Following text presents a hard fact of life, with a solution towards its end. Readers are encouraged to respond.
Employability, or the potential in your profile to be rewarded with responsibilities and remunerations that you expect from the industry, has an interesting trend. It follows an inverted U curve. The law of increasing and diminishing returns seems to be working here as well!
Fresh out of college, you are full of enthusiasm - like the dried sponge, waiting to get soaked into the industry. You are always on top of the latest happenings around the world, take up new technologies and processes on the fly, and with each passing day, become more proficient at your work. In other words, your demand in the job market maintains a steady rise.
Your experience largely catalyzes your employability. As you gain experience(number of years could vary from half a dozen to two based on your industry) you start commanding a position in the industry. This is when the slope of the curve starts to reduce. Newer folks are in the ascending stage while you arrive at a "risky" position. Risky, because, with age, your rate of knowledge enhancement has reduced, your ability to work hard has reduced, and you want a higher salary than those younger people who can perform as good!
At the third stage, you are at your vulnerable best, and the peak has happened by. Your heavy salary packages start biting you, and you are left with two possible options. One, fight it out. Push your mind and body to their limits and try to re-establish yourself. Two, dump your self-esteem and let things continue till your employability is non-zero. Commonality in both cases states it is perhaps too late!
Law of diminishing returns is inevitable. However, the good news is that a solution exists for all of us! Economics teaches, "development and technology can postpone diminishing returns in the long run". THE ONLY WAY OUT of this trap is continuous development and use of latest technological tools throughout the career. If one is able to do just these two things, there is no way that one gets overtaken.
Impact of experience on employability experiences an exponential rise when it gets coupled with continuous skill development and technology upgrades. This is THE solution to make sure you plan your succession at work, instead of getting succeeded because of obsoleteness.
Wishing you an exciting latter half of your career!
Nice start man, good observations..
ReplyDeleteok some fun time now, you are listing your reflections over the past three decades? Last time I checked out, you were 30 or 32. Does this mean you started having ideas and learnings when you were as young as a two year old? :D ;-)
On a serious note, the way that economics teaches might be A way, but I doubt if that is the ONLY way out. The whole issue is arising out of comparison with newer folks and the self-esteem things etc. Well, if one walks the path of Buddh, while living in society and gets rid of such things as ambitions,comparisons, desires, etc, then these questions will melt away. Technology upgrades are needed to solve newer problems. New Anti-virus comes because some jerk out there is creating more virus. What if that jerk becomes a nice person, and stops finding pleasure in being pain in a** of people. Thus, eliminating the cause of newer problems is another way out to get out of the trap.
As u've talked bout Eco., i wud throw away some more mgmt concepts..
ReplyDeleteU can go for a Blue Ocean Strategy ..when the market u operate in gets crowded by young entrants...
or u can for strategic mktg..repackage old product as a newer one..market it to be a brkthru...and may be u can get out some brownie thr..
Nice write Pankaj. I liked the writing style as well.
ReplyDeleteRajeev's 'solution' is ideal, but not feasible :-). If all humans become good, they all become Buddha. Then Budhha himself will become a commodity, and take all the fun out of life :). I think God is a flabbergasting game-developer! He gives each of us mind, body, a local 'eco-system' (home, family, school, office, wtc), and a global eco-system . Plus he gives us all the 'vices'- lust, anger, greed, fear, ego, attachment, (kaam, krodh, lobh, moh, ahankar as in our vedic texts)- and lives us wild open in this world. So if someone has control over all these very human sensory perceptions, he becomes a Buddha and transcends the 'miseries'. But for the rest mortals like us, we must 'fight it out'. In that respect your thoughts on the topics are quite relevant. Krishna himself says in the Gita- "There are two ways to reach Me- through Bhakti-Yog and Karma-Yog; but out of the two Karma Yog is better.."
But there are some implicit assumptions and insinuations in the article that may not apply to everybody :
1.The goal of work-life is to "establish and re-establish' oneself. I think one just just enjoy the process with it's highs as lows. Success the becomes a peripheral; Success will follow you, and not the other way around. And if it doesn't , you still can CHOOSE to be happy. The last bit takes practice and discipline to achieve, and usually is an acquired knowledge ( "siddhi")
2. There is a fear of loosing it all ("..your vulnerable best, and the peak has happened by."), a feeling of sadness on the 'peak' gone by. I think this also can be viewed more positively. Professionally there will be highs and lows. And you have given the right solutions too - invest in continuous self-development. But all of that should be taken with a spirit of fun, rather than as a compulsions induced by external forces. Taking a cure from Rajeev again :), I would like to quote the Gita here :) - "Work is the default state of human existence"- If you are breathing , you are working. So all work be it professional or personal development should be enjoyed-- cos any ways there's no escape from it :)
3. About professional growth per se- There's a saying in bengali- "Maanush dekhe shekhe nahole theke shekhe" (Man learns either through observation or experience). No doubt the younger lot is much more smarter than we were at their age. But they have knowledge. Wisdom comes only through experience. If both the older guys and the younger ones are solving the same problems, that is problems which do not need Wisdom of experience, then no doubt the younger lot will 'overtake' the older. If the experienced guy feels being left behind by the younger-smarter guy, the he has indeed not invested enough in his career.
4. Last but not the least, there is a pleasure when you see the younger generation getting better of us :). They'll keep the world safe. After all 'Child is the father of Man'. Hope floats :)
cheers and congrats on your first post!
~shree
Nice Start indeed Dada ! Just my humble 2 cents here...
ReplyDeleteI think nothing can teach the prophecies of life better then any sport..! With all of us overcoming the IPL fever and malaria, lets take the example of T20 as it presents the best comparison of Old Vs New !
With the inclusion of new blood, there always is a temptation to expect an evolution on the anvil. We often use jargon like..new blood, fresh ideas...enthusiasm..commitment etc to convince us of the drastic positives that the new faces would bring in. But, as we see a lot of times with expectations, its tough to meet them ! But, the beauty with inexperience is, they have a clear advantage of being over appraised for under achievement as well...! Don't we all appreciate a paltry 15 run contribution from new comer and give him another chance for the sake of his experience ? On the other hand, we unanimously would ridicule a valiant half century from an old pro, if we were to loose the match ! So, for an old guy, its not about individual performance, its about the team ...and that's where the old horses score !
I think with me also on the wrong side of the graph, am just trying to defend all standing on the sloping side ! But, I do believe that no matter how technology grows and develops, it takes a human to implement them. The rules of the game might change, but still, it would be the same old game with basics in place.
I think the trick may be...is to know your skill and to know it well ! Can't help but quote a very nice dialogue form movie Lakshya ..."ek scientist bano, lekin achhe na bano...to kya matlab hai. Ghaas kaatne waala bano, lekin achha....to koi baat hai"...
In the meantime...I'll assume myself to be looking at the U from the other end...I AM ON MY WAY UP !
Chao everybody !
Single Source Of Truth : You need to recharge your battery...
ReplyDeleteIt hardly matters that you are doing 10% of recharging at regular intervals or you are doing 100% recharging after it get down to 0. But yes the intermediate consequences are different. Who cares... You don't need to be correct every time, otherwise people won't believe you.