Entries Tagged 'Career' ↓

My husband loves kids. Recently his best man at our wedding had a baby girl and my husband loves to hold her and look at her adoringly. (I’m jealous!) He did this at church and a woman came up to me and said, “your husband is so cute! He is just fascinated by the baby! When are you having one?”

Obviously, the cheapest thing to do is to have no kids at all, but we both agreed that we would like to have at least one kid. Personally, I believe that having kids earlier in life saves money even though I have read advice that said people should wait to have kids. Here are my reasons as to why I think having kids sooner is financially beneficial to a couple.

1. Your income is lower when you’re young - When you are young or just starting out in your career your income is probably not at the peak. So when you have less money to spend, you will probably not spoil the kid as much as parents who have a lot of money. Additionally, if you have to give up some working days to take care of the kid, the amount you lose is small if you don’t earn all that much to begin with.

2. Inflation - Expenses for food and education are increasing at a much higher rate than the base inflation and wage increases. For example, my college tuition doubled in the 4 years I attended, and food prices are rising at a very high clip lately. If we have a kid earlier, we would probably have to spend less on these things.

3. Physical health and limitations - I have read a lot of stories about women who waited to have kids only to find that it is much harder to get pregnant. This results in fertility treatments that produce unwanted multiple births and other complications. It is also a lot easier for younger women to recover from pregnancy and child bearing so I rather get it over with while I am young. Fertility treatments are expensive, and so are unexpected multiple births.

4. Energy - This is related to physical health. While I am still pretty young I have the energy to take care of the kid and handle a job. From what I have seen, young parents seem to handle the sleepless nights a lot better. I think this abundance of energy we have when we are young is helpful in balancing a career and children. I think if you are less phased at work by your kids, then your potential for career advancement is better.

5. Empty nest would come at a younger age - My mother in law pretty much retired early when she was a little bit over 45 and both of her children were done with college. She had them fairly early on and now she travels all over the world with her husband. Knowing that your children are already adults at a young age really brings peace of mind during retirement. Additionally, you no longer have to financially support them so your retirement expenses are lowered.

Anyway, most people decide to have kids later in life to save more money and advance their careers, but I think if you really want kids and you can safely afford having a kid then earlier is better. My husband doesn’t think I am ready to be a mom mentally, but one of my coworkers said to me, “No one is ever ready to be a parent!” I think that is really true, and I think we will be just fine if we have a kid within the next couple years.

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Today I saw a headline in Boston.com that listed 8 reasons why those under 30 belong to the dumbest generation. I read on, and apparently it’s a gallery based on a new book by Emory English professor Mark Bauerlein titled The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future. Here is a blow by blow of his points with my comments.

1. They make excellent “Jaywalking” targets - Here Bauerlein makes an argument that young people do not know anything beyond friends, work, and Facebook. Well, I know many people older than 30 that do not know anything beyond money, cars, and sports. Basically, I don’t think it’s unique to our generation to focus on things that are narrowly important to ourselves. Jaywalking is a TV show segment that picks out the most hilariously dumb people on the streets, and I have seen Jay find dumb people of all sizes and ages.

2. They don’t read books — and don’t want to, either - I don’t think this generalization could be blanketed onto an entire generation. Some people love to read and some don’t. I am one of those people who used to read almost a book a week, but these days I just don’t have the time to dig through the thousands of books that are written everyday. I do read a lot of news, and I don’t believe that young people don’t want to read books. If we didn’t read books then how do giant bookstores like Amazon sell so many books that are interesting and targeted to our generation?

3. They can’t spell - In this point Bauerlein states that young people’s vocabulary and spelling have been defiled by IMs and text messages. Well, I do a considerable amount of instant messaging every day, and I do use shortcuts sometimes because they are easier to type. Bauerlein seems to miss the point that texting and IMing are forms of communication equivalent to speaking. When you talk to your friends it is completely acceptable to use slang and colloquialisms that are not applicable to formal writing. I think most people I know are aware of this fact and are completely capable of spelling correctly in formal papers and reports even though they IM things like “LOL” and “luv u”.

4. They get ridiculed for original thought, good writing - This is one of the dumbest points I have read. Basically the author states that when a young person actually formally composes something original on MySpace they are ridiculed for their spark of intelligence. Well, guess what, MySpace is not a place for literary greatness, and buddies are ALWAYS making fun of each other on sites like that. My husband writes an extremely intelligent blog about games, and I have never seen him ridiculed on his blog. There is a place for everything, and Bauerlein shouldn’t be scouring MySpace for intelligent discourse.

