Category: Work

Posted on

Without Sin

Sometime in my early career I was forced to buy new tires for my car. As I could barely afford gas in those days, this purchase was beyond my immediate means, so I financed it from the local Sam’s Club (via my employer’s private label card program)…responsibly. I paid them off before the interest accrued. Still, it sucked.

Then, a month later on my way home from what was of course second shift, in the dark and rain I failed to notice a road obstacle. A chunk of concrete was laying in wait to ambush me, because life kicks you when you’re down. The rock immediately blew both left tires and bent the rims. I had to have the car towed. I left it in the local Sam’s Club parking lot for the night.

Sam’s Club did not have replacement rims for my car, so I had to call around. Eventually, I located two repair shops who each had a singular rim in stock. Borrowing Liz’s car the next morning, and taking a personal day off work, I drove around the city and procured them. I then took them to Sam’s and threw them in my car, proceeded to walk into the service garage, and ask if they had any problem with installing new tires on the rims not already on the vehicle. Fortunately, they did not. Also fortunately, they honored their own warranty on road hazard damage to the new tires and replaced them free of charge. Unfortunately, however, they didn’t have the same Michelin tires in stock and I ended up with Bridgestone. The Michelin were radials. The Bridgestone were not. This led to years of incompetent auto shops rotating tires incorrectly and leaving one of each type on the same axle. I eventually stopped having my tires rotated altogether.

But back to the rock. As I was waiting for the tow truck, I walked back and searched successfully for what I had hit. As an anti-trophy, I threw it in my trunk. It would eventually make its way to my desk at work as a persistent reminder that life will grant no favors even when trying to do everything right. I was severely underemployed at that time. Like the rock, The Great Recession took its toll mercilessly.

At one point, I wrote “Without Sin” on it with a sharpie, as a veiled threat that I might throw it at someone. But, despite the constant temptation, I never did, and it followed me from desk to desk as I gradually advanced my career.

Then COVID lockdowns happened. Given limited notice to clear out our desks for full-time work at home, I haphazardly threw the contents of my cubicle into boxes. That which I needed for my job was retrieved from the boxes, while the remaining contents sat forgotten. Now, 6 years later, I decided the boxes were taking up too much space and proceeded to clear them out. A full audit revealed the rock, which now, once again, sits upon my desk.

Is its resurgence an omen, or just chance? We shall see. For now, I find it reassuring that the struggling days of my early adulthood are over. My fingers are becoming arthritic and I have this new sciatica problem, but at least I can afford tires.

–Simon

Posted on

Stamford

Physical location is a strong indicator of one’s status within an organization. When I started working for my employer, I entered the building at entrance W4, which was the furthest entrance from E2: the main entrance. Unsurprisingly, E2 was an elegant and modernized entrance, with glass panel partitions and doors, comfy chairs, the security desk, etc. W2 had a malfunctioning door hinge and crumbling concrete stairs. By the time the office was shut down in favor of full remote work, my desk was by E2. I had made it.

But it was still a satellite office. HQ was in Stamford, CT. Important people, not myself, regularly flew there for important meetings. And a select few non-important people, chosen from a pool of low-ranking hourly workers such as myself, but never myself. Fast-track programs existed for us, but I was never selected. Until after about 7 years. One of 4 chosen participants, but only one would win, and ultimately they chose not to fly me anywhere, and returned me to my menial job.

I eventually landed a salaried position. And the department was based in…Alpharetta. I got to travel, but still not to HQ.

Promoted again, COVID happened, and no travel occurred at all. Then I changed positions, and shortly thereafter everyone at my last job traveled to Stamford for a department meeting.

Finally, my current department budgeted travel, and I was sent to Stamford. After 18 years, I saw HQ.

Such is white collar life.

But I don’t write about my work. Instead, this is just an excuse to post a few pics from my Stamford trip:

Chicago!
A church! Because there’s always a church.
And scaffolding, because there’s also always scaffolding.
And downtown. There’s actually not much of a downtown. I think Dayton might have a more impressive skyline.
Sally’s is apparently the best pizza place. Connecticut is also apparently the best pizza region. I’ll let the internet fight that one out, but it was indeed damn good.
Aforementioned pizza.
Obligatory view from hotel room.
Amtrak. Because trains are cool and I’ve never ridden one.

And now, the saga is finally complete. Career bucket list item checked off.

–Simon

Posted on

Bottoming Out

As I approach 40, I’m very much aware of my physical decline. But what I didn’t expect was the Internet’s warnings that my overall happiness will apparently be taking a dive soon too. Self-reported subjective measurements make for a lousy scientific statement, so it’s more one of those correlation-only type observations. As to the actual reasoning, that’s up for debate. Common theories include:

  • Innocence lost with the realization that your achievement peak has passed and life didn’t turn out that good (insert Pink Floyd song here).
  • 40 isn’t quite the point where maximum earning potential is reached, and workload appears imbalanced with quality of life.
  • Some form of the above as a midlife crisis.

