Happy New Year to all, and to all I wish tidings of a good year in your occupation and the other, more important, parts of your life!

alt text: Happy New Year, 2019

Once again we have started a new year. 2018 is now officially 100% history, and what a year it was. The good, and bad, can be looked on as nostalgic, or if appropriate - painful, reminders of our life. Such memories are worth preserving, if for no other reason than to compare to the new year to show how much progress (or congress)* we have made in the new year compared to last year.

* - Yes, I know the opposite of progress in this context is regress, not congress; but I find that old joke just far too appropriate.

For myself, the first thing I want to remember of 2018 is that I started this site. There are other things, but since I am writing here, it is the most obvious thing to mark and the first item to remember. Odd thing about this blog - as a new blogger I am finding it difficult to categorize where I want to place my posts. Do I want them in the blog feed or the project feed? I can’t do both with my current theme, so do I want to change themes, or choose my placement? Ultimately, I think I am always going to be trading one problem for another, but for now, I am placing this particular post in the blog-roll so it has a greater chance of distribution. Eventually I might migrate it to the Living Life section, but for now, this is where I placed it :).

For better or worse, 2018 was a year where there was no deaths or serious injuries in the extended family, but many health issues have arisen or become far more severe, several of which are permanent. Such contemplation begs the question which is worse, deteriorating life quality, or end of life? The obvious answer, like with so many things, is it depends (though I generally am staunchly on the side of end of life being really bad, overall). How much and in what way did the quality deteriorate? What are you no longer capable of doing? Certainly it changes your life, but is the change bad, or just different? There are so many variables, and so many different ways to look at it, that you just need to be reminded to actually look at these changes and see if you can figure it out.

Within the nuclear family, life has remained largely status quo. I really have nothing bad to say here (thankfully!). Life is just proceeding though one of the less eventful periods of life - the bedrock “boredom” that we cling to as “normal”. It is these times we often think of nostalgically as “the good times” even though we are bored in the moment, and yet it is strictly due to this lack of excitement and drama, that we actually enjoy them. We did, of course do things to remember. For example, I took that family and my niece up to see Niagara Falls - it was the first time for the kids, and the first time I got to see the U. S. side of the Falls. Every other time I was there, it was from the Canadian side. There is a Chinese curse that is something like: “May you live in exciting times”. Fortunately for us, these fun and memorable events, were not enough to constitute “an exciting period of our lives”.

As I grow older, and hopefully at least marginally wiser, I am trying to focus less on my occupation and more on my work. However, at this time in my life, they are largely the same thing, and I do enjoy it; so having them as both work and occupation, taking up at least 1/4-1/3 of my life (and over 1/2 of my conscious life) means that I would be remiss to not include some bit of those details here.

2018 marked a change in my occupational life. Up until this time, I had never worked contract work. I have worked direct hire for more than a couple companies, usually for several years before moving on - typically at their whim, not mine. In 2018 I was let go from a consulting position that was promised for at least a year, and after 3 months (their original timeframe, and why I think their promise was a flat out lie), they let me go. Since then, I have been contract to hire at several jobs. It is an education in employment, for sure. It is through this that I learned there is no such thing as company paid - they lower your pay to offset whatever they are paying for. It is your job to determine the total cost and ask for that, regardless of how your compensation comes in - being as a paycheck or a benefit. It is all up to you. I also learned, there is precious little out there to judge the actual value of those benefits - even the tangible ones. Looking forward, this sounds like another blog post waiting to be written.

Another aspect this change in career planning taught me is to evaluate employers very critically. From the initial interview, hiring managers are evaluating you to determine how much value they can extract from you for the company. Don’t begrudge them, that is their job. Your job should be similar, constantly evaluating how much you can extract from the company. In an ideal situation you gain everything you are looking for, skills, challenging assignments, good leadership, fair compensation, and flexible time; while they gain market share and profit that is directly attributable to your work. I have lived all of this at different times in the past, and it is difficult to find the perfect blend that is an equal balance - that is one reason why employees leave for other employment. Unfortunately I, like many others, never learned this in school and it took me over 20 years of employment to learn this is my role in the interview and employment process.

A final aspect I learned is that there are many employers out there looking for all kinds of skills at all kinds of levels. Almost all are just shopping for talent the same way they shop for pencils. They are looking for the best value they can get. They will ALWAYS low-ball you on pay, and always ask for more skills and capabilities than they actually need. They will try to work you beyond what you are required to do, especially by contract, enticing you with all sorts of incentives. However, they rarely are willing to pay what you are worth or for what you provide, unless/until you force the issue by keeping to your boundaries. It is a completely different way to think of yourself, and as you gain experience, you will see, and feel that it comes more naturally. Employers don’t like it because it drives up costs, but it is what it takes to get ahead. I have been able to negotiate ~$25,000/year raise over 2018 due to this change in thinking and willingness to charge what I am really worth. (At first, I actually doubled my salary, but that was a short term contract. Since then, as I learned the true value of my skill-set, I found it averaged to be about $25K higher than I was originally being paid.)

Overall, I don’t recommend you being a contractor all the time, or even most of the time, personally. Actually, I don’t recommend any one method of employment over another. I think the best approach is to take all kinds of employment at different times and for different reasons. For me, working contract does take a toll that can not be measured, but certainly can be felt. For others, it represents a type of freedom you can’t find in direct hire situations. I learned a long time ago, I am not a good manager of people. I can lead, but I am not a natural leader, and managing people means a departure from what I am good at. Similarly, self-employment is an option I have not entertained mostly for similar reasons, and since I haven’t been forced to, there is no reason to push in that direction yet. For now, I will remain an employee of other companies, providing my services for fair value, either under contract, or direct hire, as I see fit.