Twice lately I’ve been reminded of what the school system fails to teach you that has everything to do with success later in life…..I guess with the caveat that “success” does have some correlation to what work you do and how much money you make. If you think the two are completely unrelated, then I guess you can stop reading here.
Since you’re still reading, I will start with the first one: 1) School, at its best (which still isn’t very good), teach us to be employees. It teaches us to work for money. What it fails to tell you is that real success comes when you stop doing work, and start creating it.
It you are doing work, if you are an employee, you will always be doing someone elses work….they will pay you just enough to keep you coming back (sometimes that will be alot, sometimes it will be a little), and they will reap the rewards of your labor.
The tax system in the US is built to strongly support capital at the expense of labor. Those who make money do so with capital….those who work, do so with labor. Getting out of the labor camp, where you work for money, and into the capital camp, where you money works for you…..is where we should all be striving to get. I’m just now starting to realize this………its what they didn’t teach me in school. Workers get the shaft….those who create the work take the spoils.
Not to be all negative, there has never been a better time in history to be a laborer. With the advent of the knowledge economy, the labor camp can actually attain a standard of living all but unimaginable a century ago.
Then there is number 2….the other thing they don’t teach us in school: We don’t get paid to work.
I work with all these people just out of college; for many of them it is their first job. After high school, and a great 4 year degree from GA Tech….they fail to realize that showing up and doing alot of stuff……will get them absolutely nothing.
I see alot of them get frustrated and start blaming everyone for their inability to get ahead. Their whole life they’ve been told they were smart, and that trying hard and showing alot of work is enough. It isn’t. That isn’t what you get paid for.
They blame management for not noticing their talent….for not planning well enough. They blame coworkers for not giving them the support they need. They blame the company for pay or lack of opportunities. They think they are supposed to be given something because they walked in the door and brought their shiney degree with them.
They spend a lot of emotional effort in blame and hating. Then they wonder why they are not sufficiently motivated to perform at a high level. They aren’t sufficiently motivated because they have wasted all their energy in blaming others. Then they create a loop where the worse they do the more they blame until they convince themselves its everyone else’s fault. Then they quit and I’m sure repeat the same loop at some other company.
We don’t get paid to do work. We get paid to produce results. We don’t get paid to raise good questions, and point out defects…..we get paid to answer questions and fix defects. These new graduates sometimes confuse that with trying hard to answer questions…that’ll get you an pat on the back in school…..but isn’t worth a dollar of your paycheck at work.
So, all that is pretty harsh…I admit. And it took me a good bit of thinking to make peace with it. But it is absolutely essential if you are to ever “get ahead” at work. As I said, if you don’t care about that I applaud the high road you are on……and I hear McDonalds is hiring….pehaps the government, or state as well.
So, I do want to comment on the fact that by no means do I think it is OK to treat employees so harshly. After all, we are humans, not results driven robots. Its just that I know there is no alternative.
Either you marry rich, win the lottery, inherit something, become a wizard investor, get luckly on real estate……or start your own business. Otherwise you’ve got to work.
Either know the rules and get busy winning, or ignore the rules and get busy losing. Because unless you find buried treasure, you’re playing the game. What’s strange is that they don’t teach you the game…yet 99% of us are caught up in it without really knowing how to win.
Again, I want to stress that I don’t think the game is particularly good or fair. I just know that it is the only game in town, and not a bad one by historical standards….or the rest of the world’s standards. Its easier to wrap your brain around its unfairness and accept it than it is to waste your effort blaming other people for your inability to deal with it.
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