I recently spoke to one of my readers about my time at BAD - I actually spent five years there despite not being particularly happy there. So Choaniki was shocked that I would put up with that, why didn't I just quit and seek greener pastures else where? Why did I put up with an awful situation like that? Well, the short answer is that it was a case of the RBP. Things weren't great but they weren't that bad either - I was good at my job, the money was pretty okay, I had a lot of flexibility as I worked mostly from home. I even liked some of the colleagues I had in my team. I was learning a lot at BAD as well but then the boss at that company simply didn't take me seriously, I was seen as the guy who wanted to be an actor - who would quit the very next day if I were to get a good part in a TV series or movie that would finally launch my showbiz career. Well, that never happened, but it was another case of the RBP. I was still getting a few parts now and then, like I never went 12 months without getting at least a decent role or two that would remind me why I loved acting so much. If I had gone a full 12 months without getting a good part, that would be enough for me to tell myself, "forget this Alex, you suck at acting, forget it and just focus on your career in finance." But no, I was still getting some parts now and then - I was still being flown to do shoots in incredible places like Hungary, Slovakia, Germany and Ukraine. It was a double whammy of the RBP for me - my job at BAD wasn't so terrible that I had to quit and I wasn't exactly a complete failure at acting either, hence the RBP status quo I found myself stuck in. What did happen at BAD though was that the boss there kept hiring more experienced directors for me to work under - I remember questioning some of their judgment and thinking, duh even if you did work at some big bank previously, I can do your job better than you. So what happened was that I was often doing all the heavy lifting at BAD whilst the incompetent directors were taking credit for my hard work. That was something they could get away with as no one took me seriously then, as I was just that crazy actor guy.
So Choaniki asked me why I stayed with BAD for so long, despite the fact that I was clearly not getting a good deal then. He said he was shocked that I would put up with something like that when he thought I wouldn't stand for it. The answer is simple - things weren't bad enough to force me to leave, it was a case of the RBP. The guys at BAD realized how useful I was and how good I was at my job, they would never slay the goose that laid the golden eggs. There were little incentives and treats along the way, such as a cash bonus to reward me for my good work - but nonetheless, I knew I was overworked and underpaid because I was still being paid a lot less than some of the directors I was working under, despite the fact that I was doing a lot more hard work than them. I suppose there was an element of the sunk cost fallacy - I had worked so long and hard to get to where I am as an actor with a half-decent CV of having done good parts over the years. But if I wanted to take finance seriously, I would probably had to give up the acting for good and that was something I wasn't willing to do given that finance is in fact my second choice whilst acting was my first choice. I was afraid that I would never find another employer who would give me the kind of flexibility that I had at BAD to just drop everything and go off on a shoot for a few weeks. So on one hand, yes I got a bad deal at BAD (pun intended) but in my head, I thought that it would all be worth it when I could finally leave finance to focus on my acting - alas, that never happened of course. Hindsight is 2020 of course, but let me be the first to admit that I was guilty of very poor judgment. My only justification is that I had three near misses where I had been considered for lead roles in major productions, only for them to have gone for the other actor in the end. In the cruel world of showbiz, there's no silver medal, either you get the big part or you don't. There's no such thing as, "I'm sorry we chose the other guy for this part, but we have another more minor role that I think you could play as we were impressed with your audition." Unfortunately, that never happens.
So why did I leave BAD? Well it was a dispute over money. Let me summarize what happened in a nutshell, so I worked for BAD as a contractor who was self-employed. Whenever I completed a piece of work, I would invoice them and they would pay me. In this case, BAD had a client (let's call them XYZ, not their real name) who didn't pay BAD for the work that was done - BAD had intended to use that money to pay contractors like me and even if BAD didn't get paid by XYZ, I would have thought that they would be honourable to just pay me out of their own pockets in this situation. But instead, no they didn't and that was the point when I thought, so that is my cue to leave. Until then, things weren't great but they weren't so bad that I would immediately want to find another job. But when they didn't pay that last invoice for the work I had done, that was when I left. In a last ditch effort to salvage the situation, I had here was one of these highly paid directors whom I had done so much work for, I asked him to help resolve the situation but he was clueless - either he couldn't help or he was in no position to get me the money I wanted. All he could do was suggest various people I needed to speak to but it was clear that he really wasn't bothered whether I got paid in the end or not. It was frustrating - I had spent five years there and yet I couldn't find a single person there willing to help me or take my side. This reminds me of a recent interview I saw in the news - as you know, there have been devastating floods in central Italy this month. This farmer said to the reporter, "when the river burst its banks, we waited to see how bad the flood would be. When the water covered the orchard, we didn't think it would go any further. When the water reached the main road, we couldn't decide if we had to evacuate. But when the water entered the front garden, we got very nervous and that was when we realized we couldn't wait till the water started pouring into the house before we thought about evacuating. We knew we had to start packing and get out very quickly. By the next morning, my house was already under a meter of flood water."
So in the Italian farmer's case, he had a clear idea in his head as to how bad things had to get before he would abandon his family home and move to higher ground. By the same token, I did know how bad things had to get at BAD before I was ready to move on. Not being paid for the work I did on the XYZ account was the final straw but just like the Italian farmer, things weren't that bad until that point. It was not like this Italian farmer was living in a house that was flooded on a regular basis, he wasn't trying to make dinner for his family whilst standing in waist deep flood water. I had my problems in BAD but honestly, things simply weren't bad enough to force me to leave. It is necessary to see the shades of grey in this kind of complex situation - so it is never just a case of "this company treats me really well and I'm super happy there" vs "I am being treated so badly at this company and my life is utterly miserable there." There is a sliding scale somewhere between the two extremes: if things being fantastic would be a 10 on this scale and if things being disastrous would be a 0 on this scale, then my time at BAD was probably between a 5 and 7 in that period - there were good days and bad days, but I knew that if things slipped below a 4, then I would leave. Then sure enough, when I didn't get paid for all the work I had done on the XYZ project, I did leave at once. Not getting paid for the work I did probably dragged me from a 5 to a 0 in one day, there was no way I could have stayed on after that. But what I think Choaniki misunderstood was this: he probably thought that I was enduring an environment where every single day for five long years was a 0 out of 10 on that scale when really, that wasn't the case. For five years, I was happy enough to work there and gave that working environment at least a 5 out of 10. Then things changed quite dramatically and the moment it dropped from 5 to 0, I left that very same day without even having had a new job yet. I wouldn't knowingly stay in a company where the conditions were utterly terrible - what they did to me in refusing to pay me for the work I did for XYZ was a shitty thing to do, but I did react to that by leaving, rather than just staying and allowing them to treat me like that.
