Tag: Corporations

The white collar reality

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

It was easy for white collar workers to be smug during the 1980’s. Their blue collar counterparts faced a dire future as hands on jobs increasingly went overseas to low cost labour markets. It even made it possible for information workers to extract larger salaries as the profitability of their organizations soared. The white collar desk jockey rode the wave of efficiency as corporations globalized and consolidated manufacturing.

The art of Tailoring

Life has a funny way of going full circle. And now it’s our turn, the white collar worker. We are also an endangered species in developed markets.

Yep, you and me. We too, will be outsourced. All us accountants, IP Lawyers, Engineers, Computer Programmers (insert university educated profession here).

Don’t believe me? Then consider this: In India each year there are over 300,000 Engineering graduates and over 400,000 IT graduates who will happily work for 10% of what conglomerate X pays you right now. It’s only a matter of time before large corporations, who are usually struggling for top line growth, can get over the emotional barrier of having a large corporate head office and go offshore. The spreadsheet will make that decision for them. But this time the barriers will be lower than when all the call center went overseas because consumers wont even notice. Society wont care either. They are sick of people earning well above average incomes in ivory towers. No one will feel sorry for us.

Micro outsourcing as provided by Elance, Odesk and Guru for entrepreneurs is just the test case. The head office is next.

What to do?

Stop being a factor of production and start organizing them. Stuff gets done, things can be built, and anything which is done at a desk is about to disappear to low cost labour markets. The way information workers can survive is through undertaking entrepreneurial endeavors (corporate & private). Be able to manage complex projects and by managing situations and people, not doing stuff. The age of the entrepreneur is about to become something which is so significant it changes work just like the industrial revolution did.

Startup blog says: Are you ready?

Get ready at Startup School.

Startup School

Corporate Escape Artist – Jake Lodwick channeling

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

I’ve recently happened upon the Odwick project from serial creative Jacob Lodwick (founder of vimeo.com). Odwick is a 10 episode project I think most of my readers will like. I can’t describe it. It seriously blew me away. So much so that I was trying to find a reason to post one of his videos right here on Startup blog. Thankfully the second to last video in the Odwick project gave me that opportunity. It’s probably what many of us out there have felt while we resided in cubicle land, or still do feel if we haven’t managed to pull off an escape yet.

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/6492221]

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The nature of deadlines

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

If school didn’t start at 9am what time would we turn up?

If tax returns didn’t have to be done by a certain date, when would we do it?

If childbirth was possible at any age, when would we conceive?

If our stomach didn’t have an eating deadline, when would we feed it?

Nature is smart and builds in deadlines for us.We ought understand the nature of deadlines.

Quite often in startup land we try to shun the usual behaviour of more established institutions like schools and corportations. And in many area this is a valid concept. But as far as deadlines are concerned this is something we should adopt. We should be strict on deadlines in the same way we had exams, and due dates at work. It’s a simple and vital discipline.

Work expands with the time allowed for it’s completion. So the time must be stamped. With an agreed deadline, we must cram to get it done. We must be accountable and our business will benefit.

deadlines

If we don’t embrace the simple discipline of deadlines our more astute competitors will evolve much quicker, and more quickly make their stuff awesome. Deadlines ensure we continue to make our company, product or website awesome. Because each deadline is an incremental improvement. Without deadlines all we end up with is awesome and ever evolving blueprints, which our customers never see, or gain any benefit from.

Startup blog says – embrace deadlines and win.

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Quit your job

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

You should really quit your job on Monday. Yes tomorrow today . If you are working for a salary or wages  and have no equity in the business that is.

And here’s why:

You are living someone else’s dream.

You are exchanging the days of your life to build the vision of someone else. You are not doing what you dreamed about as a child.

The reality is this: once you have a place to live and food to eat, the rest is ego. Chances are you are working in a job just to feed your ego. I know because I was this person for more than 10 years. I had jobs I didn’t like – high paying ones, to buy things I didn’t need, to impress people I didn’t care for. It’s a pointless treadmill which the government encourages to maximise consumption, generate higher tax rates and PAYE deductions and enforce control through a passive education process which says consumption equals success. We must remove this idea of the power structure from our minds and remind ourselves that real wealth is defined by the cool stuff we are doing, rather than the stuff we buy.

Quite your job, de-gear your life and do something  of value. To further encourage this process I’ll leave you with one final thought I tweeted a while ago:

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Cheers, Steve

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[digg=http://startupblog.wordpress.com/2009/04/26/quit-your-job/]

No 1 reason being an employee sucks

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

The number one reason being an employee sucks is this:

You can’t sell your job.

No matter how good you are at what you do,

–    you don’t own your output
–    you are building other peoples brands and empire
–    you are at the risk of hierarchy
–    you are not servant to customers, but wage earners (the fundamental issue)

What this means is that as an employee you are not serving those who actually pay your wages – your consumers. Instead you become servant to people who are best at ‘internal politics’. So for you to succeed in this environment, you too must excel at internal politics. Which takes you always for important real world skills entrepreneurs develop. And then the final reality is that at some point in your ’employee career’ someone will not like you, and dispose of you. At this point you instantly lose any good will or employee equity which was built. Even if you are a stock holder, you still have no decision making authority.

employee-silhouette

The point is, if you want to build assets, being an employee makes it difficult because you lack control. If you want control, then you must have the courage to build something independently, like entrepreneurs do.

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