Had 2 interesting observations this week concerning jobs and it made me ponder about where we could potentially be heading towards.
On Sunday evening, I had to make a trip to Yangon to attend a short meeting the following morning. Managed to get a free trip to the airport as one of my Citibank account privileges. Started speaking to the driver to get to know about his terms of employment. He was stressing about how hard it is to survive on his net income of only SGD 1,080 per month, that he was paid $10 per trip. On this day, he had 3 in the morning and another 3 at night, so he had a break in the afternoon. He was asking me if I could refer him to a full-time driver role in a company where he can have a fixed salary instead.
On Wed, I met up with my banker to sign up for a mutual fund. He had done some work for me previously and I thought I should give him some business since he told me he was not recognized for the revenue from my online trades. He said he can give me a preferential rate of 0.50% versus the regular 0.85% margin. That worked out to only $50 for a 10k amount. We went into a coffee joint where he did not even offer to buy me a drink. I just signed the documents and within 10 minutes, we were done. He mentioned that there was some likely reorganization that may happen in his bank and the branch he was currently attached to may be closed.
Looking at both the cases above, it made me realize that there is an urgency to be proactive about your position, else you will be left behind. The driver was complaining about his situation, although I thought he had a relatively comfortable job driving a nice car. While his alternative is to look for a salaried job versus a gig scheme, his choices are pretty limited and bleak. I did not have the heart to tell him that driverless cars are coming and that it will wipe out the whole industry of human drivers eventually.
The banker is also trying his best to survive in a cutthroat banking business environment. Margins are razor thin while budget numbers are ever increasing. Machines are taking over anything they can replicate and do it more effectively than humans. My preference is to do everything online rather than to interface with a human. It was so inefficient to close this deal, having to meet up with him in person to sign the docs and have a courier come over 2 days later to get me to sign more docs. I could do everything online in 5 minutes from the bank’s website and I do not mind paying a bit more. The only way he can attract my business was to undercut the commision. But seriously, why would I mind paying 0.35% more to save me the hassle of having to go meet him?
In summary, the speed at which jobs are changing nowadays is constantly moving fast. Redundancy is a given as technology races ahead to replace humans. We have to change our attitude and be more proactive to seek out the next big thing, to assume the worse and strive to work towards our next future job. We must embrace learning as a tool and look to gain new skills in order to make ourselves relevant.
I have to walk the talk. I wrote about my learning journey and the skillsfuture courses I am taking. I do have to admit that I have the luxury of a stable financial situation to pursue this adventure. But the facts remain. If we are not proactive in our careers, we risk being left behind.
I wrote a short article below on LinkedIn on Thurs to encapsulate my thoughts and action plan, to share with others who may be in a similar situation and to put my thoughts in writing to help me stick to the plan :
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Current trends: Companies value cost reduction exercises over work experience. The redundancy of senior PMETs is increasing via “juniorization” strategies. Machines are constantly taking over jobs everywhere.
Given lemons, how can we senior PMETs make lemonade?
Is it possible for people with many years of relevant work experience to reinvent themselves, to pivot into a high demand sector/new career path through the learning of new skills?
Recognised future BIG trends: Big Data, Data Analytics & Data Mining skills.
How does one create value add? By combining years of work experience with newly acquired Business Analytics skills? I am subjecting myself to this experiment. This is a Work In Progress where the eventual outcome not known yet.
As Yoda says : “Do or do not, there is no try”.
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