As my esteemed “career” marches on, I find myself with a résumé featuring more jobs than most… more than a number completely indeterminate. If you picked a number at random, I’ve probably had a few more jobs than that, but—well, it is impossible to tell.
And, now I’m looking again for another gig.
Having had so many jobs, having worked in a variety of organizations, having seen the numerous players who strut and fret their hour upon the stage (and then are heard no more), I am uniquely qualified to cut through the jargon and explain in plain language the assorted code phrases you’re likely to see in a typical white-collar downtown-skyscraper cubicle-dwelling job listing.
This is the first part in a series.
“Must be a motivated self-starter”
Translation: “The company has no training, orientation or on-boarding process whatsoever.”
On your first day, when you check in at the lobby and the receptionist calls to inform of your arrival, then (and only then) will your new boss hastily submit service requests to the infrastructure and facilities people for your desk, network login credentials, telephone and computer. Greeting you in the lobby, your new boss will crack wise about how he’s put in the necessary paperwork, but your desk, computer and phone aren’t ready yet, har har har, you know how those facilities jerks are.
No matter, because the first stop on your first day is the morning meeting! Here you’ll sit for an hour, listening to your new co-workers blather on about projects and problems, using industry buzzwords and company acronyms. Of course, this is will all be meaningless to you, so use this valuable time to scan the scene and assign stereotypes to each person: the attractive flirt; the absurdly overweight tech guy; the well-dressed, well-manicured, well-cologned, well-preened sales weasel; the toady; the douchebag; the wallflower; and so on. Don’t feel guilty about making hasty judgements; you’ll be in that meeting for an hour and you’ve got nothing else to do.
After the meeting, your new boss will be forced to apologize about the facilities, because you now have a desk. Time to find the 409!
After scrubbing the coffee stains, elbow grease (I’m talking actual skin oils and flecks here, not the figurative “elbow grease”) and mold spores from your new space, you will spend the rest of the day looking over your co-workers’ shoulders, sneaking peeks at their work, and trying to formulate intelligent questions. You can’t come right out with “Say, what are you doing?” because this sounds accusatory, or stupid, or both. Instead, you have to weasel your way in. For example:
“That looks interesting. Are you working with Excel?”
“Ooooo, is that a PowerPoint presentation?”
…and other idiot questions that you are forced to ask in order to make yourself appear engaged. Unfortunately, at the same time it makes you sound like you’re from the local kindergarten.
In a few days you’ll get a computer and telephone, and you’ll spend your time asking other idiot questions. For example:
“How do I dial an outside line?”
“What’s my e-mail address?”
“What’s the ‘project database?’”
“Where is the project database?”
“How do I connect to the project database?”
“What’s my password to the project database?”
“Well then, how do I get a password for the project database?”
“Who designed this project database, masochists?”
(You’ll only think that last one because you’re the new guy and you don’t want to make waves just yet.)
Weeks will pass while you absorb your surroundings, keeping yourself busy by getting acquainted. At some point you’ll have a blinding flash, realizing you don’t actually know what your job is, what your responsibilities are, nor in fact have any earthly idea about what you’re supposed to be doing. None. It’s like this little detail escaped everybody’s attention.
This leaves you in a predicament, because you can’t just come out and ask the boss, “So, what’s my job here, anyway?” because it puts the boss in a difficult spot, having to answer such a seemingly obvious question, and makes you look bad, having spent months on the job and only just now getting around to asking what you should be doing. Again, you have to weasel your way in.
“Hi, boss, I was poking around the project database, and I was thinking we could change the foreign keys from NVARCHARs to INTs. What do you think?”
“Hey, boss, Sid in IT was asking if I need the Microsoft Office service pack. What do you think?”
“What do you think is the best use of my time right now?”
And so it goes, week after tedious week, month after dreadful month, year after endless year, pretending to look busy, trying a variety of things seeing whether you’re scolded or praised. In many ways, you’re like a puppy exploring the world.
In summary, when you see:
“Must be a motivated self-starter”
This means it will be your job to figure out what your job is. You will have no help or guidance, and you can only sink or swim. The only interesting wrinkle is that you’ll never know whether you’re actually sinking or swimming.
