Offense, Defense, Whyfense: How We Got To The Defensive Job Search

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Last Column I put out the theory that there’s Offensive and Defensive job searches, and we may want to focus more on “offense” and active career planning and pursuit.  This begs the question – if my theory is correct (let’s assume I am of course) then how did we end up in a state where there was so much defensive job searching – or when it became such a bad idea.

First I think that people have often played defensive with their jobs because that’s where the money is.  There’s an inherently conservative approach to where the cash-flow is.

Secondly, I think for years (but not the last 20 or so) that people often didn’t worry career-wise as much as they do now.  Paths were more defined.  Companies had promotion systems.  The economy hadn’t been ruined by morons.

Third, though I feel that people got more “careerist” 20-30 years ago, more aggressive (coinciding non-coincidentally with globalization, the tech booms, and ideas about economic ownership), this didn’t last a long time.  I think people need to be more “On Offense” in careers, but the idea we’re all Internet-dot-bomb era super-go-getters who lapsed is terribly wrong.

Fourth, then we had repeated economic meltdowns all engineered by various “go-getters” who were unethical, greedy, and ignorant.  Also, probably ugly.  Anyway, you then had people playing Defense on careers because we kept having dot-bomb meltdowns, economic collapses, and of course finally the big ol’ financial meltdown.

Of course people play Defense a lot – they always have, they didn’t have to in a lot of cases, and any era of super-careerist go-getterism was short and got wiped out by the big economy-go-booms of the last decade or so.

So now we’ve got to play more Offense and I don’t think the “cultural infrastructure” is really there for it.  But it’s time – we don’t have much choice, and I think more active engagement may let us solve the problems.

Kind of makes me wonder if we’d had more people on Career Offensive if they’d have stopped some of these problems – and how many aggressive people actually helped cause them . . .

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

The Truth Of Meetings

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Meetings seem to be the bane of most businesses.  And employees.  And people.  I judge this by what people tell me, and by my own experiences of slowly fading out as I sat through a meeting that had no reason to be.

Of course meetings are necessary.  I find them useful to resolve conflicts or sign off on agreed-on things, but why do people schedule so many meetings?

I find meetings are usually held when other things don’t work.  Meetings are treated as the duct tape of management.  The greatest reason for these meetings is to tell people stuff, so meetings are often done because statuses and status reports aren’t clear or communicated.

Of course sometimes you don’t even need the status reports, but people make them anyway.  Long, pointless, complex, unneeded, too short – we’ve all seen bad status reports.

Of course status reports are needed when simple communication isn’t enough.  Sometimes that’s the truth – and sometimes people just communicate poorly.

So really – too many meetings are often due to people just not talking to each other.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

So What’s Next For Apple?

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We here at the fan-to-pro group have a mailing list we discuss things on, including tweets, news, etc.  This came partially from my discussion on what’s next for Apple.

And namely, I’m not entirely sure – because it’s hard to know where anything goes next.

Look, Apple was successful.  They defined markets and products.  They defined designs.  They’re being imitated.  They’ve done well – but as we all know, there’s always the question of “what’s next” which is kind of hard when you’ve come as far as they have.

Except I think the question applies to a lot of technology companies.

Where does anyone go from here?

  • The norm is portable phones that are small computers.
  • The norm is tablets that are flat slates of computing power.
  • The norm is slick and powerful laptops.
  • The norm is portable music, portable books, portable video – portable everything.

So we’ve all got a lot of powerful stuff that does all sorts of things out of SF films and technophilic fantasies.  Hell, I’ll say we’re further along technically than I’d ever dreamed 10 years ago.  The problem is I’m not sure what’s next for any company.

Television?  Gaming consoles?  Being subsumed into other devices.  Social media is established.  Until we start implanting things it seems we’ve hit a great pinnacle of This Stuff Is Awesome.

So what’s next for Apple?  Hell, what’s next for any technology company?

For those of us who can figure it out it’s a fantastic career advantage, or a chance to even found a business.  It’s just we won’t always know when we’re right until it’s too late . . .

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.