Blue Collar Ambition

I have been experiencing a lot of frustration when it comes to the issue of careers. I have had so many thoughts swirling in my head, and I am not alone. These same issues have been on other forums and blogs that I read. I will see if I can break them down.

Generalization vs. Specialization

Wise Bread had an interesting article here on the subject of being a jack-of-all-trades or a master of one. I am in the generalist camp. I think specialization will make you a huge roll of cash if your specialty is in high demand, but you will pay it all back when the market for your skill reverts to the mean and craters. This happened with the computer sci people who made it big during the 90's building the internet, and then found themselves downsized as that same internet enabled companies to hire people in India to work for half the salary of their American counterparts.

The specialization route demands ever more specialization as people train and acquire more education in ever narrowing directions in a vain attempt to maintain their place in their niche. This is why we have so many people in graduate school learning shit applicable to only narrow fields. The result is a glut of higher degrees and mounting student loan debt. This can't go on forever. If you factor in costs of education and the job market volatility, I don't see these specialists being better off than generalists though they make huge dollars in the fat years. They pay it all back in the lean years, and the lean years always come.

I recommend generalization. The result will be lower pay but more consistent employment.

Blue Collar vs. White Collar

I am someone in the unique position of having a foot in both the blue collar and white collar worlds. I work a job that does not require a degree, but I find it more lucrative and personally rewarding than the jobs I could get with my degree. Granted, your typical middle manager will make more than I ever will, but as Taleb pointed out, middle managers are merely lucky coin flippers paid for taking credit for things they did not achieve and fired for taking blame for disasters they did not cause. I am also mystified by the entry level managers who work for less pay than their own employees. The reason for this disparity is simple. Entry level managers take a paycut in the hope of gaining entry into the casino. They take one step backward to take two steps forward. What they don't realize is that a step forward could find themselves stepping on a landmine.

Middle management is not skilled labor. Middle managers produce nothing of value. They make no decisions of any great importance because they are mitigated and ignored as they go down the chain or get overruled by someone up the chain. These people can be fired and not replaced resulting in a positive to the company's bottom line as the company saves money on not paying their bloated salaries. (I worked for a company where a multi-million dollar operation was saved by the brains and balls of a maintenance tech who got written up by a middle manager for not following company policy. Basically, he used a paperclip to fix a relay instead of waiting the week or so it would take for the replacement part to ship. Insanity like this only exists in large companies where office politics and the CYA principle matter more than satisfying customer demands and making profit for owners and shareholders. FWIW, that manager got fired later while the tech accepted an offer for more pay from another outfit.)

I see the white collar world as a world of bullshit. This is a world where an exec spends a bunch of time crafting the perfect PowerPoint presentation for the next big meeting that will amount to nothing. Some part of him yearns to make something of value. But satisfaction eludes him. Meanwhile, a metal fabricator puts a perfect weld on a tank that will hold solution for a factory somewhere. No one will care about that weld unless it breaks, but he cares. It is because his work matters.

People look down on blue collar people or anyone else who has dirty hands at the end of the workday. They place a premium on status which is why we have the bullshit of the white collar world. I can appreciate an accountant, a computer programmer, or an engineer. But these people have more in common with electricians and plumbers than they do with the pointy haired boss in Dilbert. There is a division between the labor and the corporate political class, and you are either on one side or the other. You will either take your plays from Machiavelli or Adam Smith.

Middle managers are useless parasites. This realization quells one's ambition. My own ambition is simply to work hard and be skilled across a variety of fields. I care less about high pay than I do about consistent pay that comes from being able to get a job no matter what economic turmoil may ensue.

The Education Bubble

A college education is free. All you need is a library card. This realization has done a great deal for the expansion of my mind. I am smarter than the average person, and this includes those with advanced degrees. This is because I read. That's it. College education amounts to charging people for reading books. Only dumb people pay to read.

