Working Life

I have been born into the working life after my graduation and now I am 4 and ½ months old. Since being in this life, everyday I go to work, come back home and repeating the routine the next day.

Everyday in the office, my jobs are to do design (facing the computer makes me sick nowadays); attending meeting (make me feel like a secretary, jotting down the minutes and matters discussed in the meeting); attending site inspection (yeah, somehow I like it); replying to my boss comment (Wow, he writes a lot of comments, sometimes in the traffic, ranging from work related to work- unrelated); studying some drawing and documents (to get precious information) and the ultimatum i.e. face- off with my boss (this part was hardest and it’s getting harder and hard...).

Although I like my current job, but I still feel like there’s some parts missing or there’s a lot extras that make me feel that I don’t have the capacity to take it yet. The parts that are missing, I think is because of myself, lacking the basics, be it in this field (may be the time has yet to come) or as an engineer. The latter always makes me ask, how can I be an engineer if I don’t have the quality to be one? Though I have been graduated from an engineering school, does that mean I am one of them? Was it all about exams, only made me studied solely for that purpose, in order to be able to be graduated from tertiary level? Those subjects that I have taken, in my opinion, merely touched the surface of the deep sea of knowledge. It implicates me into emptiness each time thinking about this, though I gained few pieces of paper, as recognition for spending my 4 years time to earn it, nothing much, nothing less. I missed those days, when I wasn’t doing what was supposed to done for what was meant to be done.

Working life, step by step, day by day, it will teach me, step by step, day by day, what I ought to know. Quoting my boss’s words of what it takes to be a person like himself, he always says (most of time in a harsh way, sometimes in a nice manner): “It takes me 30 years to learn and I am still learning”; “I know you don’t have the experience, what I learned the hard way, I let you know now”, “Learn from mistake is the best way to learn”; “In this field, it’s 10% about technical, the rest is all about how you manage people”; “See, how I play politic with those people”; “You must always write comments and come back to me, then I will know what you don’t know”; “You see, I write a lot of comments, even waiting the traffic light, I also write”; “You always look, but you don’t see”; “You understand the English, it’s not enough”; “I wake up everyday 3 am in the morning and start doing my work”; “I hope you don’t mind, working life is like this”; etc.

Saw an article on working life and job- hopping:

“The Two-year Rule

I have a two-year rule I tell my staff and potential employees. The two-year rule is this: you must be willing to commit mentally to spend at least two years in the company before you quit. The reason is this; you need to deal with the learning curve. If you job-hop too often, you learn nothing substantial.

For me, it takes you at least a year to know the ins and outs of the company. Another year before you can eventually be truly productive in adding value to the company. To see the true results of your contribution to the company, for me it takes at least two years. So, if you are more prone to job-hopping and career success is on your mind, then it is time to rethink.”

So, I am not going anywhere in the near future? No one knows... Anyway, I am just a new born...