I had lunch with someone from work last week and we started talking about job security. She’s 28, been here for about 2 and a half years, and two other places before that. She left the other jobs when she got bored, and no longer felt challenged. That is perfectly reasonable, and the same thing I would do. But then somehow we started talking about whether we felt secure in our current job or not. My immediate answer was “of course not, job security is a myth, it doesn’t exist anymore.” Her answer was almost the exact opposite, she felt very secure in her current job.
How someone today working in a corporation can honestly say they have no concerns about job security is a fascinating concept to me. Her jobs had always been in smaller companies, and our current company employs about 300 people, a far cry from the 10,000+ at my last job. Maybe that’s where the difference comes from. I spent the first year and a half of my job under the illusion that if I worked really hard, showed what I could do, and excelled across the board that I would be rewarded. So that’s what I did, sometimes I worked incredibly long hours, I finished projects ahead of schedule with more features than requested, and provided the absolute best service I possibly could. I was even “rewarded” with more money and a slightly higher position.
Here’s where the problems start. I was also “rewarded” with two new bosses that didn’t understand my previous contributions, as well as just more work. It was not even more challenging work, it was just more of the same that I had already done. Despite my new boss saying many times that he was “looking out for me” and wanted to help me “get ahead and promoted,” it never happened. In fact, one time when I was offered a position by another manager, a position far better and with more responsibility than the one I had at the time, my boss fought to not let me go. So much for wanting to help me.
After that I knew I couldn’t work for him anymore, although to be honest, I had never actually searched for a job and didn’t know where to start. I ended up staying in the same company (same floor even) because some work I’d done caught the eye of another manager who I’d gotten to know. After the ensuing awkwardness from my moving positions, I began to get a much clearer look of the corporate world through the eyes of my new boss, and it wasn’t pretty.
I won’t go into too much detail here, but here’s the overview that I experienced. When I went to work for him I was promised a certain raise and title. However, when it actually happened, Human Resources (who, regardless of what you think, do what’s best for the corporation, not the employee), decided that I couldn’t get that raise or title. What was their reason? I already worked there. That’s it, that was the reason, I already worked there. Had they hired someone from outside to come in and fill the position they would have had to pay at least $10k more than what my raise was supposed to bring me to. But because I already worked there it was deemed as “too big a jump in pay and responsibility.”
What. A. Joke.
I stuck it out with the raise they gave me until they re-organized and moved my manager somewhere else, and stuck me under someone who had NO clue what I did, and didn’t speak to me for 5 months. It was at that point that I left to come work where I am now.
Where I am now is far smaller, and does a pretty good job at expressing that they actually care about the individual employee, and that we’re not “just a number.” Well I’ve got bad news, yes, we are just a number. It’s all an illusion and when the time comes to ask for more money, a title increase, or if we have efficiency gains that allow us to do the same work with fewer people, it will come down to the numbers. If two can do the same amount of work as three, the third goes. You think just because we’re still privately held that the owner really cares about all of us?
How many times do we have to see articles in the paper about layoffs before we get it? They’ve started laying people off just because they make a lot of money. If you pay someone $80,000 and they’ve been there 10 years, but someone who’s there a year and gets $40,000 can do the same job, what do you think happens? The $80k person goes, they hire someone new.
The only way to have job security anymore is to be your own boss. To have your own business/service that you make the decisions about, you decide whether you win or lose, and you decide your future. There are a million different ways that people could start their own business, but most people never will. I can only hope that you will realize someday that you are the only person that can change your future, and you go out and do it.
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