I'd like to share with you another story, this time from Latin America. My friend Miguel (not his real name) was working in IT and wanted to move into finance, he is from El Salvador, a rather poor central American country and whilst it is not the poorest in the region, there simply aren't that many good opportunities out there. I did manage to get him a job with a fairly big player in the region but it was an entry level position and he was treated very badly in that firm. Yes he managed to get his foot in the door and it was a great chance for him to gain some work experience in the industry, but he was very unhappy there. I got the feeling that even amongst the Latin Americans, there was a pecking order and those from richer countries like Panama, Mexico, Costa Rica and Chile were at the top of that food chain and they would look down on those from the poorer countries like Nicaragua, Honduras, Bolivia and El Salvador. Thus Miguel did experience some of that racism, being a Latino with slightly darker complexion from a poorer country in the region. Nonetheless, he was desperate to tough it out there to gain some valuable work experience before he could get a better job with a rival firm. In the meantime, Miguel did try really hard to find another job but to no avail - so on some days, it was a 3/10 for Miguel and on others, it was 0/10 and I knew how miserable he was as he would come and talk to me. I felt really bad as I was the one who landed him in that position in the first place, but he was determined to make it in the world of finance and was still grateful for the job, no matter how badly treated he was in that company. Even if Miguel had quit out of frustration, I would not blame him nor berate him for that decision. I suppose the difference between my situation at BAD and Miguel's current situation is that I was able to find a new job very quickly after having left BAD whilst Miguel is still very reliant on me and my Latino connections to try to get him his next job interview. I wonder how Choaniki would feel about Miguel's situation - if he would berate Miguel for hanging on despite his work environment being so awfully toxic? Or would he applaud Miguel's determination in the face of adversity? (Update: Miguel now has a job offer from a Mexican company.)
It is clear that the RBP would apply differently to different people - Miguel is clearly willing and able to put up with a lot more crap that I was, after all, I did quit BAD at once when things went wrong. In fact I look at some of the awful working conditions that my two sisters have put up with in Singapore over the years and it is clear that their willingness to tolerate crap is on another level compared to mine. I would like to introduce another case study to talk about the RBP in a different context: Sarah and her husband Dan (not their real names) had been married for quite a few years but after they had their baby, they began to drift apart. Sarah really took to her new role and embraced motherhood whilst Dan struggled with the challenges of taking care of a young baby. Sarah felt a natural bond with her baby whilst Dan just didn't know what to do with a baby that seemed to be always crying. Eventually, Dan and Sarah grew apart as Sarah dedicated all her energies and effort to being a good mother whilst she berated Dan for not pulling his weight; Dan on the other hand started working longer and longer hours just to avoid coming home to the crying baby and Sarah screaming at angrily him, "where the hell have you been tonight?" Their relationship deteriorated but Sarah didn't want to divorce Dan and become a single mother - she also wanted the baby to have the chance to grow up in a family with a mother and a father. Sarah thought, okay Dan is struggling with a baby, that's a really difficult challenge for anyone but perhaps when the child is older, he can form a different kind of bond with the child then. So Sarah just hung on, in the hopes that things would get better, even though she knew that Dan went out to the bars, drinking with his younger colleagues instead of coming home to help her with the baby. She was definitely stuck in the RBP, when things were bad but not bad enough to force her to leave Dan. The final straw came when a friend spotted Dan kissing a young woman at a bar, that was when she knew they had reached the point of no return and they just had to get divorced. There was no going back.
Thus in the case of Sarah, it was a case of the RBP. She was always telling herself, okay things are bad, things are difficult but they're not so bad that I have to leave Dan. She had genuinely believed that this was a temporary phrase and all they had to do was get through the first six months of the baby's life and things would improve dramatically. Babies do cry a lot during the first six months: whether the baby is thirsty, hungry, tired, uncomfortable or in pain, well the only way babies can express themselves is by crying. But after that, the situation improves a lot as the baby learns other ways to communicate - sure that can lead to other kinds of tension in the parent child relationship when children argue with their parents or disobey their parents but there's nothing quite like a baby crying at 3:30 am when you have to get up in a few hours for work. This is why it is a ridiculously stressful situation - Sarah was able to take maternity leave immediately after giving birth but Dan couldn't do the same, he had to keep on working to support his family. That's why the first six months of a baby's life is the most difficult and stressful for young parents, thus Sarah wasn't being totally unrealistic when she hoped that the situation would improve in due course once the baby was a bit older. In any case, whilst Sarah knew that Dan was struggling to cope with the challenges of fatherhood, she had no idea that he was the kind of man who would cheat on her - that shocked her as it was unexpected. But nonetheless, Sarah was better off once she divorced Dan as the RBP was going to trap her in a situation which would have not given her any happiness at all. However, would I berate Sarah for having tried to fix her marriage or to hold on to the hope that things would improve over time? Would you be harsh and say that she really should have walked out on Dan a lot earlier, having seen the pattern of his behaviour when the baby had arrived? Or would it have been entirely reasonable of her to have hung on in there for that long, trying to save her marriage for the sake of her baby? At what point should the RBP kick in for Sarah?
Let's look at another case study - Melanie is a young lady who found first job after graduation very quickly. She didn't quite know what she wanted to do so her daddy made a few calls at got her a place on a graduate recruitment programme at a big bank. However, she quit her job after just a week after she made a really dreadful mistake - Melanie was tasked with preparing a list of items for a client prior to a meeting, the items were pretty straight forward like, "go to the accounts department upstairs, ask Julia to give you the reports for this client's account for 2021 and 2021. There will be six people from the client's company visiting for this meeting, so make sure you have six copies of those reports. When the guests arrive, check if they have any special dietary needs before arranging for lunch for everyone at the meeting." It was nothing that complex but Melanie was far more interested in watching the latest videos on TikTok than following those instructions, so half of the tasks on that list weren't done. When she was berated for her mistake, she resigned on the spot because she claimed that she was being made to do demeaning and menial tasks like photocopying and she was destined for greater things. Her line manager said, "you're just a fresh graduate who knows nothing about what we do here, did you really think we were going to put you in any kind of position of responsibility in your first week here?" Melanie explained to her father that she was treated so badly in the bank that she was forced to quit, but this was the RBP - things got so bad for her that she was forced to seek a better job. But the way I saw it, Melanie was a lazy spoilt brat from a rich family who has never ever taken any responsibility in her life and so she struggled to function in the office environment even though she had been given simple tasks to do there. So compared to Sarah, you could say Melanie was unrealistic about how much she was willing to "put up with" at work and conversely, you could also say Sarah had put up with way too much, by turning a blind eye to her husband's irresponsible behaviour.
Ultimately, to understand how the RBP works in real life, we need to acknowledge the shades of grey that exists in the real world. Remember that sliding scale I used earlier where 10/10 is when everything is perfect and 0/10 is the most unbearable situation, most of us are somewhere in between the two extremes. It was about 5/10 when I was at BAD, I'm now probably around a 7.5 or 8 at the moment as I am in a period of transition. I have set up my own company and am self-employed now, I currently have two big clients where I get 95% of my work from and so far, that's going alright but there is a very steep learning curve in both cases and I'd like to become a lot more confident in my roles with these two companies. I don't pretend for a moment that I am this genius who has figured it all out - quite the opposite! I am very honest when I do make silly mistakes and I often share the lessons I have learned from those mistakes on my blog. But I think Choaniki made a fundamental error in thinking that either Alex must be this triple-scholar super genius who has never ever made a single mistake in his life before or he is this hideously stupid idiot who was dumb enough to allow himself to be treated like shit for five years in a terrible company. The truth is, I'm somewhere between the two extremes - I am just human, I am a normal person just trying his best. I'm not a genius, but at the same time, I'm not stupid either. And most importantly, when I started out at BAD, things were pretty good actually, the same way Sarah and Dan were very much in love and happy together when they first got married. She would have never married him if he had been a vile fiend from the start and I would have never worked for more than a few days at BAD if things were awful from the start. Sarah's marriage deteriorated over time, the same way things got a lot worse over time at BAD - those are the dynamics that defined the changing circumstances that ultimately pushed Sarah and I to make that decision to leave and I don't think Choaniki actually took into account how that change is circumstances played a major factor in our decisions.
