Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Defusing hopes of a second career

I can’t help but smirk when I hear glorious stories about IT professionals who quit the industry to “reinvent themselves” and become oddballs. You know what I’m talking about, deviants who become restaurant owners, landscaping designers and other bogus choices that make me raise an eyebrow. How many times did I secretly listen to a conversation where a DBA rants about his job and say something like “I’ll sell my clunker and start a burger joint, I mean could it be worse than this fucking project?”

People somewhat believe that it exists a more golden opportunity than IT, a secret place where happiness exists and where people can become better persons by doing what they really love.

Get out of town.

Working for a company, well not any company of course, but working for CGI is the pinnacle of any serious career. Here you will share our dream, help us on our mission to profitable growth and you’ll get plenty of training so that we can drop you on a lucrative gig for a fat client. Even your folks will be proud of you, because our company name is the newspaper. You can’t seriously hope for a better life than that, and if you do you’ll get njoyned.

It’s like people who quit their IT career to become “life coaches”, this is so freaking ridiculous that it has become a running gag in HR circles. When you check into LinkedIn and scan for those pets, you realize that their career has been so dysfunctional that these people must have a truckload of unresolved “personal issues”. Women especially. Probably divorced, unable to put a cap on their emotions, their new car is scratched bumper to bumper, they lose their ATM card 8 times a year, yet they advise you on how to run a perfect life.

Do you really think running a greasy spoon or giving advices on “life” to other wackos will be a satisfying career on the long run? Sure, flipping burgers sounds more fun than configuring a Windows server or checking firewall rules in a beige cubicle, but after a few hundred thousand patties reality will knock on your door. Happiness is not about being on your own or calling the shots, it is not about human contact, and it is definitely not about money. Whatever you’re doing today won’t make a dent in human civilization, hell nobody will remember you 150 years from now not even the taxman.

So why not be part of a larger group that will give your life structure and meaning? Your identity will be defined by our policies and processes, so you have nothing to worry about. It takes maturity and wisdom to become a company man. Join us today, and send me your resume.

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