Painful Real Stories of Engineer Layoffs in Alberta

In 2008, when USA when through a housing crisis and an economic melt-down, the media stayed silent about the heart breaking stories of tens of thousands of families that lost their homes and were forced to live in slums; in dwellings made of tarp and cardboard. Only the independent documentaries covered these heart-breaking stories.

In 2002, when eastern Canada saw the hi-tech industry come crashing down, no one - not a single media outlet - covered the story of tens of thousands of people losing their livelihoods forever. No one interviewed a single engineering graduate to find out what was happening to several thousands of young adults who would have to give up their hard-earned degrees forever.

And now generalized headlines like, "Several people in Alberta have lost their oil & gas jobs" doesn't do the stories any justice. These are real people. They have complicated lives. For many, the fall is hard.

I'm going to talk about two who I know personally. If you want your story told anonymously, please contact me.

(1) A young male engineer. He entered the work force just over 5 years ago. His plan for success was "to make himself indispensable to the employer". (This is the same mistake that I made.) He worked hard, very hard. He tried to make himself indispensable to the employer. He took on responsibilities far beyond his comfort zone and he succeeded. He excelled at difficult tasks and so after 5 years, he was made project lead on a large project. And two weeks later, he was laid off. He had done everything right. He worked hard. He spoke politely to his managers. He made concrete career goals. He didn't cut corners. He dealt with suppliers and contractors cleverly. He made money on the project (i.e. no deficit in the budget). And? And he bought a home. And 4 months ago he had his first child. And today? He is unemployed.

(2) Female technician. Sacrificed several personal goals to further her career. Did not take breaks like she wanted to, so that she could continue on her career path. She worked incredibly hard. Had an unblemished resume - until August 2014 when she was laid off. Now she has a half-year gap in her resume which fills her with dread. In any industry, a half-year gap is the equivalent of career leprosy: No one wants to touch you. She has sold her home. And her husband works for half his wage in a far-off city.

Somewhere I read an obtuse article where the writer was "worried about staffing issues when the economy picks up". I think I mentioned it in one of my earlier blog posts. How about worrying about the people that don't have money to pay their mortgages? How about worrying about creating company policies that give employees a cushion (monetary and work skills) so that they can deal with economic down-turns successfully? How about generating some awareness for future employees on how volatile the oil & gas industry is? How about looking into the lives of the people that are being affected by this oil crash? How about some honest journalism? How about some basic fucking journalism? How about some empathy? Or has the soul-less, lazy, pathetic excuse of journalism you sell taken up so much of your time that you can no longer tell how you are now pandering the wishes of a soul-less corporate entity while stomping on the dignity and respect of real individuals? Pathetic.

I fumed at another recession related article I read today where an HR person said, "The best way to be recession-proof is to make yourself indispensable to your company.". Naivete does not excuse ignorance. I'm so sick of HR people pretending to work for the best interests of the employee whilst doing everything in their power to stomp on individual dignity.

Hear me again everyone: There is no shortage of Engineers on this planet. What there is also plenty of, is greed. Under-staffing problems are not because there aren't enough qualified people in the job market. It's because companies want to stay under-staffed to fatten their bottom line.

If only Engineers had the life-span of fruit flies. Then everyone in HR and upper management would be happy.

Tenets To Live By (For Recovering Overachievers): Prohairesis

I suppose there are two kinds of over-achievers.
(a) Those who over-achieve naturally, regardless of the input of others. They just follow their instincts and their heart and the result is: exceptional achievement.

And then there are ....

(b) Those who grind themselves to the ground in their efforts to please their relatives and peers. Their lack of self-acceptance completely overshadows any other thoughts, feelings or emotions. They pursue self-acceptance through the eyes of others. And it is a horrid journey.

I've taken this journey because I belong to 'b' family. (Maybe I should have reversed the list above so I could belong to 'a' family instead. 'a' sounds superior to 'b'.)

Pleasing others is exhausting. Members of 'b' family burn out, loathe themselves in varying degrees, get sick and unhealthy from overwork and exhaustion, and look a bit foolish doing all this. They look most foolish to themselves because they wonder ... what (the heck) are they doing and who are they doing it for?

I asked myself those last two questions daily and never got an answer better than, "Well, I don't know what I'm doing and I'm sure as heck not doing it for me."

I have, in my pursuit of philosophy, stumbled across a few wonderful ideas that I wish to incorporate into my daily life. And I will present them one by one.