So that's it from me on this topic, what do you think? Is this a concept that you are familiar with? Have you encountered the RBP before, be it personally or have you observed it amongst your friends? Do you know anyone similar to Miguel, Sarah or Melanie in your life? What do you think about Sarah's decision to hold on for so long before leaving Dan? Would you say that she was a doormat with low self-esteem for allowing Dan to get away with so much for so long or would you regard her as someone who is quite noble in putting the needs of her baby before her own in trying to save her marriage? Just how bad do things have to get for you before you decide to leave a relationship or a job? But if we set the threshold way too low, do we risk becoming Melanie then? Please leave a comment below, many thanks for reading.
I can't criticise too much since I was stuck at a JP MNC called Greedy (not actual name) for almost 10 years because i wasn't treated too badly and I had lots of learning opportunity. But I was paid very little (1st increment was $50) and staying there so long I stagnated and couldn't move to another company. Which was why I had to leave the IT industry in order to progress in my career.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately when I completed school and entered my new workplace, NUT hospital (fictional name), I was exploited by being made to work way past my official contracted working hours without compensation (I was essentially paid gratitude$ which is not accepted by any company). This was ultimately what pushed me to leave the hospital and subsequently when I found out that the entire healthcare industry was built on exploitation, I reached out to @LIFT and left the industry entirely.
But I realise that @LIFT is also practising reflection, as mentioned by Ray Dalio, by writing down his problems encountered and analysing it on this blog. You can watch a Youtube summary of Ray Dalio's Principles here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9XGUpQZY38
As for Miguel, I am happy he got a better job offer. I won't judge him for staying so long as there are probably difficulties he faced in finding another job (for example I had become too comfortable at Greedy and had very little transferrable skills).
In the case of Melanie, I have no advice for her. I would let Simon Sinek do the talking for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXWrjeovEQs
Again I want to state, for the record, I am not an expert and have made many mistakes including chasing industry trends (IT, healthcare). But I am wiser now having learnt from my mistakes, also never to trust anyone especially Singaporean politicians. Read about my career story here: https://lnkd.in/gnA89Vvn
Well interestingly enough, I have another friend let's call him RV. He was in business with this guy called JK for a long time and because JK had put a lot of his own money into the business as seed capital (RV just brought his brains to the table as opposed to money), he had always been in a junior position in that relationship with JK calling all the shots. Recently JK threw a big tantrum with a major client and the client is now going to do something with RV without JK (I helped orchestrate all that to get RV out of that toxic relationship). JK had always been abusive and had a terrible temper to the point where RV help incredibly frustrated at the way things were going - but I had to tell RV that JK losing his temper with the client may seem like a bad thing in isolation, but because of the region beta paradox, it's the best thing that could've happened because it forced RV to make a clean break and walk away from JK. If not for what happened, who knows how long more RV would've stuck with JK in that business relationship? It was the equivalent of Sarah catching Dan cheating on her.
DeleteAs for Miguel, good for him and I hope it all works out with this new job. And Melanie's dad will find her something else, she has nothing to worry about and such is the world of the rich. Or she can just marry a rich man - after all, Melanie's mother is a housewife who doesn't need to work.
DeleteOk I am going to be making a very sexist remark and I know it will sound like I am sexist but I am just a realist.
DeleteI am of the opinion that females just have to be born pretty and they have won the game of life.
With their looks they could either be on OF, an influencer, or hook a rich man and be a tai tai. Not that there is anything stopping a male from doing the same thing but the barrier of entry is so much lower for females.
Well, ref: Melanie's mother. I rest my case. On my husband's side of the family, there's someone who is just like Melanie's mother. A complete air head who is quite content being a housewife and mother - but her husband is earning very good money and so she has a comfortable life.
DeleteSo you just proved my point.
DeleteWell I honestly don't see what the husband sees in her - he married an air head housewife, what kind of conversation is he going to ever have with someone like her? I actually talked about finance with him and he's quite intelligent, I would have assumed that he would have liked to have that kind of quality conversation with his wife since he actually lives with her but I guess not?
DeleteMight I offer an alternative opinion? There are also airhead "househusbands", they are just disguised by being given a "do nothing" job by either their wife or their wife's family. I know an asshole with abs who married one of my old money friends in undergrad. She can't stand him, but she still finds him hot. However, that old money friend tried to cheat on her boyfriend with one of my childhood friends who is very smart, handsome, and charming while she was on vacation. That childhood friend told me about it afterward, about how she didn't hide the fact she had a boyfriend at all while flirting with him. Anyway, many wealthy people marry one kind of person and cheat to obtain something they don't have at home. It's greed, plain and simple. But when you have that much money there aren't much consequences. My old money friend's boyfriend/husband knows he just has to put up with any bullshit because she is his meal ticket. He is not interested in working for a living, but then again he's a very transactional person who didn't enter this relationship for love anyway.
DeleteHey Alex. I think fear of the unknown is why RBP happens so often. Even if things are shitty, people lack the imagination to think there is something better until things get so bad it forces them to. There's also the inconvenience of managing the transition. I think it's great you took initiative to become a contractor when you were unhappy being a full-time employee having to turn down opportunities, even if you're still adjusting to it now. I've had RBP so many times in my life it's too hard to count, but from now on I tell myself "make active moves, not reactive ones." This is an open secret now(the whole department knows), but my boss was put under investigation for being abusive, and all his employees were taken over by the university, so he's likely to be fired soon. The school even told me he shouldn't have made me give up that quant internship in London. I was sad I had to leave my PhD program with only a masters, but I now have secured an A.I job that pays 4x what I previously made, and I also secured another side job working with my best friend for her dad writing A.I software for his factory(yeah this is sorta giving Melanie vibes). It made me think, I should've left way earlier, but not wanting to give up my PhD was what made me stay for so long. Only when an investigation started did I realize things are really bad.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, working as a contractor where your pay is 100% performance based and based entirely on your ideas is a lot riskier than being paid for your skills as an employee and being told what to do by a boss. I won't be paid if I don't make my best friend's dad more profits. However, I don't think people should have the attitude of trying to get away with "not thinking" as much as possible while also being paid, because these jobs are the first target for layoffs. That's what working class jobs are like, and they don't pay great. The richest people aren't paid like that, CEOs tend to have their compensation tied to stock prices to incentivize performance.
Hi Amanda, you're right. I think we're quite happy to put up with some shitty situations because of the fear of the unknown - take Sarah's case for example, she was willing to put up with Dan not pulling his weight when it came to taking care of the baby. That's a bad situation but being a single/divorced mother taking care of the baby on her own was a big unknown she was scared of and quite naturally so. So she was stuck in the RBP, things had to get really bad for her before she was forced to boldly make the choice to leave her husband. I think we've all been in RBP ourselves and in your case, oh yeah, there's no judgment - you had already invested so much time and effort into your PhD, there was too much sunk cost for you to easily walk away thus the RBP kicked in hard.
