This morning I had the privilege of watching a rigging crew put up a pre-fab slab on a building under construction. I was awed because it reminded me of the days, right after graduating from mechanical engineering, when I was doing the same thing as a construction crew putting up a cement plant in Mindanao. The theories in mechanical engineering were of no help in putting up the steel sidings of a huge clinker cooler - that part of the project I was a leadman in.
Over the years I had to reinvent myself to suit to the conditions and circumstances I was in. Prior to retirement I had to make myself savvy to the theories of automation in populating a PCB (printed circuit board) for watches. I had to study the mechanics of adhesives and encapsulating compounds, understanding moments of inertia vis-à-vis high-speed assembly of microscopic ICs (integrated circuits), the practical application of pneumatics while mastering the lingo and practices of upper management.
Now, at 60 yrs of age, I am hard pressed in learning all there is to know about e-commerce. “Earn while you learn,” is the basic tenet of this new frontier of business. It is a frontier that knows no boundaries of principalities, creed, sex, ethnicity or whatever. There is no limit in products to sell, no clear cut demands on capitalization. All it needs is the unlimited desire to succeed despite having had to fail so many times - as I had and still do.
A typical American worker is expected to have no less than 5 career changes in his/her working life, learning, along the way, more than 3 skills to remain competitive in the ever-increasing competitiveness of the labor market place. That’s a lot of reinvention.
Today it has become so common to hear, to the point of being boring and monotonous, of people complaining for lack of jobs. I don’t agree. There are plenty of jobs for people who are capable to handle those jobs. What is in great shortage is the ability of the applicants to the measure up to the requirements of the job market which, thanks to computerization, has become so demanding in knowledge, accuracy and dedication. While the world has drastically changed, our labor market, in general, has remained static and pre-historic.
A guy I worked with had degrees in mechanical and electrical engineering. He started out with the company as service engineer, retiring after more than 20 years as, you guessed it, still a service engineer. He was good, he was bright. Except that he never thought it worthwhile to do something outside of his job description.
“Thinking outside of the box,” is an old saying among motivational speakers and management practitioners. Over the years, it has never lost its magic, not for its having been embraced generally, but because of its “ring.” It sounds good, but bitter to the taste. Well, the time has come for working people to really think outside of the box - the box they have hemmed themselves in - if they expect to survive, at the very least, or want to become rich
Tags: cooler, engineering, pcb, pre-fab, reinventing, savvy, suceed, watches, worker
