For a While There, I Was Puzzled
Posted Sun Apr 22 00:41:12 2001 by sbaldwin |
By Alexandra R. Bush
I watched the dot-boom, then the dot-bust. I listened to the horror
stories; 80-hour weeks, fratboy CEOs, vulturish VCs, corporate bonding
rituals that sounded like bad echoes of collegiate hazing. I was
confused beyond belief. How could we let this happen?
These were, supposedly, the best and brightest of my generation --
and say what you like about our lack of schooling, lack of discipline,
lack of drive, we are not all of us stupid people. In my mind, anyone
who's bright enough to figure out object-oriented design, or even how
to scam their way through an Ivy without actually learning anything,
should have been bright enough - and rational enough - to realize what
was happening.
Why did we let this happen? Why did we do this to ourselves? For
make no mistake, there is nobody to blame in this debacle but
ourselves, for we were complicit in every way. We accepted jobs with
companies whose business plan consisted of 'throw up a site then make
an IPO'. We stayed until ten o'clock at night when we should have gone
home at five. We though Nerf guns and foosball tables and beer belonged
in the workplace. We saw the lack of professionalism, the corruption.
We plunged in anyway.
At last, I am starting to understand why.
I'm a designer. I work for a small software development house.
Unlike all too many companies, it has a solid business plan, reasonable
goals, a balanced budget, and a 9-to-5 workday. The benefits are
reasonable, not extravagant; healthcare and 401(k), but no onsite gym
or masseuse.
Unfortunately, this great company has no use for a full-time
designer. I feel guilty complaining, but I'm bored. I come into the
office every day, sit for eight hours, go home. I listen to my
contemporaries' plight - unemployed, mistreated, overworked, underpaid,
laid off without notice - and I feel guilty, but there it is.
Over the past few weeks, I've begun to think that the reason many
bright people suddenly turned naive and gullible was the carrot waved
in their faces - not money (although that was there), not fame (that
too), not even the concept that a job could be an eternal playground
(ditto), but the challenge of doing the impossible.
Because we all knew that it was impossible. We knew the business
plans wouldn't fly. We knew it couldn't work. A few stayed skeptical,
and only recently have started to get lauded instead of drowned out by
catcalls. We knew we couldn't rewrite thousands of years of business
method with a few lines of code, but we tried anyway - because if it
was that or this, sitting at a desk and staring out a window all day,
we knew we'd rather burn fast and hard and die trying - or at least get
badly hurt - than go into jobs where we wouldn't be challenged,
wouldn't have to push ourselves.
So we pushed, and after a while, the slow, steady beast of the
status quo woke up and pushed back. Hard. And empires crumbled like
dust.
We brought this on ourselves. We hared off chasing an impossible
fantasy, and only the most deluded were amazed they didn't catch it.
Was it worth it? Is the suffering, the disillusionment, the economic
and social backlash worth the satisfaction we got by making our houses
of cards stand for even just a few minutes?
Perhaps I'm not qualified to say. I didn't go on the wild chase. I
played it safe; I still have a job, although in some ways I think the
stultification of sitting in this little grey cubicle day in and day
out, doing nothing, might be just as bad as scrounging for the next
paycheck. I can look at the horror stories of those around me with a
serene eye, because I've traded the possibility of doing something
great, something world-shattering, for a steady paycheck, even though
it means I never have the opportunity to strive against myself and push
myself into excellence. Part of me feels like I got the short end of
the stick.
|
|
|
|