5. Grand Theft Auto IV, etc.- Ah, here is another required bashing of games and other digital entertainment for the dumbing down of my generation. My husband could probably write a ten page rant about this since he is a video game developer and he gets a bit riled up whenever the media blames video games for the downfall of modern society. Whenever I hear people bashing video games, I wonder if they have ever played a great video game. Yes, there are a lot of dumb games, but there are a lot of dumb books and movies, too. Any piece of entertainment reflects the skill and art of its creators, and I’m sure not all of the trashy pieces of entertainment we see are created by 20 somethings. Anyway, I am pretty sure that the author of this book doesn’t have 1/100th the ingenuity and creativity that goes behind creating a great game.

6. They don’t store the information - Here the author’s point is that young people have access to a lot of information at their fingertips so they don’t make an effort to retain the knowledge they obtain. Instead, they look it up and move on. I don’t think there is anything wrong with this. For example, I am a software engineer by trade, and I don’t make an effort to memorize every defined function in a computer language because things are changing all the time. So when I need to write something I am unfamiliar with I search for functions I need and read documentation. I know pretty much all of my colleagues young and old work the same way. Some of the older people may have stored more in their heads just because they have programmed in a language for a longer period of time, but that doesn’t make them smarter. We don’t store information because there is just so much information we need to know these days. Life isn’t as simple as knowing your multiplication table and this behavior of research instead of memorization is not stupidity. I would argue that it’s actually better than memorization because we constantly obtain updated information.

7. Because their teachers don’t tell them so - Well, this point actually says to me that the teachers are dumb. I have had teachers I needed to correct. The last time this happened was in college in Physics class. There were three problems on a midterm and two of them had wrong answers on the answer key. I had to email the professor and tell him he was wrong. I just want to say that just because there are teachers that do not do their jobs well it doesn’t mean that my generation isn’t learning and thinking.

8. Because they’re young - I made a comment on Can I Get Rich on a Salary saying that it is probably unfair to judge the money habits of generation Y right now because when we are in our 20s we are in a grand stage of transition. Life is confusing and abruptly changing for any generation of people at this age range. Anyway, this is an extremely retarded reason to call an entire generation stupid. It is almost as absurd as calling my friends’ children’s generation dumb just because they are all babies that can’t do anything but poop and eat. I really wonder if Bauerlein admitted how stupid he was when he was young in his book to support this point.

Anyway, I personally know more brilliant 20 somethings than smart older people just because most of my friends are about the same age as me. I researched this Mark Bauerlein a bit and it seems that his students think he is a very condescending guy. I am not surprised, and I am pretty sure he wrote this book to stir up controversy, and also make a bit of money so he is a little less angry about dumb twenty-somethings like me being paid more than a highly educated English professor like him.

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Just recently I read about a case of salary discrimination where a female worker found out that she was paid less than her male counterparts for 19 years. She found out by accident because she was about to retire and a memo was sent to her containing three of her male coworkers’ salaries. She was more senior than most of them and was paid anywhere from 20% to 30% less. This reminded me of one of the companies I worked for because my coworker and I found a list of everyone’s salaries on that company’s shared drive under a folder named Public/Company. If you sorted the list by salary and position it was pretty clear all the women got paid the least in their roles compared to their male counterparts. Additionally, new hires were paid quite a bit more (10 to 20%) than people who have stuck around the company ever since the lean years of 2001 to 2003. When I was leaving the company I made it clear to my manager that I and my cubemate knew this information since it was on a public shared drive where we store our collective files and he was pretty pissed because he found out that a brand new guy a couple levels below him was paid more than him. So he packed up and left soon after me. After we both left nearly everyone in the engineering organization of that company got a raise. It felt like a lot of drama at that time, but I think in the end everyone was better off because the salary information was public (even though it may have been unintentionally public). The people who stuck around got a “market adjustment” and mostly caught up to their new peers, and those of us who left found better opportunities.

So having gone through that incident, I have thought a lot about the pros and cons of public salary information in a corporation. Here are my conclusions:

Pros of public salary information:

1. Companies can’t secretly discriminate against workers if salary information were all public. This will pretty much eliminate lawsuits where employees do find out discriminatory compensation.

