Would you climb?
Over Jin Yu Man Tang, my favourite dessert so far in Singapore, I had a conversation about corporate career with a friend. I had to put “corporate” because the said friend is in academia — and “career” looks decently different for the two contexts.
Anywho — our conversation came to a question:
“Would you climb (the corporate ladder)?”
My mind felt like it was slowing down to what would have been a 0.25x YouTube playback speed. Like.. “Yeah — would I?”
Actually, side-tracking a bit, now that I think about it, I like the fact that my mind paused for a bit. I used to be the person who would say yes to most if not everything. Anything that would mean I am ~advancing~, would be within my grasp without a second thought of whether it will add value to my life. But then again, perhaps back then I was not sure of what I wanted so anything was better than nothing. I am quite sure of it now. Quite. I think.
As for my job. Frankly, I do not particularly love it, but I also do not hate it. And this is not really a good or bad kind of thing. I just see it as a mere fact.
When I was in university, I was starry-eyed about what my career would be. Having done a degree in Development, my idealism was through the roof. I wanted to work in the most altruistic, yet visionary, strategic, innovative and fast-paced company, with clear goals and impact, yada yada yada. Maybe that was my definition of a dream workplace. Which may not exist. I would not say that my idealism came because of a lack of experience though. (Alright perhaps partly).
I worked for a year in a large automotive corporation before, and have done multiple freelancing as well in research and creative industry — and from these, I came to a clear awareness that (a) I generally work fast, faster than the average person I dare say, and (b) the fact that I work fast means I am efficient means I have a lot of extra time, and (c) then I use those extra time to do more things that are meaningful to me like my side gigs in education or in content creation — or even to just rest.
Now I work in a fintech giant. In a role that does not allow for the above a-b-c to happen (and allows my hairline to get thinner instead). The faster I work the more I have in my lot. Again, nothing good or bad about it. Just a fact. I have to say though that the learning curve is incredibly steep. That is I learned so much I did not know I could digest in such a short amount of time. But the rigidity of my role does sometimes make me question things. I’ll just leave it at that *smirk smirk.
The funny thing is. Someone actually made a comment, “Why would a Cambridge graduate do this job?” I do not know if I should be offended. But one thing I know for sure, for what I went through, this job is something I am truly grateful for. I never really looked at myself as a Cambridge graduate needing some elegant precious exorbitantly-paying job (okay let me take that back — perhaps the salary part I will welcome at any time thanks — now I am overthinking if people would consider me a capitalist which I utterly hated before — I am stopping my train of thought here).
Perhaps I should have given you a context — my job is in a customer support role. Although internally “customer support” is a different department altogether, it is easier to explain it like this — I should add too that this description does not capture the entirety of what we do. We also work quite closely with Product and Sales, although we are not product managers. I guess this happens when you are in a huge company. Anyways — my department has a more “sophisticated” name: Analytics. But no we don’t particularly analyse data. Perhaps analysing client’s queries on a day-to-day basis, yes.
Back to the “Why would a Cambridge graduate do this job?” — having done this job for almost the time it takes for a human to be birthed… honestly, my reply is:
Why wouldn’t she?
I am honestly humbled by this job. Perhaps in some ways, I used to look down on customer support roles. Given its reputation for being outsourced to clearly overworked and underpaid staff in emerging economy's labour markets, who also clearly do not want to do the job.
But this role, dealing with analysts and traders and salespersons and the big fish making financial decisions that affect our lives (talk about the ripple effect of finance and economics), man I gotta know their sh*t (and mine too of course). I need not be a veteran trader with 20 years of experience, but at least I have to know their lingo, their ~workflow~, what they care about. And not just one of but I have to bear in mind the multiple personas — if you think of it from a design thinking perspective.
It is not easy. That I can tell for sure.
And I get why they hire people like my colleagues. And many of the more senior members of the businesses, having spent decades here, came from the same starting point — this job. I totally get it. I can even feel in my soul how the job is shaping me as a person.
Most importantly, it is an art. Handling (pressured) clients is not easy, but the more I interact with them the more I realise they are really, at the end of the day, just human. And with any human interaction, we can never put some AI chatbot experience on par with an actual person talking to you. I find it quite comforting in the midst of hocus-pocus of AI taking over jobs.
So I have taken such a long detour here to address the question of … “would you climb the corporate ladder”?
I am thankful my year in Cambridge was not wasted because I still get to critically question the question. Lol. At least my brain still remembers the mental gymnastics. Here you go:
I do think the question has quite some assumptions behind it. Which is interesting. First, that corporate ladder exists to be climbed on. Second, that there is a choice of whether or not to climb. I found the latter quite refreshing.
Of course, if you were to spend a career in a company for long — the only way is up, no?
But I reflected on this by referencing a book I read a couple of months back, “Build” by Tony Fadell the guy who invented (or co-invented?) the Nest and one of the pioneers at Apple. Not all people are meant for “higher up” aka managerial roles. He laid out how some people prefer (and perform better even) staying as individual contributors, and of course, some if not the majority of us, will “climb”. This kind of echoes the second assumption of the original question. I do have a choice (in some ways).
What a good thing to hear that actually. The ladder may not be my battlefield and it is fine.
To the first assumption. I don’t think it is often the case of a ladder. Maybe for some, it is a matter of crawling and building your own ladder. At least that is what I feel. Sometimes the ladder gets too crowded. And as an introvert whose energy gets easily sucked out by the crowd (like… in a literal sense) — of course I am not marching on that war. I will let those people be and assemble my own.
Maybe my reasoning is flawed. Maybe I am a naive 20-something-year-old who is new to the job. Maybe I do not know much about corporate.
But one thing I know for sure. Climbing or not climbing, ladder or no ladder, I will do whatever feels right.
Quite anti-climatic isn't it?
But over the years I have learnt to not over-engineer my wants. As my life motto now goes peeps: I am just figuring life out and winging it as I go.
I hope years down the line I can still have this space in my heart to take life with a pinch of humour and ~not taking it seriously~ vibe. Writing this so I remember. Writing this so I do not lose myself in my pursuit of a “career”. Whatever that may look like in the future.
