Fail. FAIL!!!

Wasn’t it only a few short weeks ago when this “key influencer” guy made one of the worst Twitter posts ever? And offended his multimillion dollar client (Fedex) in the process? (The fact that he committed that blunder while he was on his way to coach Fedex on how to use online social media is just priceless. You can’t make up stuff like this!)

And of course, now we have the Cisco Fatty, a.k.a.: How To Tweet Your Way Out of a Job. Poor girl tweeted that she hated the fatty (that is, well-paid) Cisco job she just got offered for. Somebody from Cisco saw it. And the internet rejoices!

To me, it’s plain and simple. Both of these people screwed up big time. But what’s interesting in both cases is that there are always people who are outraged that these days we cannot say anything we want online. 

“Can’t we be honest about what we think anymore? I think it reflects badly on <insert the offended company here>” 

“He tweeted it during his private time, in his own account!”

“So what if she says she hates the job? Do we have to be delirious of every job offer we get?”

Duh.

Can’t we make this simple? How about this: think whatever the heck you want.

But if it’s something that you won’t say in front of your client/friends/the government/whoever might be listening, then either:

1. Make damn sure that you’re saying it anonymously (which is VERY HARD–perfect anonymity is pretty much impossible), or, much better,
2. DO NOT SAY IT AT ALL.

The internet is NOT a place for you to let it all hang out and be honest about your true feelings. If you want to complain about your boss, your clients, etc., go and complain to your trusted friends. Verbally.

Do not, EVER, publish anything online that you don’t want to be traced back to you. Think long term. What you think is OK to say when you’re in your early 20s may come back to haunt you when  you’re vying for that corner office 15 years later. 

(That goes to YOU too, you female acquaintance who keeps publishing your marital woes in Facebook and complains constantly about your boss in your very public blog!)

(Image courtesy of playerx @ flickr.)

The one for Singapore specifically, can be downloaded here.

It’s nice to see some upside potential there… although depending on how things go, everything can become moot anyway in the next 1 year or so. Sigh! 

For now I’m just thankful to have my job.

“They never gave me a chance to prove myself!”
- An ex-colleague, after quitting his job following the umpteenth bad performance appraisal.

“Sigh. What should I do with him? He can’t even do the small projects right. I can’t even give him bigger projects even if I want to!”
- His (now ex)-boss, in a coffee break with me.

Scenario B:

“Why wasn’t I promoted? It’s unfair! I’m as good as the other guy, if not better!”
- A guy who is pretty good, but has a glaring weakness that he keeps insisting on labeling as “not crucial”. 

“So, now that I’m promoted, what are the expectations on me? How can I do a better job?“
- The guy’s rival, who was promoted, and is now on the way for the next level of promotion.

Scenario C:

“If I’m not getting promoted this round, I’m looking for another job! They keep giving me these crappy projects!”
- A lady who thought that she should be ranked 1st or at the very least 2nd in her corporate band.

“Whoah. I’m so happy with my bonus this year ”
- Her team mate, who instead of concentrating on pestering her boss for promotions, bonuses, salary increases, decided to focus on just doing the best work possible. She was ranked top–which comes with almost a year of bonus.

Those 3 above are just a few of many similar scenarios that I’ve personally seen and heard. Again and again, I see a recurring theme:

• On one hand, we have person A, let’s call him Jack, who’s ambitious and so focused on getting promoted/big bonus/big salary jump. He keeps pestering the manager, the manager’s manager, the manager’s manager’s manager, and practically whoever would listen, that he should get promoted, should be ranked 1st, etc., etc., etc. He will go ballistic if he feels that he’s not getting the “high-visibility” projects and will not even bother to do whatever tasks he has at hand at the moment well. 
• On the other hand, we have person B, let’s call her Jill, who just focuses on doing the best job possible, constantly asks her manager for feedbacks/evaluation/advices, uses them to constantly improve and get better, and report back the improvement/result. 

Jill always trumps Jack. It’s not even a matter of fairness or capability.

