06-10-2016, 01:54 AM
The rules changed, and I lacked suitable advice and direction.
I might have been wiser to take a chance on starting a business -- but what business? -- than trusting bureaucratic organizations in which glass ceilings were forming. I might have been wiser to have sought a skilled trade instead of a college degree, or taking a chance in one of the go-go high-tech firms in the San Francisco Bay Area. People who bought a little stock at Hewlett-Packard as a near start-up while employees therein often got spectacularly rich on share appreciation alone. But college seemed like such a good idea. It always had been. It was fun and stimulating.
The climate of American Big Business changed, and the MBA culture (the first duty of a leader is to himself!) took over.
With poor balance and hand speed, I would have never fared well in a machine-paced job of any kind. But those ended up going to Mexico and China. Academia? I found a bit late that K-12 education wasn't so poor a career choice as all the experts said that it was. Of course going for a grad degree would have had me competing for such few openings as the over-educated draft-dodgers of the Vietnam era left open.
...I now realize too late that whatever one does, true excellence in anything in which mediocrity is neither tolerated nor rewarded takes about 10,000 hours of preparation for someone with above-average raw talent. That is how it goes for actors, performers, athletes, writers, artists, professionals, and skilled tradespeople. Something that one can earn in a short time typically rewards one with mediocre or worse compensation. I needed a focus, and I was around people who had no clue that I needed such a focus to get anything out of life.
Be a good, loyal employee with potential? That used to be good enough/ It is no longer adequate. The rigid class structure has solidified in American bureaucracies.
I might have been wiser to take a chance on starting a business -- but what business? -- than trusting bureaucratic organizations in which glass ceilings were forming. I might have been wiser to have sought a skilled trade instead of a college degree, or taking a chance in one of the go-go high-tech firms in the San Francisco Bay Area. People who bought a little stock at Hewlett-Packard as a near start-up while employees therein often got spectacularly rich on share appreciation alone. But college seemed like such a good idea. It always had been. It was fun and stimulating.
The climate of American Big Business changed, and the MBA culture (the first duty of a leader is to himself!) took over.
With poor balance and hand speed, I would have never fared well in a machine-paced job of any kind. But those ended up going to Mexico and China. Academia? I found a bit late that K-12 education wasn't so poor a career choice as all the experts said that it was. Of course going for a grad degree would have had me competing for such few openings as the over-educated draft-dodgers of the Vietnam era left open.
...I now realize too late that whatever one does, true excellence in anything in which mediocrity is neither tolerated nor rewarded takes about 10,000 hours of preparation for someone with above-average raw talent. That is how it goes for actors, performers, athletes, writers, artists, professionals, and skilled tradespeople. Something that one can earn in a short time typically rewards one with mediocre or worse compensation. I needed a focus, and I was around people who had no clue that I needed such a focus to get anything out of life.
Be a good, loyal employee with potential? That used to be good enough/ It is no longer adequate. The rigid class structure has solidified in American bureaucracies.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.