DeleteI also think in addition to fear of the unknown, there's also fear of "being a failure." In Miguel's case, if he quits because he's miserable, some assholes might say he "didn't make the cut for finance." If Sarah got divorced 3 months after her baby was born, she could be seen as a "finicky partner who failed to make things work." In my case, a recruiter told me Goldman Sachs thinks I'm the masters student who was too stupid to finish a PhD, even though my university insists that my boss was the professor who was too incompetent to pay for equipment or mentor students to succeed. Sometimes things aren't our fault, but society doesn't allow room for that. There's a limit to personal responsibility I suppose. However in all these cases, it's Melanie that has it easiest to make a transition, because she has backup funds to live on while she finds an alternative. Losing a partner or a job is devastating in the short term for normal people.
Delete@Amanda, I was actually sharing my story about how I left healthcare due to having a low pay and 0 progression, on top of being exploited by being forced to work free overtime.
DeleteYou can't imagine the amount of salty haters who said I was effectively lousy at my job, not passionate, no heart, etc, exactly how you would describe Miguel's situtation. The common theme for these haters were they 1) Never worked in healthcare a day in their lives 2) Aged 45s and above (boomer). Imagine them asking me if I was a nurse or Dr, which pretty much exposes the depths of their ignorance.
I have a grand total of one person who was currently working in a healthcare position actually ask me for guidance on how to transition to finance because he faced the same problem (low pay, no progression but due to the slow hierachical nature of healthcare that is how it is).
Well in the case of Miguel, he is living at home with his mother (his father has passed away) so he's got a point to prove - he wants to make money so he can take good care of his mother. His mother was very cynical about him being able to transition to finance and I feel bad for him; I never knew what my parents thought about me working in finance as we never talked about it. I think it's pointless seeking their opinion in any case. But geez, Miguel's mum is cynical and the only way to shut her up is if he can make a ton of money - talk about being under pressure to succeed. Good luck to him.
DeleteIf Miguel's mom was cynical my dad went straight up psycho. He called me stupid (and various other unmentionable) for giving up my stable 4k/mth job at a major university. I told him pointblank that I didn't need career advice from a deadbeat retiree who has probably never attended a proper job interview in over 40 years.
DeleteAs for point to prove I have none, my dad would never admit he is wrong in a million years. I have zero contact with my elder brother for more than 25 years and have nothing to prove to him.
The only reason why I want to succeed is so that I can prove to myself that I have it in me to succeed. Everything and everyone else is just noise to me.
@choaniki that's like someone telling a McDonald's worker they're a failure for not making CEO after a few years of starting as a cashier. Sometimes the odds are just against you.
DeleteY'know Alex a good parent would say "even if I wouldn't make the same choice, I support you in your efforts to better your situation." I just found out my friend in Jordan who also works in IT(and lives with his parents) was considering moving to Dubai for better paid work since he has relatives there, but he told us he didn't go through with it because his "mum said no." I gotta commend Miguel for not listening and just going through with it, that's the drive you need to succeed.
In the case of Miguel, we have a mutual friend Manuel in Mexico. Manuel has a respectable, stable job and is quite rich (at least by Mexican standards, even though admittedly his pay is high my Mexican standards, low by US standards but hey, he lives in a big house in Mexico and living costs are a lot lower there). I did tell Miguel to talk at length with Manuel and at least Manuel could see things from a Latin American perspective whereas for me, I was worried I was going to be a little bit foo optimistic. It was with Manuel's help that Miguel took the plunge to go into financial services. Miguel's mother would definitely shut up if he closed a deal, pocketed a commission of $75,000 and she would then say, "I knew you could do it, I've always believed in you! Can I get a new car please?"
DeleteWell yeah, it's not the dollar amount but your purchasing power that matters. 100k usd/year in Switzerland feels poor even if it feels rich in Texas. Oh Miguel works in sales? I'm surprised since he has an IT background and I do know a lot of software engineers who work in finance. But sales is a faster route to make more money, either that or being a trader. The latter is stressful though. Well I hope he earns that big commission soon then!
Delete@Amanda, I guess like @LIFT mentioned before, some people have poor social skills and just lash out at you because they are projecting their failures on you. They can't see that by changing job/careers you are taking accountability for your mistake and attempting to correct it
DeleteAnd to be frank don't say McD, the only way for any entry level staff to make CEO after a few short years is if he/she buys out the company and appoints his/herself as one. Watch the YouTube video I posted by Simon Sinek where he mentioned the mountain that young people have to climb.
Hi Amanda, in Miguel's case, he isn't doing the kind of coding or AI related stuff that you do, it was more website development and social media. So that's great if you have some fashion accessory you want all young people to be aware of and he would know how to push it on social media, but in financial services, that is the opposite end of the scale. Often, we have zero social media, zero marketing and keep a very low profile. I have my own company now and people are like, can I see your website? I don't have one! It is a registered company but I get clients through word of mouth. When you're dealing with something very specialist within my industry, it's all word of mouth. Nobody is gonna Google me, stumble upon my website and then offer me work - I've already built up a decent portfolio of clients to keep me busy since transitioning back to self-employment after leaving my last job earlier this year. Thus in Miguel's case, it is a simple matter of supply & demand. There is a demand for people who can do sales in finance, there is little demand for IT people who do websites/social media. If he wants to get his foot in the door, he has to do sales.
DeleteAs for Choaniki, dude, that's why I don't speak to my parents anymore - heck, I don't even speak to my sisters anymore as they have that mentality of working in the civil service and have no clue what the heck goes on in the business world. I have plenty of friends I can speak to and have an intelligent conversation with when it comes to work related stuff. I don't know why some people still feel the need to speak to their families despite the fact that they clearly have nothing in common with their family members. I did ask my friend Mark about this and he said, "well the reasonable conclusion is that you shouldn't feel the compulsive urge to keep in touch and speak to them on a regular basis, like every week. Speak to them less often, maybe a few times a year or when there's something important but otherwise, keep the contact minimal to reduce conflict." Mark has a sister he doesn't get along with and he felt that the only way for him to avoid arguments with her is to not talk to her - that's kinda like Terence and his brother, Mark hasn't spoken to his sister in many years and he is not sure if/when he might ever speak to her again; but that has at least prevented any arguments from happening, which according to him, is an improvement.
Delete@Amanda *points at self* I have an IT and healthcare background but am now doing sales in finance. I find it more fun as I get to go around talk to people, do different thinks and exchange ideas with intelligent (good looking) people instead of stubborn boomers who are "waiting to die".
DeleteI just got off a Google teams call on a private equity project I'm working on - I wouldn't call any of the people on that call good looking but hey, they're definitely very intelligent and there's the opportunity to make a lot of money there. Then I can use that money and spend it on any shallow, hedonistic pleasures I choose to indulge in. Moral of the story: don't mix work and play.
DeleteI mean I was talking to a very good looking (tall and fair) PRC IFA who I connected with simply because she has links to China. The good looking part is secondary. I'm sure she is very driven as well. I don't look for good looking people to connect but I suppose good looking people know how to package and market themselves better.
