On Life's Guarantees

May 13, 2009

In life, what I am beginning to learn is that there aren't any guarantees. This notion holds true for many aspects of life. Marriage with the person someone chooses as "the one" isn't a surety that such a person will live the entirety of their life with you. Hard work, diligence, eruditeness, intelligence, faithfulness aren't variables in an equation for a successful and a fulfilling life. Just because one's disposition is gentle, kind, and thoughtful doesn't translate to being accepted by colleagues, or peers. Attaining the accolades of a formal education doesn't guarantee the graduate will be employable, or will be employed at all. Having many friends helps life go along easier, yet many friends does not constitute a safety net from life's hardships. As everyone has experienced, friendships last and other friendships fade. These situations are merely the course of life.

After working more than my share of dead end jobs before, during, and after formal education, I find that most employers frown upon young workers ascending the "corporate ladder". Instead, many employers structure the hierarchy of entry level personnel much in the same way as fast-food franchises. McDonald's, Kentucky Fried Chicken, El Pollo Loco, Del Taco, Panda Express, and the like have a high level of transient workers at the lower end of the company hierarchy. Frankly, designing company hierarchy to allow for a high transient entry level worker population keeps wages low, and the company flexible to adapt to sudden changes in the market or economy. Fast-Food Franchise company structure is simply genius. Thus, this stratified corporate structure is adopted by businesses from architecture firms to zoos.

Yet, as with much in society there is a Catch-22. With stratified corporate structures factoring for the expendability of workers, effectively considering all entry level workers as expendable, even the most erudite, or talented worker is given little or no consideration for advancement in an industry.

People have a tendency to reduce all matter to what they can perceive as matter's simplest points. Effectively, a subject (being the matter, an issue, or the like) is parceled into many parts. For example, an apple when analyzed is assessed in terms of size, shape, color, type, smell, and so forth. Upon determinations based on observational reductions each part is classified in a binary system: like or dislike. In looking at our apple again, the assessor may determine the apple is small, bulbous, red with green streaks, a fuji apple or malus domestica, that smells ripe, and so forth and so on. Then based on the assessors criteria of analysis they determine wether to have or pass on the subject in question. Ultimately, does the person want the fuji apple or something else? In many ways this reductive thinking has helped the human species survive on this blue marble called Earth for more than 10,000 years.

Does a College Degree Really Matter?

Kate Lorenz, CareerBuilder.com Editor

If college drop-outs like Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison and Richard Branson all run wildly successful enterprises, why is Melissa Gerry,* a mid-level manager with years of experience -- but no college degree -- having such a hard time finding a job?

Gerry