The full graph indicates happiness begins to decline at 18, bottoms out in the 40s, and steadily increases starting at 50. Something like this (this was drawn freehand, so disregard the scaling issues):

So I decided to compare this timeline with my own life, and see if this is an applicable expectation, using life events as reference:

  • 0-7: Limited frame of reference/too young to care. I remember school being okay until we moved.
  • 8-11: New school. Kids were jerks. Wasn’t allowed to leave the house. Low happiness.
  • 11-12: Junior high started and I really enjoyed the first year.
  • 13-15: Struggled with grades. Wasn’t good at extracurriculars. Bad friends. No luck with girls. Low happiness.
  • 15-17: Moved across the country. Few friends. Bad grades. No girls. Overbearing parents prevented any kind of social life. No car in a town of rich kids. Bad clothes. Bad hair. No happiness.
  • 17-19: Started college. Greater freedom. Discovered interests. Found friends. Increased happiness.
  • 19-21: Own apartment. Girlfriends. Finished college. Even more happiness.
  • 21-31: Bad grad school experience. Tired of apartments. Horrible jobs and limited opportunities. Wife, car and daughter kept some stability, but overall a period of lower happiness.
  • 31-39: Better jobs. More money. Bought a house. Reasonably happy.
  • 39-present: Even better jobs and more money. Good life prospects. Happy.

If I try to graph the above, I end up with something like this:

And if I superimpose the two:

It would appear that I’m at the complete opposite level of happiness than where I should be.

Hopefully this means I’m early to the old age happiness party, rather than late to the middle age unhappiness one. Or maybe my life has been atypical in general. Who knows? But what I do know is that right now I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.

–Simon

Posted on

Overcoming

I’ll begin with an oft-repeated nugget of bullshit wisdom: “Money doesn’t buy happiness.”

And I’ll say that’s true, except no money also can’t buy happiness. The phrase isn’t that money can’t buy happiness, but that it doesn’t necessarily. So I think that a better version would be: “Money doesn’t necessarily buy happiness, but it’s a prerequisite.”

I began tracking my annual income in relation to yearly inflation and the American median per capita income a few years back, using my historical W-2s. Alas I didn’t save them all, and employer data retention limits their own historical records, but I can go back as far as 2011, and prior to that I can infer some pretty measly wages. So, after a 16+ year career (when I began working full time), this is what I discovered:

The Median

First off, the median per capita is, by definition, the income that most people have. It is therefore the income at which point you can survive with proper budgeting, since most people do so. It is also not something that happens with entry level jobs, and requires years of experience and some promotions to achieve. In my case, it was 7 years of working full time to achieve this median.

Inflation

Failure to increase wages will return a net loss as inflation chips away at real income value, so if your annual raises do not outpace inflation, you will lose actual worth. This drags out the process.

Transition

For the next 4-5 years following this introductory period, the promotions with job changes were decent but not enough to significantly alter my station. I’ll call this the transition stage: the point at which sufficient skills are acquired to warrant higher pay, but the opportunity has to present itself. It was the most competitive period of my career.

Overcoming

The following 5-6 years have since seen me significant compensation growth, I think because at this point I have acquired a very broad skillset but with pointed areas of expertise, which are in demand. Individually I broke into the 20%er bracket during this timeframe, which was the point at which I began to notice my purchasing power had significantly changed in relation to my younger self and the world around me.

Conclusion

In the spirit of this site’s ethos, these are my observations and interpretations of being an elder Millennial, by age:

  • 0-21: No job in this age range will return a livable wage due to lack of knowledge, experience, education, and an employment system that greatly restricts job availability.
  • 21-28: Any job in this age range will be limited in both responsibilities and salary.
  • 28-33: A job in this age range will begin to see greater salary returns, probably due to experience gained while in the prior age range.
  • 33+: A job in this age range can encompass a wide range of pay scales and opportunities.

Sooooo, anything before turning 30 is a wash. It’s the period of life that requires working hard for low pay while building skills and experience needed to compete for the higher-paying jobs. This pretty closely checks out with published salary by age reports, although I can’t personally confirm the next stages. Supposedly salary caps out in the 45-54 age range, so hopefully I have that to look forward to.

I admit, it’d be kind of depressing as a young person, and appears constant across developed nations. The postwar Baby Boomer period was anomalous, with its influx of unskilled high pay industrial jobs, followed by unsustainable financial policies to unsuccessfully maintain that growth. But a generation that lacked financial burden also proved to lack compassion and character, so there’s an upside to the struggle, for those who make it that long. (Also, money.)

–Simon

Posted on

Authentication Solutions

I have accepted a new position at work:

AVP, Authentication Solutions

As with most long-term jobs, the Product Owner stint has long since lost its romance.

Product Owner

That is not to say it was a bad job. But there’s only so much one can learn, and I was feeling the growing loss of interest. It was time.

I’m still with the same company, but I’m moving out of Marketing. I’ll be under Credit, working cross-functionally to integrate authentication software. It ties into Fraud-a new business segment for me. Sounds like a good CV addition.

And the large pay increase certainly sweetens the deal.

–Simon