DeleteYears ago, when I worked at BAD, they had a stand at a conference at an event and the boss of BAD talked about getting some hot babes in skimpy dresses showing off their big boobs (sounds terribly sexist - his words not mine) just to get people to flock to our stand in a very crowded exhibition hall and then the bald and ugly older guys (like me) can take over if we have a serious punter who wants to do business whilst the hot babes could simply get rid of those who were not interested in talking business. It is a terribly sexist industry where women really have to fight hard to be taken seriously. Good looks can get you only that far and a pretty lady might be regulated to a role where she is expected to wear a short skirt, show off her cleavage to humour a dirty old man at a meeting. However, "honey trap" type women in this industry don't usually progress very far in the process, they're merely a tool used by older, sexist men. Women who have brains and self-respect refuse to go anywhere near that kind of work environment where women are treated like pieces of meat. I once went to a party once hosted by a client where I saw a woman from that company wearing what I could only describe as a 'summer dress' if I was being generous except she was nowhere near the beach or a pool, she was in a restaurant and there was a serious shortage of fabric. I witnessed her get groped in a sexual way by a dirty old man and she laughed it off as if it was part of her job to allow that kind of crap to happen. Good looking women with brains would go as far as to dress very modestly to make sure they send out the right message to men like that in the business environment, "don't mess with me, I'll break you in half if you dare look at me in the wrong way."
DeleteIronically, by that token, since I score a big fat ZERO in the looks department in the eyes of these straight men, that does mean that I have had to earn my keep by using my brains - that makes me very good at my job and employable if my looks have nothing to do with it.
DeleteI am not one to judge this PRC IFA but she started out in logistics (DHL) and transitioned to insurance and hit director level within two years...I don't know how she climbed so fast but I can attempt to ask her when I meet her. I have my unspoken suspicious but let's leave it at that since I don't want to be sued.
DeleteWhilst I know nothing about this PRC lady you're talking about, allow me to speak more generally. Women who have no substance but have good looks are used as honey traps in the industry (such as the woman who turned up at the restaurant, wearing precious little and allowed herself to be groped sexually - I had to see it to believe it, she practically encouraged that old man to grope her but that's another story for another day). They are used, abused and then spat out once they lose their good looks and can no longer be used as honey traps. They would never become directors and assume real responsibility - perhaps I am thinking about an individual who is deliberately trying to hide her good looks in order to be taken seriously in this industry dominated by men (ie. "I am a strong woman in business, I will break you, fear me. I am not some old man's secretary or assistant, I am the director here, take me seriously.") but for what it is worth, my guess is that this PRC woman has some real substance to make it this far in a very unforgiving industry and we can all learn a thing or two from her.
DeleteThe way you put it I am really curious now to find out how she went up so fast. For all we know she is a damn good salesperson.
DeleteOr she may be super intelligent - the fact that she is also super good looking is just a bit of a coincidence and that her success has nothing to do with her looks at all.
DeleteWho knows - perhaps we're too judgmental. I do wonder about that woman who turned up at the restaurant wearing so little, if she really had brains, would she have to resort to doing that? It's one thing to scream, "it's a woman's right to wear whatever she wants in public!" Yes I know, but when she got groped, instead of turning around and slapping the old man who groped her, she laughed and then started chatting to him as if a grope is the equivalent of saying, "hello! Good evening, how are you doing?" in this social context. Would a genuinely intelligent woman subject herself to that? I don't think so. Only a desperate woman who knows she can't compete academically would resort to something like that.
DeleteY'know people say money can't buy looks, but if it buys a gym membership, healthy food, a personal trainer, and a personal stylist, it does have an effect. Growing up in a private school I felt like there were many good looking people who were active in sports and knew how to dress well, and they were expected to dress super well if they met their parents' clients at a wedding or for lunch or whatnot. If someone is good looking in business I just assume they take care of their appearance just as much as they're committed to doing a good job. Someone "ugly" like Boris Johnson is a huge exception, though maybe he was better looking when younger. But someone like Emmanuel Macron is more typical of a young, good looking, successful person in finance. Growing up as the nerdy kid in the class I didn't want to do that client facing job and wanted to stay in the background, and just assumed it was for the sporty kids, but as an adult I know I can't get away from it. Even I'm self conscious about how I look and present myself when my new boss mentioned he sometimes takes the firm's clients out to golf. If I ever have to come along to explain the coding and A.I as CTO, then I can't look like the disheveled unhealthy nerd I look like right now. This isn't silicon valley where people can get away with t shirts and jeans. Maybe if the client was a young millennial or gen Z it's possible, but for older more traditional industries like law or finance, there's a dress code if you want to climb the ladder.
DeleteOh yeah Alex, it's unbelievable how many wealthy people don't have a website or even a LinkedIn. They just go to country clubs or gentleman's clubs or industry expos to network, and most people know them anyway because of all the business relationships they've built up. My best friend's dad doesn't even have a website despite owning a factory. We're actually setting up the e-commerce division and seeing how that goes. I do think that if Miguel focused more on non-web coding like general desktop applications he could've been a software developer for quants, implementing their trading algorithms. It's a very high paying job, but would require more specialized math knowledge, and possibly a masters or PhD. But if there's an opportunity in sales and he doesn't mind switching, then I wish him all the best.
Amanda, I think it's quite naive to say "oh you just need some specialist math knowledge and a masters/PhD" - a lot of people in poorer countries or working class communities simply do not have the time, money or resources to just go get a masters or PhD as they don't have rich parents to pay for their degrees. In any case, even if you said to me that I could write trading algorithms as long as I obtain those skills, let me be the first to tell you that my math sucks so bad and I really fucking hate anything to do with maths (which is why I am in sales). Miguel reminds me of myself because he is from a poor family, in a poor country but he taught himself everything from web design to English and he most certainly did NOT have the opportunity to go to a fancy school like you to get all of these prestigious degrees. That's why I am going out of my way to help him succeed. In any case, the top investment banks do NOT recruit coders out of places like central America. The odds are so stacked against Miguel it is not even funny, that's why sales is one of the very few options open to him. I hate to say this, but you speak like a girl from a super rich family who assumes that people who grew up poor like Miguel and myself have access to those same privileges that you enjoyed when, news flash - we never had access to those privileges.
Delete@Amanda quants are dispensable. The world's most successful quant fund, Medallion hire many mathematicians not just one. And I bet apart from the founder, no one else knows how it algorithm works.
DeleteHey Alex, I don't doubt Miguel is talented, since you are willing to go out of your way to help him. But yeah, I guess I didn't grow up poor in a poor central American country so I don't know how hard it is to get into a target university if you grow up like Miguel. Sorry about that. But I will say, at the PhD level for STEM subjects in the US, UK, or Europe, it is free. You don't pay any tuition and you get a small stipend for living costs for 4-5 years. So some of my labmates actually came from poor families, but they aren't charged anything for their PhD so the tough part was getting in. It's usually only PhDs in the non sciences or engineering like art history or education which charge tuition, and that tends to attract more rich kids whose parents can afford it. But even in STEM, it's a very small stipend compared to working as a software engineer immediately, if Miguel has a family to support he would choose to work in industry instead of accepting a lower income studying for a PhD. But even in America my poorer labmates had to defer paying back student loans to do a PhD. I dunno how hard it is for a central American to get in, but from what you say, it sounds like Miguel may not even have a bachelor's degree, which is a requirement. But even if he had a bachelor's degree, getting accepted is a whole other set of barriers where the odds favor the rich. If you go to a more prestigious undergrad, then there is a bigger research budget to do projects which will help with graduate school admissions. My labmates like to talk about "survivorship bias" a lot. Where they think there are a limited set of opportunities for ordinary people, and a lot of times these opportunities are given out by luck, such that there barely any difference between who got the opportunity and who didn't.