A degree merely confers status on the one holding the degree. It is supposed to signify accomplishment in a field of study, but grade inflation has made this dubious. In addition, a Harvard grad with a C average will make more than a State U. grad with a 4.0 for knowing the same information. It's like owning a Lexus which is a Toyota with better marketing.

In technical fields and the blue collar world, this bullshit does not exist. If you don't know what the fuck you're doing, you can't fake it in these fields. In addition, these worlds often have accomplished workers with no sheepskin whatsoever. The only thing that matters is skill which is the way it should be.

The greatest value in education today is technical training. The tuition is surprisingly cheap, and the return on investment is much higher than having an MBA. This training almost always comes with a guaranteed job. Learning electronics at your local voc ed school will be a better investment than a mathematics Ph.D.

To tie this in with my earlier thoughts on generalization, I envisioned what I call the "Blue Collar Ph.D." Essentially, this is the combination of skills and technical knowledge resulting in a whole greater than the sum of its parts. For instance, imagine an industrial maintenance tech who is also a certified welder and a diesel mechanic and knows carpentry, plumbing, electrical wiring, etc. This may seem like an impossible task and a lot of stuff to know, but I don't see it that way. Blue collar types are supposed to be stupid, but we know better. But the time and money committed to the blue collar Ph.D. is considerably less than you would spend on a real Ph.D. or an MD, or a law degree. Plus, you become more employable the more you learn.

Entrepreneurship is for Suckers

I would love to run my own business, but as Virginia Postrel points out, entrepreneurship is the province of lucky fools. These people are not brilliant or brave so much as lucky and stupid. They have more in common with the lottery players who finance many government expenditures with their ignorance of simple odds.

Taleb made the same points when he said you were better off being a venture capitalist than being an entrepreneur. This stings for me because I see entrepreneurship as being the best way for an average guy like me to make it rich. But Taleb is rich and is not an entrepreneur unless you count starting a hedge fund as a business. I don't.

The best place to put capital is not in a startup but in a diversified portfolio of investments. Whether or not it is Taleb's treasury bond/options strategy or index funds like I prefer, you want to spread your bets and stop envying lucky fools.

The Work Ethic

I read a lot of blogs and books about business, economics, and personal development. Except for Larry Winget, none of them talk about the work ethic. Here's a handy formula for you:

HARD WORK + SIMPLE LIVING = WEALTH

There is a lot of conjecture about why the USA has become the wealthiest nation on the planet. We talk about freedom, innovation, and the like, and I agree that free societies are better than unfree societies. But why? This is because they are more productive. It begins and ends with production. You achieve more by doing more. Unfree societies decline because they steal this motivation through taxation and regulation.

The great dream of people is wealth without production. Everyone wants to live at the expense of everyone else. This isn't just a political thing but a social thing as well. I haven't read in any of the literature that the surest route to success is to spend more time working. But it is.

The mentality is that work is for suckers, and people that work hard are pathological and clinically insane. But I notice these people don't make much money, or they think the way to make money is to "get over." In other words, if you want to be rich, don't be the sucker. Be the fucker who sticks it to the sucker. Sad shit.

Simple living is also condemned. People have leisure time which necessitates leisure activities requiring expensive toys. These would be boats, ATVs, RVs, motorcycles, jet skis, etc. Blue collar people are especially susceptible to this as I see most of these items for sale on the lawns of houses in working class neighborhoods.

When I have free time, I like to spend it with a low cost book. I might splurge on renting a DVD from Blockbuster, but my leisure activities are cheap. My rule is to do nothing that requires purchasing expensive equipment.

Conclusion

The bright red vein running through all these topics and insights I've discussed here is status. People want status, so they spend money and labor on getting advanced degrees, promotions to meaningless jobs with titles, starting businesses that are ovewhelmingly doomed to failure, and living large to impress their friends and families. People crave status and pay a premium to get it. My insight is that we should consider not paying this premium anymore. Work hard instead. Acquire job skills that are marketable and produce something of real value. And live simply. The result of these choices should lead to less stress, greater satisfaction, and financial stability in your life.

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