I posted this huge entry expressing my frustration with the job market and the way that some of us secretly help everyone else to do their jobs (you know us, we are the “go-to” people that you call with questions because you’re guessing we’ll know the answers, and we usually do) while suffering financially themselves, somehow unhirable to do the same things they perpetually help others to do or teach about. But I deleted that post. It was too long-winded and bitter. I’ll just add these thoughts:

When I get my Ph.D. and begin to contribute in really surprising and important ways, I want to state publicly, at least once, that the Ph.D. doesn’t even scratch the surface of what I can do (and have always been able to do) in any number of areas; it’s just a process I grudgingly pursued because somehow society otherwise failed to credit me for my considerable contributions, knowledge, and skills at all. Yes, I know that all I’ll get credit for is my Ph.D. and my publications. But I’m here to tell you that those are 5% of what I know and can do and I’ll continue to contribute in a million other ways without compensation or recognition, as will the other top functioners in society.

If you’ve been helped for free in the past year by someone you know who’s just “always helpful,” consider saying thanks to them again. Call them up and thank them, out of the blue, for the help that they gave you, especially if they helped you while you were on the job, getting paid — if their expertise helped to preserve your income, ehance your performance review, streamline your office, or bring you a buck. It’s the least you can do.

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As a side note, for those who want to understand my comment better, the issue is the division between enterpreneurs (experts in business) and experts in other areas. Experts in other areas don’t start businesses because they don’t know much about business. They’re not a CEO or an HR manager or a mid-level operations manager. They’re an expert in some applied or theoretical field. They’re hoping to work for someone who needs them.

Business people, on the other hand — CEOs and HR managers and mid-level ops people — know all about business: bottom lines, motivation, paperwork, efficiency, morale, etc… and they know nothing about any of the fields from which they have to hire employees. So they try to apply the value judgments from business to experts in other fields when making selections… and they end up choosing people who are 25% of the employee that they could have had at half the cost, because their criteria were totally inappropriate (and they don’t have any knowledge of the correct criteria, or how to make judgments about such criteria having been met in a given field).

It’s a classic problem across a spectrum of expressions. In some of us, it is very strongly expressed (i.e. I am so far away from CEO or HR manager it’s hilarious). But in all cases, whether egregious or slight, it lowers quality, morale, and productivity while raising costs and liabilities.

But the enterpreneurs don’t know any better. And the top skilled/educated laborers in any field have no interest in being enterpreneurs… so, in our economy at least, you’re never getting the best product possible — just the best product that the MBAs were able to organize for you, with their limited understanding of any product, process, or measure of validity outside of business itself.

It’s so frustrating. All of these employed people are always coming to me to help out with stuff they’re getting paid to do, becuase I’m one of those rare people who actually knows how to do it. The story is the same as usual:

– Person X takes a class from person Y on product Z
– Person Y says they don’t fully understand product Z
– So person X doesn’t fully understand product Z
– But person X needs product Z for work
– So person X calls me, and I help them with
   * What they’re paid to do
   * What Y was paid to teach them but didn’t or couldn’t
– I get paid nothing by society, even though
   * I’m really hurting
   * I help lots of people with product Z
   * Unlike most, I fully understand product Z, not just how to use it, but how it works
   * I’ve applied (and not been hired) many times to jobs using product Z
   * I’ve applied (and not been hired) to teach about product Z

There are so many persons X and Y and products Z in my life over the years that I absolutely lose count. All the “thanks!” are echoing in my ears, but other than friendly satisfaction, I have little to show for them.

I’ve applied for so many jobs in my life, and have gotten very, very few of them. The ones that I have landed have been crap, by and large, low hourly with no benefits or freelance/contract with no benefits and no rights. Fast food. Customer service. Writing/editing grunt work. And yet right now I’d love to have any of them, since I’m broke and in fiscal trouble. I sit here all day and fill out applications and send out resumés and everyone says I’m really impressive and then nothing. I don’t get hired for the jobs that X and Y hold, even though X and Y aren’t quite qualified to do them and I end up doing them for free in the end anyway when X or Y (or both) come to me.

Ethical dilemma: do I stop helping people and just pretend I know as little as commercial society credits me with? I still won’t get paid for anything, still won’t have a job, and in the meantime, I won’t be doing my best for the world. But at the same time, what encouragement is there for anyone to know how to do anything if there are people like me out there who are free-laborers at:

– Copy writing
– Copy editing
– Networking, network integration, network deployment, and network security
– Rapid application development
– Web development
– E-commerce administration and hosting
– Systems integration, infrastructure, legacy systems
– Technology consulting
– Social services consulting

I have helped so many people make so much money over the years… yet I’m still broke… and nobody will pay me to do anything, it seems. My credit is worse every year, and my bank book smaller. I have fewer and fewer things to do as the people that I’ve helped over the years gradually increase their skills and improve their positions based on the help that I gave them, eventually no longer needing me.

I am trying not to be bitter, but when you have bills to pay and people still needing my help with things they’re getting paid for and I’m not, it’s tough. It’s not that I hate helping — totally opposite, I love helping people out. But if I’m willing to always help and contribute so much to society, why is society trying to destroy me? Why is my credit rotten, why am I homeless, why can’t I afford to operate a motor vehicle, and why can’t I get a job?

I don’t know what the answer is. Everything I come up with as an explanation or a comment sounds really bitter. I just don’t know. I’m exhausted. Very, very exhausted. Every day I’m more exhausted than the last. I don’t know how long I can keep this up before I absolutely reject the “social contract.”

SOMEBODY GIVE ME A JOB! I’M AN IQ 150 MASTER OF ARTS FROM A WORLD-RENOWNED GRADUATE SCHOOL THAT CAN DO ALMOST ANYTHING ON EARTH YOU THROW AT ME, WITH AN EXISTING KNOWLEDGE BREADTH THAT FEW ON EARTH CAN MATCH!

Plus, I’m bright.

The longer I’m here the more I realize why everyone hates Californians.

Hey, California, you and your little bourgeois faux-paradise-of-Mercedes are going to fall into the ocean sooner or later, and nobody is going to come and save you because NOBODY IN THE REST OF THE WORLD CARES…

…so FUCK YOU!