Prohairesis 

(Stoicism, Aristotle, Epictetus)

In a very simple sense, Prohairesis is the result of a happy collaboration between our rational thought (logos) and our irrational desires (orexis). "The concord of reason and desire." (1) Charles Chamberlain writes beautifully on this.

Aristotle says this: In our daily lives, once we have rationally decided to pursue a course of action, we must align our desire with that action. "We must make our desire accord with reason."

"Children and animals have no share in prohairesis." (1)

Aristotle goes on to say that:

"The weak willed man (akrates) acts in accordance with desire, not with commitment (prohairoumenos), while the continent man (engkrates) on the other hand acts in accordance with commitment not with desire."

Where I disagree:
Chamberlain goes on to say that, "The engkrates, who has also undertaken a commitment, feels the pull of desire, but perseveres. By doing so, he allows new desire to form."

I can guarantee that the writer of this post (that's me) is a quintessential engkrates that did not develop a new desire. I undertook a commitment (engineering), I felt the pull of desire (other meaningful and honourable pursuits), I persevered (4 years of engineering and 13 years of professional practice), and it ended in despair. No seeds of desire sprung into saplings of corporate greed, or deceitful tactics. Neither did the love of endless toil that bore sub-par fruit blossom in my tender heart.

However, I think Prohairesis has hopes for the likes of us (i.e. overachieving people pleasers) in Epictetus' Discourses below (2):

"No one is master of another's prohairesis [moral character], and in this alone lies good and evil. No one, therefore, can secure the good for me, or involve me in evil, but I alone have authority over myself in these matters." (Discourses 4.12.7–8, trans. Dobbin)

I cannot control the rational thought or the desires of another. (Read as: my verbally abuse co-worker has his/her own set of rational thoughts and desires. Neither am I privy to them, nor do I have any control of them. How insultingly simple.)
And in this alone lies good and evil. My participation is secured - by the greatest actor of this play: ME.

"Some things are up to us [eph' hêmin] and some things are not up to us. Our opinions are up to us, and our impulses, desires, aversions–in short, whatever is our own doing. Our bodies are not up to us, nor are our possessions, our reputations, or our public offices, or, that is, whatever is not our own doing." (Handbook 1.1, trans. White)

If we took control of, took responsibility for, those things that are within our power, that are up to us, we would be happy. Would we not?

We try so hard to control the happiness of others by working 80 hours a week, abandoning our families, neglecting our bodies, but can we control the happiness of our bosses? No. They remain unhappy. The jokes I kept hearing during crunch time, "He's a crabby old man because his wife doesn't put out." have a terrible ring of truth to them. We don't know why he's crabby.... we don't know what motivates the other, yet we try so hard to control their responses. 

We ignore the things we can control. Our own mood, desires, location, health, happiness. We sacrifice these things, why? Has it been taught to us from a young age? Or can we be brave enough to admit that it is in our nature to do this?

Every time I feel seething rage at someone else for their behaviour, I must remember that what I can control is my anger and not their behaviour. When I feel crushed and broken after receiving a poor review of my work, all I have to do is identify that my feelings of dismay are within my control and the review presented to me is not.

That which we have power over, we must take responsibility for. Then we must proceed to control it, for therein lies our happiness. The moods, whims, fantasies, wishes, desires, anger, disappointment of the other is not within our power. To try and control it is madness.

It is therefore a sin to give our efforts away to fruitless endeavour. It is an affront to us, and to nature, to try and defy what is laid out in front of us.

Be the master of your mood, and therefore your fate. Let the other master his/her own destiny.

And in this way, let us be selfish. Would the world not be a better place?

References:

(1) The Meaning of Prohairesis in Aristotle's Ethics

Charles Chamberlain

Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-)

Vol. 114 (1984), pp. 147-157
(2)  http://www.iep.utm.edu/epictetu/

"To maintain our prohairesis (moral character) in the proper condition – the successful accomplishment of this being necessary and sufficient for eudaimonia ('happiness') – we must understand what is eph' hêmin ('in our power' or 'up to us'; see Discourses 1.22.9–16). If we do not do this, our prohairesis will remain in a faulty condition, for we will remain convinced that things such as wealth and status are good when they are really indifferent, troubled by frustrations and anxieties, subject to disturbing emotions we do not want and cannot control, all of which make life unpleasant and unrewarding, sometimes overwhelmingly so. This is why Epictetus remarks: 'This is the proper goal, to practise how to remove from one's life sorrows and laments, and cries of "Alas" and "Poor me", and misfortune and disappointment' (Discourses 1.4.23, trans. Dobbin).

