the working life

If you're reading this, then you must be terribly optimistic, or terribly bored, because I haven't posted here in months. Welcome to the winter of my working life. Basically, since I have nothing particularly important to do on week nights, I can't procrastinate by blogging. Well technically, I suppose I could - but there isn't much of an urge to put off "watching another episode of miami ink". Besides, what would I do to fill that procrastination time? Other than sleep, I can't think of anything. But finally, I'm sitting at my comp listening to a new album, and I can't think of any more websites to peruse, so here I am.

Yup, so probably anyone in school is hating me right now. But let me tell you... work is not quite the picnic that it's cracked up to be. Sure, once you go home, there's no more work. Except for those of you who have to work from home that is. Fortunately I am not one of these people; however, I do have the pleasure of coming in on weekends when the situation warrants it, which looks likely for this weekend in fact. There's nothing that makes you feel older than working on a weekend. And it makes you feel like a sucker... on one hand, I really couldn't care less about the work, since it's not something that I feel is improving society or life or anything. But of course, on the other hand, there's something strange called "Sense of Duty", whereby if something is your responsibility (however you managed to get stuck with doing whatever), you gotta do what you gotta do. That also makes me feel real old.

(Man it is fricken cold in my basement... saving money, I mean, the environment, means my fingers freeze from typing.)

The other thing about work is the whole Corporate Environment. It's like this whole fake sense of community and team-player-ness permeating the building, and I swear it makes me sick because by the end of the day I am totally drained, which is odd considering what my stamina is like during school. There are so many things that don't make any sense and so many stupid people deciding (or not deciding) stupid things and all of these stupid people are venting about how other people are stupid. And then there are the "political moves". For example, I got assigned to something that I have absolutely no knowledge of, something that even full timers aren't too clear on, and I was told that it was a "political move". Since then, I haven't actually been called on to be involved in anything. Even though I'm sure meetings have been going on. So sure, if you want something to go down the drain, but don't want to say that out loud, just assign a random non-permanent team member to it, and I guess your problem is solved. I find it all very uninspiring.

Next, what makes me want to avoid work for as long as possible (i.e. grad school) is that, if I just returned to this kind of job after undergrad, my undergrad degree would be pretty much useless. My job really doesn't involve anything that I'd consider very technical. I mean sure, I work in the electronics industry, we manufacture circuit boards, I know a lot about soldering and sometimes I get to use some interesting equipment. But pretty much anyone with common sense could figure out the problems that I solve. Maybe I'm taking for granted the type of 'common sense' that an engineering background brings out, but seriously, this is totally not rocket science. A lot of it involves reading up on things, and buying things. Which involves internet research and calling up lots of random sales people and getting in demo equipment and testing the equipment and implementing the equipment. It's like if you wanted to buy a TV, and you researched the differences between LCD, plasma, etc, then decided on which one to buy. Only with more analness and documentation (i.e. more annoyances). People buy TVs all the time. So that's what my job is like, only it's not a TV that I'm looking to buy, and it won't be for me (OK so it's not with my money either, but anyways). There's been maybe one day in the past few months where I was doing some testing that was fun, playing with parameters and seeing what I could get. The rest is chasing after people and getting quotes and basically being someone's bitch.

Which leads me to one other thing - delegation. Man, I need them to hire another student quick, so that I can delegate some bitchwork. In principle, delegation is necessary and efficient. That is, IF the person in charge of delegating isn't an idiot. When nobody talks to anyone else and 5 people get delegated the same task (which btw is likely in an area outside of their regular duties/expertise) except they don't know that anyone else is working on the same thing, then something is effed up. And usually, the person doing the delegating doesn't do anything else but delegate, and so they spend their time harrassing all of the people they've given their tasks to, while complaining about how much work they have and how they're tired, thus making it even slower for the unlucky peeps who are lower on the food chain. And in a prime example of a vicious cycle, once the bottom folks get promoted a level up, they promptly turn into the same kind of idiot they once despised, out of spite.

So basically, you can see what I really got out of all of this work experience - a dose of bitter reality, disillusionment, and the feeling that if I stay stuck in this now, there is nothing left to look forwards to and it's all downhill from here. Of course, this is just one place, and one job. But from what I gather from the old timers, things aren't too much different elsewhere. To be just a plain old engineer is to work without getting the respect you deserve, at least in North America. So unless you've got that business streak and ambition in you, or have the philosophy that work is not life (even though you spend a huge portion of your time alive working), I would suggest staying in school, where you can nap when you want to, and where you are working and learning for yourself and not the man.

posted by starfire @ 10:02 PM 0 comments