DeleteSo are you implying that sales is one of the more fairer jobs in finance for someone to achieve social mobility? If you had to rank various positions in finance from "nepotism dependent" to "meritocracy", how would it go?
DeleteBy the way, the thing you said about needing resources to do a masters/PhD, I was browsing LinkedIn and found out an African student who took a quantum computing class(remotely) with me last semester was featured in the Sunday mail for her efforts to promote quantum computing in Africa. And also that she won a coding competition hosted by Oxford university. However, in the same LinkedIn post, she said she was beginning a masters soon in the UK, but that she needs donations on gofundme to go because she was only offered a partial scholarship. The university wasn't even a Russell group university, it was somewhere around 40-50 in the league tables. I'm just thinking, why couldn't she get either more scholarship money or get into a better university since she won a competition hosted by Oxford? But like my labmates said, "survivorship bias." I really hope it wasn't because she was from Africa and not Tidjane Thiam level wealthy, because she's clearly a talented coder. She also has her own "Alex" in her corner trying to get her opportunities, as in a mentor who is more senior and successful in the career she's trying to break into, and it was him who reposted her LinkedIn post. I guess he was trying to help her get more donations for the gofundme, as he did donate himself. Yeah I totally believe you now that it is very very hard for a poor but talented coder from a poor country to even get into a top masters program if this Oxford competition winner couldn't.
Hi Amanda, as the late great Tina Turner once sang, What's Love Got To Do With It, but let's replace the word 'love' with 'talent' - talent has got nothing to do with it as I've seen so many poor working class people with talent denied the opportunities to prove themselves whilst rich kids from wealthy families being given those opportunities despite the total lack of talent. Talent means little in this world without someone willing to put you in a position where you can actually put that talent to good use. Miguel is good at some things, bad at others, he's just human like the rest of us but as I am a friend, I'm gonna go out of my way to help him because that's what I do for my friends, rather than because I'm giving that help out on the basis of his 'talent'. No, I don't do 'talent' based favours like that, I help all my friends. In poor countries such as El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras and Costa Rica, trying to do further education is a complete pipe dream as you need to be independently wealthy to be able to spend all that time and money pursuing further education - but therein lies the paradox: if your parents are rich enough to pay for a decent PhD, then your family don't need you to study that hard to get a good job, you can do what the hell you want. But as for poor people like Miguel who can certainly do with a PhD, guess what? His poor family would NEVER be able to pay for it. Never ever as they are - drum roll please - very poor! Thus in central America, the rich who can afford further education don't really need it, whilst the poor who cannot afford further education are the ones who need it the most. It's a terribly messed up situation in central America and comparing it to what poor people in America (who have faaaaar more options than someone in El Salvador) do isn't helpful as they are still so much better off in a country like the USA.
DeleteIn finance (along with many other industries), as discussed above, it's far easier for someone from a poor, working class background (like myself and Miguel) to prove ourselves through sales and earn massive commissions very quickly. In order to code at the level you talked about to rake in serious money, you need to invest an insane amount of time & money into a PhD and that system is deliberately designed to keep poor people like Miguel away from the top jobs and reserve them exclusively for rich kids from wealthy backgrounds like you. I don't even think you realize how privileged you are and how the odds are oh so totally stacked against someone like Miguel and even myself.
@LIFT and me too. I grew up in a rental apartment (council housing). My dad is deadbeat broke and doesn't have a single cent to his name after he stopped working.
DeleteI never had a formal university education but that hasn't stopped me from trying unorthodox means to find my own success. Which includes flying to the UK and meeting @LIFT in person more than 6 years ago, multiple career and company switches and straight up begging a lady from old money for money to study a distance learning degree (yes I have 10ft thick skin).
As the saying goes “上有政策、下有对策”. Any problem you put out in front of me I can think of 20-100 ways to solve it which is why when I made my switch to finance I had plans A-D to succeed.
Oh I didn't know a PhD was charged for in south america. As much as the west can be classist, other places are even worse.
DeleteIs this why you were skeptical of the government program to do A.I in finance that Choaniki posted about a while ago and instead got him a job in sales? I mean you have said in the past how it would be a very ageist program because companies usually want younger workers, but I didn't think of the class-based gatekeeping aspect of coding in finance till now.
I'm glad I followed @LIFT's advice. Going the institutional path would have taken me 10-20 years to get anywhere of note (that is assuming you are given the chance, note I didn't mention talent).
DeleteNow that I am working for a brokerage and a startup one, I have so many opportunities to learn and do. If I am any good I could be standing shoulder to shoulder with LIFT in a matter of years!
@Choaniki, I'm glad Alex got you a good opportunity. The institutional path is quite long, even for me. Good luck in the new job.
DeleteY'know, I actually know quantum computing professors in the US and Singapore who could give a fully funded PhD position to that girl that posted on LinkedIn with the gofundme for the masters program. But she isn't asking me to help, so it would look bad to offer. I did donate to the gofundme and she did message me on LinkedIn to thank me. Maybe I should use my social skills to learn more about her situation to see if she might want to use my contacts.
Hey Alex, I felt inspired by you calling me out for being blind to my own privilege to help that classmate of mine like you helped Miguel and Choaniki. I talked to that person over Linkedin, and she told me she didn't even know PhD programs were free because they aren't in her home country. Like you said, in poor countries, education is never free, especially not for tertiary education. I'm walking her through the process of applying to different universities for a PhD in the US and Sg, and I even got her one interview from someone I knew. But god damn, there are so many financial hurdles just to apply to a PhD program in the US. There's a $60-100 application fee per university, and a required standardized test (GRE) which costs $220. Not to mention study guides for that standardized test which could be up to $200. This is classism in action like you said, someone from a poor country with poor parents can't afford those application/testing fees even if they are good enough to be accepted to a free PhD program. Not to mention the flight to the US/Sg even if they are accepted. My roommate who is Indian told me she had to borrow a lot of money just for the airfare to come to the US for her PhD program, even though the school reimbursed her for relocation costs a month later. And then there's the one month rental deposit for an apartment, furniture, etc. There's just all these financial barriers which don't feel like huge expenses to someone like me, but feel like a lot to someone from a poor family in a poor country. But even to a poor American a $220 standardized test fee is a lot. Oh well, I can't change the system but the least I could do is use some of my privilege to help a friend who doesn't have it.
Delete@Amanda it is rare for a rich person to be self-aware enough to realize that being born rich is already incredibly privileged (https://www.theonlinecitizen.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/race.jpg).
