Put Everything at Stake

When I recently completed two busy years at my ex employer, my LinkedIn inbox flooded with ‘congratulatory’ emails. You know, the one that LinkedIn has so thoughtfully penned so that we can just hit the ‘Send’ button instead of actually typing something useful, or god forbid, personal. 

After limboing for more than two weeks, I finally updated my current position on LinkedIn to a savvier version of ‘unemployed’. In case you are searching your ignorant brain, it is ‘Independent Consultant’. By that time I had lost the rest of my sparse bravado and was sweating at how my established and much secure peer group would react at this coup de idiocy.  Now, LinkedIn’s profile format mandates that we enter the name of the company we are working at, so I checked the only option that I was prompted - ‘Self Employed’. So now I am, if one had to make a sentence out of this as we would of any full time job, independently working at employing myself. 

Then I forgot to toggle the button that proclaimed ‘yes, publish an update to my network about my profile changes’ before making said edits. Might as well shout out my potential pennilessness to the world. Que sera sera and all that. 

Before barrelling into the much anticipated self flagellation on this seemingly unreasonable decision, I agreed with myself that I now had a lot at stake. I had given up my only source of regular income (not to mention the emotional security of a job and all its attendant benefits like free lunches), so I owed it to myself to make better use of my time. If I squandered this period of my life I would have no one else to blame but myself, for a change. If one turned this statement around (the mathematical equivalent of its contradiction being true if a statement was true) it would be that employed management professionals in the mid-senior level have notoriously less to lose. I have a weakness for Victorian era stories, so I see a strong parallel here. During the late 1890s, the aristocracy ruled most of Britain. They had so much wealth - immovable assets like land and farms which generated income - that maintaining it was in itself a lifelong job. While a few exceptions multiplied their holdings and therefore their wealth, a large majority lived a life of decadence: singing, dancing and wining their lives away. The ton, as this set was fashionably called, was known for its unforgiving attitude towards anyone who crossed the line of propriety in any form. To me the only plausible explanation for this uselessly rigid behaviour was that they had so much of material comfort, that the only thing that mattered anymore was their reputations.

To cut to the present, whenever I have socialised with my peer group, the only thing that has mattered was where everyone was working. What was earlier a vocal exclamation of pleasant surprise and not a little envy (because I had worked at what was viewed as a 'happening startup'), now I see a casual shrug and a not so covert move away towards someone with whom they can do corporate speak, and maybe further their 'network'. 

It is no surprise therefore, that more than 12 hours after I mistakenly told my LinkedIn network my new job, my inbox remains bereft of congratulatory messages. Here’s my vote for a message template that reads: “Congratulations on following your true calling. Hope you have fun and write about it someday.”