December 9th, 2008 / 1 Comment » / by Matt
The Boston Globe has an article today about a man who plays Santa Claus every year. Apparently, due to the scary specter of recession (more on that here), companies have been cutting back on Christmas parties this year. And that doesn’t mean good things for the man who would be Santa Claus:
Business has been especially bad for Donald Wetherby, 57, a Montgomery, Vt., truck driver who makes about $400 each holiday season playing the big guy from the North Pole for weekend parties. So far, he only has two bookings this year, compared with eight this time last year.
“Even if it is Christmas,” Wetherby said, “Times are hard anyway, so people don’t got a lot of money.”
The Christmas party cutbacks are happening in a lot of places. The Rocky Mountain News says one in every five companies are cutting back on Christmas parties. They have to save money every where they can, they say.
This is stupid.
First of all, your company would have to be in pretty weird economic shape for the Christmas party to really make a dent in your year-end financial figures. I know these sorts of things can get pretty pricey at larger organization, but larger organizations also tend to have larger revenues. I’d be shocked — so much so that I might keel over and die — if I ever heard about an organization that spent more than a fraction of a percent on their annual bash. Fiscally speaking, it’s unlikely to make a huge difference either way.
These kinds of cuts are BS because they’re never really about the bottom line. They’re about making middle-management feel good about themselves. They’re about bean-counters who can’t ever understand why a business would “throw money away” on something as trivial as a party for its workers anyway.
They’re about people who don’t understand the connection between actually doing nice things for your employees and the increased productivity that follows.
Posted in: News
November 26th, 2008 / 2 Comments » / by Matt
A simple thought for this week: if you’re a young worker coming into an organization with policies — whether they involve start time, sick days, internet use, music playing, dress code, whatever — that you don’t agree with, don’t just demand that exceptions be made for you because that’s the way you like to work. Instead, start by doing work, and doing it incredibly well. Show off those abilities that make Gen Y a force to be reckoned with. Make yourself uniquely valuable. The best way to get exceptions to longstanding policies to be exceptional.
Because employers are wary and only getting warier. John Barwis of the Holland Sentinel in Michigan in a in a familiar-sounding column called “Generation Y meets real life” writes:
Our Generation Y professionals regularly met in groups to share and track each other’s salary and performance-bonus information. Many expressed the feeling that everyone should receive the same bonus, and that it was impossible or even unethical to differentiate performance. Where did they learn to expect reward for effort rather than results?
I believe as much as the most militant member of Generation Y that old work paradigms need to die off to accommodate this new generation at work, but when you get away from that macro level and down to the micro level, it does become all about results.
Does this require sacrifice on the part of young workers? Sure. In some organizations, it could require many years of sacrifice. (And in some organizations, due to institutionalized bureaucracy and lame duck management, differentiating yourself could prove impossible — or dangerous. But let’s not go there now.) But, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t need to be that difficult.
Even with the economic downturn, employers across the globe are hurting and will continue to hurt in their search for qualified people. That initial period right after you get your foot in the door is CRITICAL, because if your boss or manager starts to see you as expressly and keenly qualified for your job (and, hey, it doesn’t hurt to make it clear that you’re qualified for OTHER, more important jobs within the organization, too) suddenly you’ve made yourself very valuable. You’ve become a rare commodity: a talented knowledge worker in an era where fewer exist.
Don’t screw it up. Remember that, until you define yourself in your organization, there’s very little difference between you and the five candidates they interviewed but DIDN’T hire. So don’t go in and start making even reasonable demands in week one. Because while you know your skill level and know that you, say, can get just as much work done listening to your iPod or working four ten-hour days as opposed to five eight-hour days, your boss doesn’t.
Start slow. Remember the order of operations. Prove to your employer that he or she doesn’t want to lose you, then start defining (with your employer) the work environment you’d like to have to ensure a positive, long-lasting employment. In short: be exceptional, then start asking for exceptions.
Photo by Wayne’s World 7. Licensed under Creative Commons
Posted in: At Work, Attitude
Tags: exceptions, flex time, hiring, management, work-life balance
November 16th, 2008 / 1 Comment » / by Matt
A couple of months back, my girlfriend and I hired someone to come clean our apartment. We went through a service, of which there are a zillion in this city. After setting things up, getting a key made, and working out a schedule, it’s been pretty much a set-it-and-forget-it kind of thing. Every other Monday, we leave our house and, when we return in the evening, it’s much much cleaner than it was before.
I’ve gotten some pretty extreme reactions from people I’ve told about this arrangement. Most just think it’s funny — something Matt has to do because Matt’s messy. Others understand, usually because they had a cleaning service come to their house growing up. Some people, though, react almost with a hint of disgust — like I’m doing something wrong by doing things that way.
I can’t draw any kind of clear generational lines on the issue: reactions were diverse amongst young and old alike. But what I can do is give you my perspective in the form of some advice: there is nothing wrong with outsourcing the parts of your own life that you don’t have time for, dislike or outright dread. There’s nothing noble about spending your time doing something you either are no good at or dislike.
We live in a time where households are increasingly dual-income, which means both partners are busy. And the line between work and home is blurring, though not necessarily in a bad way. Due to increases in technology and direct access to revenue streams, online and off, more and more people are finding that the old “time is money” adage now applies directly to them.
If you’re a writer, or a blogger, or a designer, or any kind of freelancer, is spending four hours in the evening cleaning your house really a cost-effective exercise? Or is there a more efficient way to do it? And even if you’re not a freelancer type, you too should weigh the benefits in terms of your work/life landscape: maybe it’d be better for you if you spent that time enjoying a dinner with friends who you never get to see.
