IT Insights Blog — Employment

Years ago, when I was young and had promise, I was occasionally called an “Ugly American.” (At first I chalked it up to being from America and being marginally less handsome than most.) Being referred to in such an unglamorous manner typically followed my making a statement about how weird something was or looked, e.g., wall maps in foreign countries where the United States isn’t in the middle, or Canadians celebrating Thanksgiving in October. Fortunately, I’ve since come to realize that there are a great many world views besides mine.

Today, trends seem to control our society. We glance multiple times a day at what is trending on Facebook or Twitter because of our innate FOMO (fear of missing out). You check your favorite team’s latest trends in the sporting world, and dive even deeper into your favorite athletes’ statistical trends. To those of you concerned with your personal style, you are checking the latest fashion trends to keep up-to-date.

As a child you were likely asked what you wanted to be when you grew up, and you likely responded with something like a doctor, astronaut or star athlete. For me, my dream was to design roller coasters (for obvious reasons), but that changed over time. My childhood dream may not have come true, but had I wanted, I could have gotten started with a few IT certifications. What is your current dream job? Are you currently working to achieve your dream job?

In 1984, playwright and filmmaker David Mamet wrote a Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning play about the cutthroat world of real estate sales. Eight years later, in 1992, the play, Glengarry Glen Ross, was turned into a film with an all-star cast: Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin, Kevin Spacey and Alec Baldwin. Baldwin pops up only briefly, appearing in a single eight-minute scene as a top sales agent who delivers a lacerating speech to three struggling peers intended to light a bonfire of fear and desperation in their hearts and spur them to better sales performance.

Did you know that Aug. 26 is Women’s Equality Day, so designated by the United States Congress in 1971? It’s frequently observed that woman workers are a minority presence in IT professions, often by dramatic and intimidating margins. The fact that women have generally not been included in certain circles in the past, of course, is no reason to suppose that there simply isn’t a place for women in those circles.