No one is master of another's prohairesis [moral character], and in this alone lies good and evil. No one, therefore, can secure the good for me, or involve me in evil, but I alone have authority over myself in these matters. (Discourses 4.12.7–8, trans. Dobbin)

What is in our power, then, is the 'authority over ourselves' that we have regarding our capacity to judge what is good and what is evil. Outside our power are 'external things', which are 'indifferent' with respect to being good or evil. These indifferents, as we saw in the previous section, number those things that are conventionally deemed to be good and those that are conventionally deemed to be bad. Roughly, they are things that 'just happen', and they are not in our power in the sense that we do not have absolute control to make them occur just as we wish, or to make them have exactly the outcomes that we desire. Thus, for example, sickness is not in our power because it is not wholly up to us whether we get sick, and how often, nor whether we will recover quickly or indeed at all. Now, it makes sense to visit a doctor when we feel ill, but the competence of the doctor is not in our power, and neither is the effectiveness of any treatment that we might be offered. So generally, it makes sense to manage our affairs carefully and responsibly, but the ultimate outcome of any affair is, actually, not in our power.
What is in our power is the capacity to adapt ourselves to all that comes about, to judge anything that is 'dispreferred' not as bad, but as indifferent and not strong enough to overwhelm our strength of character.
The Handbook of Epictetus begins with these words:

Some things are up to us [eph' hêmin] and some things are not up to us. Our opinions are up to us, and our impulses, desires, aversions–in short, whatever is our own doing. Our bodies are not up to us, nor are our possessions, our reputations, or our public offices, or, that is, whatever is not our own doing. (Handbook 1.1, trans. White)

That is, we have power over our own minds. The opinions we hold of things, the intentions we form, what we value and what we are averse to are all wholly up to us. Although we may take precautions, whether our possessions are carried off by a thief is not up us (but the intention to steal, that of course is in the power of the thief), and our reputations, in whatever quarter, must be decided by what other people think of us, and what they do think is up to them. Remaining calm in the face of adversity and controlling our emotions no matter what the provocation (qualities of character that to this day are referred to as 'being stoical'), are accomplished in the full Stoic sense, for Epictetus, by making proper use of impressions."

(3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohairesis

Why It's A Big Mistake To Do Free (Unpaid) Overtime

A Purely Financial mistake because: The way the economies of this earth work,  it makes perfect holistic sense (from one angle) that companies make workers work extra hard (and by that I mean over 40 hours a week) during economic highs. The trade-off is that it lays off workers during economic lows. The extra time the workers worked, helps accumulate the personal fat that is (expected) to be used during lean times. So if your company - or profession - wants you to work for free after you've completed your 40 hours a week, then they are setting you up for your personal financial ruin. To me there could be nothing more malicious than this. There is a very high chance - nearing the inevitable - that you will be laid off during lean times. By not paying you for your extra efforts fairly, the company is actually conspiring to put you and your family out on the street.

It is a Moral mistake, because you don't take anything for free from your company, yet your company expects to take your irreversible time and precious effort for zero compensation. Some of you are thinking, "It's the price I'm willing to pay to stay employed." Ok, no argument there. Just be aware of the trade-off you are engaging in. It is worthwhile to explore professions or jobs where you are  compensated for your time with payment or time-off. I wasn't. I was being swindled by a mega-corporation. And I agreed to it by signing my name on that contract of servitude. Thank the stars it wasn't the equivalent of indentured servitude - which many unfortunate souls are subjected to when they sell their company. Several of my co-workers did not file expense claims in the order of thousands of dollars and I thought that was obtuse. Yet there I was, working 80 hours a week and getting paid for 40, effectively reducing my hourly salary to half. Stupid isn't a strong enough word or descriptive enough word for what I did.

A Personal mistake because - and I can only speak from my experience - I paid for that free time I gave to the company with more than lost income. I paid for it with my health and more important to me - my peace of mind. Overwork and exhaustion made me prone to anxiety and directly caused me to lose sleep and my appetite. I would wake up after 2 hours of sleep in cold sweat thinking of all the unachievable deadlines. Unachievable purely due to logistical reasons. If you throw one person at a three-person job, you won't be able to meet a deadline. Under-delivering is swindling the client. Far too many EPCMs engage in this far too often.

A Professional mistake because you will burn out like I did. If you enjoy your work, don't make this mistake because you'll pay for it with your career. I don't know if I can say I was fortunate that I didn't particularly love my line of work to begin with, so it didn't matter that I permanently burnt out. But if this were a field I was truly passionate about, I would be bitter at the company for taking away something from me that I enjoyed - my work, my means of livelihood.