2007 NSW Careers fair

Today was the careers fair at UNSW and was truly a most excellent day! It was that awesome, that it was one of those days that made me wonder about my choice of career! There was so much energy and vibrancies to the fair, which I don't get on a day to day basis. Being around new people makes me terribly nervous BEFORE the actual event, but on the spot, it’s like another person runs me and I'm on this great ride and I love it! It could have been partly the novelty of it, and it’s true, if I did it regularly I'd probably be bored, but at least this once, I truly loved being 'at work', even more than the Big Day Out (annual company team building day).

The day started off at 9am at Avaya. There I had to pick up a bunch of gear with the assistance of the lovely Miss Karen, all of which combined to be worth more than the car I drive! After which point I drove down to Randwick. By sheer coincidence, the lane cove tunnel was open and free and this sped up the visit dramatically. Of course being me, I managed to screw up the turn offs at least twice during the day (note to self, stop thinking about DoW whilst driving) which negated any benefits of the tunnel.

We had a fairly large stall which was comfy and allowed us to put plenty of gear down, and also gave us some space for chatting to people. I ran on the laptop a whole bunch of Avaya ads I found on Youtube Sunday night! (Darn you Jess for ringing me at 8:30) (Kinda funny too btw, you should have a look). However, realistically you wanted to be in the MAIN building. That place was SOOOO packed with people and the atmosphere was fantastic. Well for extrovert like me it was anyway. I suspect others might have been overwhelmed at the crush, the noise and the horde of orks/university students. That said, we had many people visit the Avaya stall and we got a chance to give them on the speel. I met people from India, Brazil, British Columbia, SE Asia (a ridiculous number from there) and yes, would you believe it, even an white Australian or two. Honestly there were SOOO few white people that I felt like putting up a sign that said 'Equal Opportunity Employer. We hire whites too!'. I was surprised to find people who knew what we did, happy when they had the skills we needed, and overjoyed when they actually were interested in joining AND had the right skill set. After all, that’s what we're here for right?

I realized that the people who wrote 'Peopleware' are spot on. Everyone LOVES a little bit of chaos in their lives. It gives us purpose by stamping it out and replacing it with order. Constructively putting a little bit of chaos here is a great way of making life enjoyable again (well only if the chaos not your FAULT, which just sucks). When we first got there and set our booth up, I noticed our stall was a bit bare compared to others. So I rang Kylie, who passed me onto Fiona in Marketing and I did a wild dash back to the office to grab things to make our stall look professional. I know Jess was apologetic for not having grabbed those posters from Fiona and making me have to drive all the way back, but I need to thank her for an opportunity to meet someone new in Lvl2, a chance to visit Kylie for the day (^_^) and a chance to stamp out chaos FOR THE EMPEROR!.

As always, being the enterprising fellow that I am, I took the opportunity to get as much free stuff during the day as I could. Oracle backpacks, E&Y pens, Thale balls, ABS yoyo's you name it. More importantly, I got to chat to a lot of industry people. I think I've matured a tiny bit when I could at least partially filter the BS artists from those who were giving me the real deal (the real deal people provide examples, don't use as many clichés like 'there’s always opportunities to move up the ladder' etc). I even chatted to the CISCO guys, who were a really friendly lot (for being the enemy…). There was a heap of companies I chatted to actually; CISCO, Hayes, Thale, Credit Suisse, Oracle, E&Y, ABS and the list goes on. I loved the ones where the staff were technies, on the floor staff etc, not just the PR guys as they don't come across as fake as the rest. After all that, I reckon I'm taking a pretty good deal at work, but there are probably better opportunities out there for growth. I'll just see how things go, and hopefully things will get more interesting. I'm sure our wise management team will realise you need to care for your younger employees else they WILL desert you in a heartbeat. The new generation is not as tied down as the old and is likely to move around to whatever works for them.

I digress, so enough of that. The other major thing was... I got to chat up lots of pretty ladies. Thank God! Do you know how rare that is for me working in the IT industry? A lot of them were grads like myself so we had plenty in common and they were all friendly. Being both professionals working for their firms, we could chat normally instead of the usual CRAP that you go through when you meet someone new in a bar. I still don't know the trick is for asking someone their number, as there quite a few who I had great conversations with and who I effectively did the 'nice meeting you' and left. Karen B had this huge grin on her face each time I came back from these 'mini-excursions', but was polite enough to not say anything. Hey it’s not being unproductive, its about making new contacts and learning public relation skills and improving employee morale! *cough*.

All in all, I can't wait for next years!

Workaholism.

My name is James and I'm a workaholic.
I've been sober (not doing work) for 2hrs whilst I've been doing DoW.

There used to be a point where I used to be proud to say I was a workaholic. A few extra hours won't hurt, hell I'm sure it'll result in possible benefits in the future. But you know when that what was originally a fling with the dark side has turned to something worse. This is when you start lying to people about how much extra work you're doing, and when something that just was an hour or two on the weekend becomes effectively an 80 hr work week.
You start cutting yourself off from things you used to enjoy on the excuse, 'you're no good at it anyway, why waste valuable effort on it'. Important things like trying to find love gets shelved because "you're too busy to have time for a girlfriend and besides you trying will just result in embarrassment". Stupid little excuses for the real truth which is you simply value work over everything else. After all, you work harder, you get rewarded. You try to find a date and its just rejection one after the other.

Then eventually this tower comes crashing down when you realise, that when it comes down to it. Work does NOT value you as much as you value it. And that's also when you realise that you've lost time on something that actually has no value, and you'll never EVER get it back.
//falls sobbing into the arms of the fat female moderator.
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Wow I'm particularly proud of that. I could even believe that was me.
You don't have to look very deep to realise, there is grains of truth, hell entire cereal packets of truth in what I just said and what is my life.

Workaholism is an illness. Its just that simple. People make excuses about pushing your career, but really its a form of OCD. The sad thing is, that person at least in the short term IS more productive and supervisors, management will encourage and potentially reward such behaviour. Management is often myopic and won't realise this behaviour will backfire. And backfire it will. Maybe it'll be a year, maybe it'll be five years, but one day the employee will get the sickening realization that, "I've been wasting my life".

Worse yet, of all the addictions in the world, Workaholism is a socially 'respected' addiction. Hell there have been studies touting that there are 'positive forms' of workaholism. Behaviouralists say 'if people are working hard at what they enjoy, it can't be bad for them'. People think highly of someone who puts in the hard yards at their employment. But really, how is it any different to the other great 'holism', alcoholism. Both are really forms of escapism right? The employee is good at work, and maybe not so good as a father, or husband. So you do what you do best instead. Proven surveys show correlation between martial breakdown, dysfunctional parental relationships, and health deterioration. From a corporate view, it leads to this burst of productivity early on, which is more than completely negated by increased sick days, reduced motivation and turnover.

Yet WHY is it companies don't do anything about this? I know no one ever monitors how much EXCESS work I do or anyone else for that matter. Sure if I slack off for a little while I might get someone commenting, but other than my work friends, not a single manager has ever told that I should perhaps cut back. My mate at the ARL works till 3am to get things right. Do you think any of his bosses say to cut back? Nope, its at best 'thanks for your hard work', or more likely 'we've still got all these fires to put out'

Its a no-brainer to say work more, but it takes courage and insight into really understanding your employees to say 'Hey James, your task today is to go ask that nice receptionist out to a movie and dinner and give a report in the morning'.

If only the workplace was THAT straightforward.