This doesn’t just apply to house cleaning. We live in an era where many facets of your day-to-day life can be outsourced. Hate laundry? Set up a pick-up/drop-off service. Always scrambling to find time to go to the grocery store? Consider an online grocery delivery service. Hate shopping for Christmas gifts? Consider a concierge. Hell, some people have even gone as far as to outsource their daily email, as Tim Ferriss of Four Hour Work Week has done:
1) I have multiple e-mail addresses for specific types of e-mail (blog readers vs. media vs. friends/family, etc.). tim@… is the default I give to new acquaintances, which goes to my assistant.
2) 99% of e-mail falls into predetermined categories of inquiries with set questions or responses (my “rules” document is at the bottom of this post — feel free to steal, adapt, and use). My assistant(s) checks and clears the inbox at 11am and 3pm PST.
3) For the 1% of e-mail that might require my input for next actions, I have a once-daily phone call of 4-10 minutes at 4pm PST with my assistant.
The point is not to assume everyone can just throw money at stuff like this and live a life of luxury, but just to consider not doing something you dread. These services are frequently far more affordable than people assume, and if the net benefit to your life is evident, then why question them?
There’s nothing noble about sacrificing for the sake of sacrificing. If there’s part of your life that you loathe managing yourself, look at the alternatives. It may make a world of difference.
Photo by derek*b. Licensed under Creative Commons
Posted in: Attitude
Tags: advancement, personal life
November 12th, 2008 / 2 Comments » / by Matt
Just an idle thought to keep this site going this week: do people who exhibit so-called “workaholic” tendencies inevitably end up out of touch with the the latest goings-on?
I think they do. I don’t see a way around it.
One of the first things people sacrifice when they get overwhelmingly busy is their intellectual curiosity and inventiveness. When you’re stressed, you stop learning, and just start relying on the things you already know — the old chestnuts that have worked in the past and will, presumably, continue to work.
Further, this kind of work environment kills any kind of cultural connection. And I don’t just mean that in the “let’s go look at paintings or listen to beat poetry” sense. I’m speaking more broadly: of tech culture, of greater trends and shifts, of people and how they think and what they do.
It may not seem like much when your overworked co-worker tells you they haven’t seen a movie in years, haven’t finished that book they started five years ago or that their RSS reader has over 40,000 unread items in it, going back months, but these things don’t just happen in a vaccuum. Any employee that far removed from the world at large is, at best, going to be operating at a diminished capacity for creativity.
It’s an odd situation we find ourselves in with work culture, because while we’re finally starting to understand on a macro level that people working themselves to death isn’t a very good thing, we still tend to see honour in burning the midnight oil (or the candle at both ends, or whatever you happen to be setting afire) to get work done.
We need to get away from that. It’s not a good idea in mental or physical health terms, and it’s not a good idea in the knowledge economy, because working all the time impedes knowledge.
Take a break. Read a book. Go to the movies. Learn something. It’s important.
Photo by truthlying. Licensed under Creative Commons
Posted in: At Work, Attitude, Culture
Tags: Culture, time management, work, workaholics
November 6th, 2008 / 4 Comments » / by Matt
Weird editorial in the Financial Times UK today from Michael Skapinker, which is a neat name. He titles it A dose of austerity for a pampered generation, and is sort of all over the map.
Look, he starts here:
This recession has already hurt people such as over-mortgaged home owners and bank staff. But employers and headhunters predict a real shock for one group: those in their 20s and early 30s who have never experienced an economic downturn before.
Then hits us with this old chestnut:
For the baby boomers’ children, mass unemployment will be something new. The shock will be all the greater because the best educated of them have had it their own way ever since they entered the workplace.
Doom! Gloom! We’re so screwed. If only Generation Y hadn’t been so pampered and demanding. If only we were more like the boomers.
But wait — maybe we’re actually okay? Skapinker continues:
In one sense, today’s younger generation are better prepared for economic hard times than their parents or grandparents: they were not expecting jobs for life.
Nor did they ever think they would have defined benefit pensions, calculated as a proportion of salary at retirement. (One young worker was astonished when I explained the idea to her.)
However pampered Generation Y may have been, switching jobs and reconsidering careers are second nature to them.
It’s always nice when an author refutes his own headline. It just sort of wraps everything up nicely, doesn’t it?
I’ve written about this already. It’s still way too early to really speculate on how the economic downturn will affect Gen Y’s employment prospects. My personal feeling is that if it does hurt them, it’ll be a very short-term period of pain, and then it will end. But regardless: I think claims that Gen Y needs to adjust their attitudes in light of the recession are completely insane.
Here’s why: Generation Y hasn’t demanded greater work/life balance and so-called perks (Skapinker makes reference to Gen Y getting time off work to “train for the triathlon”) solely because they can. We’re not holding jobs ransom, hoping to get a sweet flex-time schedule out of the deal. We ask for these things because we feel that they’re important. They’re not frivolous or expendable and, most importantly at all, they don’t actually affect the quality or amount of work we get done.
Seriously, if your employee can do great work, get things done on time, and also takes two extra hours every morning to train for the triathlon, what does it matter?
Am I missing some logic here? Have I just not taken my dose of austerity yet? Should I really take austerity on an empty stomach?
Photo by Pulpolux !!!. Licensed under Creative Commons.
Posted in: At Work, Attitude, News
Tags: economics, finances, recession