Delete@LIFT and myself never had those privileges yet when we fail to succeed the government labels us lazy. And boomers call us strawberries for not being able to 吃苦. Fuck them, we refuse to be exploited. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3XGAmPRxV48
Here's a simple reason why Miguel's answer to career advancement does not lie in further education and once again, I think Amanda has assumed that El Salvador's universities are as good as those in the USA. Firstly, there's only one public university (UES = University of El Salvador) and a few private ones (again, degree mills). UES is chronically underfunded, staff don't get paid on time, the equipment on the campus is old and falling apart. The staff are either on strike due to not getting paid or the students are protesting against something - either way, there's no guarantee that your Monday morning lecture is going to happen as scheduled. Furthermore, only 7% of the university student body come from the bottom 40% in El Salvador and 57% come from the top 20% - the government is too broke to subsidize university, so students either get loans or rely on richer relatives to fund their studies There's no such thing as a free or funded PhD in a place like that. It all costs money and what you get is a poor quality education - if you were a really talented, intelligent genius, would you a) go work in the private sector to earn more (possibly in Canada or the USA) or b) go lecture at UES and earn peanuts, endure hardship and poverty?
DeleteSo even if Miguel did find the money (say if I gave it to him) to go do a PhD in UES, it is not worth the paper it is printed on. If he wanted to do that in the USA, he needs a masters first before he can get a PhD and let's just deal with the masters degree first - how the heck is he going to find the fees + living costs for the duration of his masters programme? Money doesn't fall from the heavens in a place like El Salvador and again, that's why I'm calling you out for your privilege because you don't seem to realize just how the odds are stacked against people like Miguel and even Choaniki - we simply don't have the kind of privileges you've enjoyed all your life.
Even getting a master's degree from a decent, respectable American university can cost a lot of money - no point in getting a cheap one from a crap university, a respectable one can set you back US$50,000 easily when you factor everything in and if Miguel even had that kind of money in the first place, he wouldn't be looking to get a better jo to earn more money. He's a hustler like me, he taught himself English (and I taught myself Spanish), he taught himself everything he needed to know about IT whilst I did the equivalent for banking. He will succeed in his own way, but he CANNOT follow the path of a very rich, privileged American kid whose wealthy parents can pay for a top quality education as - I'm sure you already know this - he comes from a poor family. Unlike you, he doesn't have very rich parents and he doesn't live in a first world country, so he has to take a very different path to success.
Delete'All Debt is Bad'—Debunking the Myth
Deletehttps://www.linkedin.com/pulse/all-debt-baddebunking-myth-terence-tan?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_android&utm_campaign=share_via
Alex you don't need a masters before doing a PhD in the US, at least in STEM. A lot of PhD programs are direct entry from a bachelor's degree, and you get a masters and PhD at the end. I didn't pay a cent for my masters because I got direct admission to a PhD program, but elected to leave early so they just awarded me a masters automatically for doing partial requirements for a PhD. I had to go explain this to my friend so she wouldn't assume she had to shell out 10s of thousands of dollars for a masters before doing a PhD. This system is there because universities like Harvard or Stanford like to use international students from China or India as a form of cheap labor for their science projects. If it wasn't free and direct entry from bachelor's, then the labor pool would be a lot smaller and they'd have to pay their researchers more money.
DeleteBy the way, I'm not trying to say the PhD system is 100% fair or that there is a level playing field between rich and poor students in various rich or poor countries, but it isn't entirely "pay to win" at every step if someone is willing to move countries and be an international student. But moving countries, speaking a new language, or even having the privilege to learn how to speak English in the first place are huge barriers to attaining a PhD, even if someone is talented.
Delete@Amanda the PhD programs in SG use students as a form of cheap labour too since most of the grant money comes from the government and they are tight-fisted.
Delete@Amanda I also don't see the point of a PhD unless you intend to go into academia. I have talked to so many postdoc and PhD holders and they earn even lesser than someone with just a Diploma (me). So a PhD is not the answer to social mobility either.
DeleteThanks for that Amanda, but allow me to raise two points in response to that. The first one is that if someone like Miguel has a BA or BSc from UES (University of El Salvador), he is very unlikely to get admission into a prestigious American university's PhD programme - at least, that's quite unlikely. The places are limited to students who have either had their first degrees from more reputable universities and/or have some very good work experience - Miguel has neither. But the other point that I want to raise is this - what is the point of the PhD? That's to get a good job that pays well, if Miguel is not that fussed what he does to earn that money (hey people like Miguel from poor countries are not that fussy, they are a LOT more pragmatic), they would look at this choice this way: I could spend time & money trying to get into a PhD programme with a mid-tier university which may or may not work out well (ref: Amanda who didn't complete her PhD) and hope that at the end of it, I can get a good job; or I can simply go into sales and work darn hard to make sure I succeed without bothering with any more further education. Pragmatic people like Miguel would say, "I'll pick the second option as it is faster and has less risk, it still leads to the same result at the end of the day without having to spend more time going back to university. I really don't want to spend another few years at university, I really just need to get on with earning some money for my family ASAP." You see for rich people like you, spending a couple of years more at university is no big deal when you don't have people depending on you earning money to pay the bills whereas poor people like Miguel simply don't have that luxury. Such is poverty for you, being poor well and truly sucks.
DeleteAkan datang - new post out very soon regarding the practicalities of earning money but looking at it from a different angle: what are you willing to do to earn good money?
DeleteThat's a fair point, most people just want to make money. It doesn't matter if it happens by being a quant, working in sales, or selling food on the street as a hawker. I've met many people who at 18 say "I don't know what I want to do, why do I have to pick a university major right now?" that still say the same thing at 25 or even 30. The person I'm helping to get into a PhD program knew she always wanted to do quantum computing, and I can see it from her resume from all the activities she's tried to get a foot in the door. For someone like that, she could do other things to make money like be a web developer, but it wouldn't make her as happy so I used my connections to get her on the scientist track. I suppose I never had to think about ROI when picking the scientist track, I can just go "I like that, I wanna go do it", and even then I can be fussy and even think being a quant is worse than working in tech, but that's a luxury few can afford, like Melanie in this article.
DeleteBtw I just started my new job, and I had to work with a new guy who does sales. Apparently he makes more than what I make, because he's the one who connects us with clients and markets my code. But he didn't have to go to school nearly as long, he just has to be socially savvy and sell well.
@Choaniki, every rich country is guilty of using international students as cheap science labor, Sg included. Actually one can compare being a scientist to working in fashion. For most people it doesn't make a lot, and you will be underpaid for so long but the industry is still standing because lots of rich kids like to do fashion for fun and their parents will fund them. Some designers make millions though, like Tom Ford, but that's the exception rather than the norm.
If I may point out please that this desperate need to chase paper qualifications is so incredibly Singaporean and to a wider extent, very East Asian (so Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese etc) I have seen in Singapore how the fat and ugly kid in class who has no friends would totally throw himself into studying so hard for his exams to the point where it was like his life depended on scoring those straight As - "I may be the fat and ugly nerd with no friends, you guys may mock me and call me names but I have the best results in class and none of you can take that away from me no matter how hard you try to bully me!" Oh that's kinda sad because when this nerd joins the workforce armed with his brilliant results, he will realize that social skills actually matter in the real world and thus no amount of straight As is going to help him get ahead whilst he is being held back by his lack of social skills. Thus this "I must get a PhD to have a successful career" is kinda built on that Asian mentality of "I MUST have a piece of paper to prove to employers that I am smarter than everyone else."
