” by 55, and that
it is not reasonable to expect the company to pay top-dollar to seniors who
have fallen behind younger competition on quick skills. Or sexual orientation or
family status. In some areas,
being single is an advantage. Other
career ladders don’t make a lot of psychological sense at the top of the ladder
for people who don’t form families—although the availability of same-sex
marriage could enrich this controversy.
For one, I don’t think that proving that a gay person or female breaks
the glass ceiling just to get into upper management proves anything, unless the
job is one that the person can do better than almost anyone else because of his
or her unusual background. Nevertheless, the mainstream corporation seems to be
pulling ahead of the government in its attitudes towards gays.
Another idea would be for companies
to identify pools of key person employees who are expected to be kept through
mergers and downsizings, to be promotable into
management, and in some ways remain more “loyal” (to the point of agreeing to
engage in no outside commercial or publicity-seeking activities) in exchange
for enhanced benefits. To some extent,
the “up or out” concept still can make sense.
It’s important to put a perspective
on the hours that so many professions require. Indeed, dedication and
professionalism to some people seem to require that the profession monopolize
one’s life. The most extreme examples may be the hours required by hospitals of
medical interns and residents (especially surgical residents) as a way of
“paying your dues” with a unifocal life. But it
happens everywhere else to, from law firms (with the emphasis on billable
hours) to information technology, with the heavy emphasis on pagers and on-call
availability. The idea that an upper
middle-class life is a “privilege” with an underclass below, contributes to the
notion. So do the way forces like health insurance and benefits work (it’s
cheaper to demand overtime than hire more people, especially with salaried
workers). But,
given the rise in productivity of the typical worker, it seems likely that
American business would benefit from shorter work weeks, because with more time
the average person would provide a better market as a consumer. Telecommuting
and 4-day works help, and maybe should be expected as a way of reducing
pollution and fuel consumption. Business should also recognize the burden
placed on families by the modern workplace, and consider (by open contractural agreement) slightly shorter workweeks and
on-call schedules for those with dependents. Finally, business may have to consider
more careful screening of employees for criminal records and credit problems,
and in some jobs requiring stamina or endurance of on-call responsibilities,
medical screening.
An individual will confront a paradox in trying to
diversify his skills. He or she may feel pressured to become a “professional
geek” at the disposal of others, yet that very notion sounds like an oxymoron,
a contradiction to professionalism. He may develop an expressive interest as
(to follow an accountant’s view) a “capital investment” as an intended second
career, but eventually reach the point where his intentions may be perceived as
self-serving and unprofessional, or as representing a conflict of interest in
the way he deploys his public reputation (no longer fully dedicated to his
paying customers or to his proven “profession”). If he then ventures out into what he wants to
do full time and finds that it does not pay, he will feel pressured to return
to a “commitment” to what others want, to being willing to surrender his own
ideas and personal identity (if that identity is not rooted in a traditional
way in links to family or faith) in order to provide for others, or even to
“survive.” This is somewhat the
“artist’s dilemma.” The Internet and other related technology has created a
double-blind: it enables people to establish themselves publicly with little
investment (as I did with my books) but then also expects them to, so it can
bring back an unexpected pressure towards “professionalism.”
All of this bears particularly on the publicly
apparent turmoil on information technology (“I.T.”) where popular myth has it
that in the wake of the dot-com bust, the breakdown of Enron and Andersen,
terrorism, and general over capacity there are now no jobs. Not true at all.
But I.T. does have a certain constellation of problems related in the rapid way
it grew and in the sudden shifts of technology recently. “Computer programming”
started out as a job for introverted, detail-oriented nerds and chess players
in the 1960s—in the days of desk-checking and twice-a-week turnarounds. But
productivity improved quickly, as programmers worked at terminals and “let the
computer do the dirty work.” The rapid and constant growth of core business
applications in banking, insurance, manufacturing, etc. during the 1970s and
1980s made mainframe I.T. relatively recession proof, although not completely
so. A certain superficiality in the market developed, though, as employers and
headhunters looked first for
The workplace of corporate will have
a major role in helping balance freedom with stability and safety in light of
the new war on terrorism. Stable
companies needing to reduce expenses should consider alternatives to layoffs,
such as shorter work weeks and reduced executive compensation. The investment
community needs to pay more attention to long term investment compared to short
term earnings. This may well a good time for Congress to consider loosening
labor rules and in some cases allow or even promote the “family wage.” And a certain paradox about innovation
compared to professionalism comes to a head.
Companies will, in the new landscape, pay even more attention to the
backgrounds and career intentions of those professional employees they want to
retain as “core staff” representing the company publicly. Yet, the message of the past twenty years or
so to individuals has been to branch out as much as possible, to be good at as
many things as possible, and to try your own ideas, to toot your own horn, to
speak up. This self-promotion goes
against the idea that senior leadership in most professions implies a
willingness to appropriate oneself (one’s own “right of publicity”,
increasingly important in the age of the Internet) to advocate the ideas
developed by others in a competitive setting—an expectation that has been
challenged subtly by the personal expression possible on the Internet. To some extent there is a tension between
this expressive independence and traditional professionalism that we must
resolve now in an era of new concern over national security and public trust. This becomes a subtle issue of great economic
significance for long term growth and stability.
The war on terrorism
will also make personal background investigations a much more important issue
in employment in general. Questions such
as, why polygraphs may be allowed for certain positions but are not admissible
in court, will be faced . Likewise medical fitness and
monitoring may become a bigger issue, which will raise discrimination concerns,
as well as privacy and dignity. Again, a high-paying job is not necessarily a
“fundamental right.”
ãCopyright 2001 by
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Email me at JBoushka at aol.com