Jill is busy doing a great job while Jack is busy annoying his manager by basically telling him that he is an unfair person for not considering Jack for promotion, huge bonuses, or whatever. 

Jill gets noticed by her manager for all the right reasons (quality work, done on time, saves company money, etc.), whereas Jack’s manager rolls his eyes and dreads any meeting with Jack because he knows what Jack is going to say. 

Jill’s manager finds it easy to plan for her career and help her to grow and rise in the organization because Jill solicits feedback and improves constantly from there. Jack’s manager has to fight with him every time he’s trying to give Jack feedback so Jack can improve… which is difficult, because, you see, to Jack, Jack is perfect. 

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t trumpet our own achievements and ask for what we deserve. That would be stupid and wrong of me to say. What I’m saying is that these Jacks of the world got it all backwards. They just ask, ask, ask, ask, ask, instead of focusing on give first, prove their worth, and then ask.

They are focusing on the wrong thing. Let’s think about this for a second: when a manager evaluates a person, does she look at (a) evaluate her based on what she’s done for the company, or (b) how often she had been nagging her so she can get promoted?

The Jills are doing this right by focusing on how to best contribute, no matter how big or small the projects are, and then use that to ask for what they deserve. And heck, do they receive it! 

Whereas the Jacks are either nagging and blaming everything, from the size of their teams, the visibility of the projects, the vendors who are not cooperating, etc., etc., etc. Feedbacks, no matter how constructive, slide off them like water off a duck’s back. They’re 100% convinced that whatever weaknesses they are “perceived to have”, they all have external causes.

They say, “If I get 10 more people, THEN I can contribute!” They whine, “If I get large projects, THEN I can prove myself!” They nag, “Why does that woman get promoted and I don’t? It’s so unfair! I am better than her!” (trust me, you’re not.)

I say as long as the Jacks of the world do not get the order right (“Give, THEN Ask”, instead of “Ask, Then Maybe Give After I’ve Received”), the Jills of the world will just kick their whining asses across the globe, 24×7. 

Give, And Then Ask, And Ye Shall Receive.

(Images courtesy of dougww @ flickr and rachaelvoorhees @ flickr, in the order of appearance)

Who are we kidding? When managers are sifting through thousands of résumés, they’re just gonna use some search terms and don’t even bother to look at anything else. It’s just a matter of sheer numbers. Which is why I strongly believe that networking is KING when it comes to finding a good job (preferably with a much, much better salary).

But hey, we want to tie all loose ends and max up the probability of getting that dream job. So knowing what managers use for that initial filtering of résumés is pretty dang important, I say.

CareerBuilder’s recent online survey shows what the 9 mostly used search terms by employers are:

• problem-solving and decision-making skills (50 percent)
• oral and written communications (44 percent)
• customer service or retention (34 percent)
• performance and productivity improvement (32 percent)
• leadership (30 percent)
• technology (27 percent)
• team-building (26 percent)
• project management (20 percent)
• bilingual (14 percent)

Do you have these already in your résumé? As long as you do have the relevant experience, you should!

(Image courtesy of SOCIALisBETTER @ flickr)

Now that my salary has quadrupled since then, I can save consistently around 70-80% of my salary every month. Even if I don’t do this project, my outlook for the next 10 years is really not that bad. Plugging into the excellent financial calculator I mentioned in my post here, assuming that:

1. I am properly insured against any unforeseen catastrophy
2. I can maintain my current income level for the next 10 years
3. I can maintain a saving level of around 70k p.a.
4. I can invest all that money at an annual return of 6% (quite conservative!)

Then it seems that I’ll be having almost exactly 1 million dollars, 10 years from now. Definitely not bad at all.

The thing is, this is not passive income. I have to work hard and smart for it. I can’t suddenly double my income because what I do doesn’t really scale.

Also… maybe it’s my psychological makeup. But if I become a millionaire just by doing this, somehow I think I’ll be quite dissatisfied with myself. I want to do something greater, something beyond what I’ve always been doing (get a regular job, deliver as much value as I can to employer, in return getting a good salary). I want to break my limit and go way beyond that.

So! Going back to the 5m10y project