DeleteLet me contrast that to what I did with a client today - my new company has a client in central America and my boss couldn't wait to get me on the call with the guy so show off, "see I have a Spanish speaking guy in my team now, meet Alex!" I am fluent in Spanish yet I have never ever taken a lesson in Spanish in my life before, I don't have a single piece of paper qualification to certify that I can speak Spanish, never taken a single Spanish exam in my life before. Yet within minutes, I was laughing and joking with the client in Spanish. My boss presented a project he thought the client wanted to invest in and I did the bold thing and told my boss, I've been listening carefully to what they have been saying and this isn't the right project for them based on their criteria and what they want to achieve. Let's present this other project instead that - I hijacked the meeting, changed the agenda on the fly after hearing what the client wanted and my boss could've never picked that up without my help.
The client loves my suggestion and now is probably going to invest a LOT of money in the project I suggested instead. So now, I'm due a pretty big commission - not bad for a guy who is so new in the job. And I did all that without a single piece of paper qualification in Spanish or finance/banking - it was mostly just social skills and there's no degree or PhD in that.
Oh and my boss got this 24 year old guy in the team to join the call and watch Alex work his magic - there was a sense of "watch and learn kid, this is how we do business and make money." Screw paper qualifications, it's all about social skills, listening to the client, empathizing with what the client's needs are, proving to the client that you're a great listener, gaining the client's trust and of course, I am doing all that in my 4th language Spanish. My boss is paying me to do all of this not because I have showed him that I have some PhD in banking or finance, but because I once had coffee with him, we chatted, established rapport and he could see that I had great social skills.
DeleteY'know, I actually agree with you 100%. I used to think that to be able to be given the opportunity to do science, I needed a lot of paper qualifications, awards, and things on my CV. Only later in life did I realize that making a few emails/texts and establishing rapport, in addition to being able to do the science (but not having or showing a piece a paper) was all I needed. I really thought I needed to go to school for a PhD to make connections to secure financing for a tech startup. But now that I'm out, I made two text messages to people I knew from my wealthy high school, and I got the money and opportunity right away. Lol what was the point of graduate school then? These people didn't even ask to see my masters degree or any of my scientific papers, they just thought "oh we know Amanda, she was on the basketball team with us growing up who happened to like physics. I definitely trust her to know what she's doing! Yeah let's give this a shot!" I remember in high school I had another friend who told me she was discussing with her mom about becoming a real estate developer in the future. And the mom said to her "hey why don't you ask Amanda, whom I talked to at your birthday party last week, to add some solar panels and wind turbines to the building's electricity systems to make it energy efficient? We'd save so much money and have such a cool building!" I was a high schooler at the time with no qualifications, all I said at the birthday party was that I'm interested in doing physics for uni, and I thought that building thing was a joke. And although I didn't ask that person for funding, I did ask someone else whose parent also made a similar joke in high school. There's no doubt that there are many smart people who are struggling to get their ideas off the ground because they don't have any connections, but I had it by accident of birth and didn't know how to tap into them until my former boss screwed my PhD for me and I had to find alternative opportunities. Talk about region beta paradox! Trust and rapport in this world is an underrated currency
DeleteThe friend I'm helping from Africa, she has lots of awards, but she can't get opportunities to do quantum computing abroad. It doesn't just flow to your inbox after you get awards, you literally have to go out there and talk to people to make yourself known and strike deals. At least she sat in one of my classes last semester and established rapport with me, so I went out of my way to help her. I sent a couple emails to profs I've worked for in the past, and one said he'd interview this person and try to get them a full scholarship.
Also I finally know what you do by watching the sales guy in our team today. It's surprising how listening is such a rare skill and how it can make such a big difference. That person also goes to conferences to get Intel about what competitors are doing. That's not something a PhD can teach.
By the way Alex I'm glad to hear you've improved your Spanish a lot(and are due a big commission soon). I wouldn't dare learn a new language because I suck at it, and I'd be more self conscious to speak a non native language in a terrible accent to native speakers.
DeleteIt wouldn't surprise you to know that the fat nerd with the straight As I described in the previous comment was a real person, a former classmate in Singapore. But of course, it wouldn't surprise you, I'm sure you could have picked any school in Singapore and easily found a fat nerd like that. Unfortunately, whilst I remember his first name I struggle to recall his surname so I cannot look him up like on Linkedin, just to see how far is straight As got him in life. It's not like I am the opposite, I had some paper qualifications (three scholarships) but I never relied on those in my job, instead I mostly just use my social skills and language skills in the context of business. The culture of Singapore whereby people were all so obsessed with paper qualifications sustained the belief of the fat nerds of Singapore that their paper qualifications will help them later in life, that this is the most important component of their future success in their careers - oh dear. As for my Spanish, is it perfect? No, I remember this frustratingly long pause I did mid-sentence yesterday as I struggled to remember the word conseguir (to achieve) but eventually it popped into my head. It's a word I do know and have learnt before but sometimes when you're working in your 4th language, the vocab isn't as readily accessible. But did the client mind or judge me? Of course not. He was not an asshole. He appreciated the fact that Spanish is not my first language and I have learnt it on my own as a foreign language. Rather than making him struggle on in English, I'm choosing to make his life easier by speaking Spanish instead. So he was very nice to me and if someone judged you for being a non-native speaker with an accent, then that's your cue to say fuck you to them as you're the one who's taken the trouble to learn a difficult foreign language whilst for them, it's just the language they've grown up with.
DeleteHaving studied elementary French I can understand about 30-40% of the Spanish that gets thrown around in my work chats. It is not a very difficult language to learn. Certainly not on the level of Japanese or Mandarin.
DeleteI hate to be bitch but there are two levels of mastering a foreign language. If you do basic Spanish, you can buy in Spanish. So you could go into a shop, ask how much this item costs, maybe even ask the shopkeeper about some of the details of the item and do that entire transaction in Spanish. However, if you had a Spanish tourist who didn't speak a word of English walk into your shop and you had to play the role of the shopkeeper trying to persuade the Spanish tourist to buy a really expensive item, then you need a LOT more than basic Spanish. You need quite advanced Spanish to be able to communicate more technical details as to why that item is such good value for money. That's why I often separate the languages I speak into two categories: I am fluent in 7 languages (ie. I can sell in those languages) and I can speak another 18 languages (I can buy but not sell in those other 18 languages). Thus in the case of Choaniki, I know he can sell in English, Mandarin and Japanese (and probably Hokkien as well) and he can buy in a few others like French and Spanish.
DeleteIn fact, I did tell Choaniki that because he now has Spanish colleagues, he may as well try to get his Spanish up to a level where he can sell in it - that's gonna take a lot of hard work of course but given that he has colleagues he can practice with on a daily basis, that's a really good opportunity. I am rolling my eyes at one of my American contacts, he worked with a Colombian guy for 10 years and never learnt any Spanish as the Colombian guy spoke English like an American given he grew up in the USA. Languages are a great transferable skill you can take with you to any new company to move to later. In my previous job, I had to speak Spanish as I worked with Peruvians but now, I'm back to the situation whereby I'm the only one who speaks any Spanish and in the land of the blind, the one eye man is king. Not a bad position to be in!
DeleteSorry Choaniki has Spanish SPEAKING colleagues in Latin America, I don't think he has any colleagues in Spain actually - that was a typo on my part.
DeleteWhile I would love learning Spanish since I watch lots of Spanish league football, Bahasa Indonesia or Brunei would be more useful to me now.
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