2. There is no secrecy between coworkers so there is no speculation as to who is getting paid more, and so everyone can just focus on work. If salaries were posted by position then there wouldn’t be an incident where newcomers with the same positions are paid a lot more just because they joined at a more prosperous time.

3. There would be better accountability for a company as to where their money is going. For example, public companies disclose the pay packages of executives because shareholders like to know the information. Also, the government gives detailed salary information on all positions because they are spending public money. If everyone in a company knew what others were making, then it’s easier to trim the fat when needed.

4. Employees would be more aware of their worth to a company and the career and promotion paths would be more clear. This gives employees direction and something to work towards. In the government they basically state how many years of experience or education you need for a certain pay grade. This makes it easier for people to figure out what they need to do.

Cons of public salary information:

1. Workers may be more complacent in knowing that they will get paid a certain amount as long as they stick around. They may not work to their max potential because they already know what raise and bonuses they would get.  However, I think companies could avoid this complacency by giving out performance based raises and bonuses and clearly state what the rates are for each performance level.

2. Companies would have to shell out a lot more to hire people from competing firms during great economic times because they would have to raise the rates for everyone.  I do think this is a good thing for the employees, but it can be costly for employers.

3. Companies with posted salary information may give  regular but smaller raises and bonuses because they need to make the most amount of people happy.   This is how it is in the government, but it doesn’t have to be always true.

I know that in America people believe that salary information should be confidential, but I really think that open salary information could be beneficial to employees and employers. Since I am Chinese I do discuss salary information with my friends and it is actually very helpful to know what the market rate is for my position.  I think ultimately public salary information has a stabilizing effect in a company because those who are comfortable with what everyone else is being paid are probably happy with what they are being paid.   Since employees often leave companies due to their thoughts about their salary, a company can benefit from workers who are content with their salaries.

What do you think?  Do you work for an agency with public salary information?  Do you wish you worked for one?

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Some time ago I wrote an article about crazy bosses and how they could drive you crazy. I haven’t had any super crazy boss, but I have had some nice bosses. Today I want to discuss the phenomenon when nice bosses actually encourage me to work harder voluntarily.

My current boss is really nice. He is really easy going and trusts people to work on their own. He wants us to get things done, but he never pushes extremely hard. He always allows people to take care of their personal hardships first and seems to truly care about his team. This week I asked for a day off for Friday because of the hubby’s bonus Vegas trip. So I asked if he would sign my vacation form, and he said don’t worry about it and just go. Then he told our entire team that we could take the whole week off because we just finished our release. This is actually the second time he negotiated with upper management to give us a week off. When our team is on a deadline we do work pretty hard and put in time late at night or on weekends so the days off are like a release bonus for all of us. Now the hubby says that I can use the time to clean the house and lose some weight. I’m not sure if that will really happen, but I could try.

I think nice bosses actually encourage me to work harder. When I am left alone and not prodded constantly I tend to finish my tasks faster. The key takeaway here is that if a boss leaves you alone to do your tasks it shows that he or she trusts you. Having that trust allows me to do the best I can do. I think if I had a crazy boss that looked over my shoulders constantly while I worked I would be pretty annoyed and just try to get him or her off my back as soon as possible.

Another thing is that by being nice, a boss actually instills loyalty in his or her reports. I know that in a previous article about Gen-Y and the workplace I wrote that there isn’t much loyalty between employees and companies these days, but there I believe loyalty still exists between people. For example, my team at work all share the same goal when we are working, and we all want our product to be the best so that everyone on the team can look good in the company. Having a nice leader makes me want success for the entire team because in a way I don’t want to disappoint them.

Finally, I believe that having a competent and nice boss is really better than having a higher salary because to me a friendly working environment is more important than money. What do you think? Do nice bosses naturally encourage you to work harder?

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My short life has taken place in three distinct places separated by oceans. They are China, Hawaii, and the San Francisco Bay Area. In terms of income, my family has made more money in the Bay Area than any other place in the world. However, I am not sure that our quality of life has drastically improved from the times when we were dirt poor. It is a bit mind boggling, but here is a side by side comparison of the places I have lived, and how my experience of life isn’t really vastly improved by money.

When I was young, China just opened up to the west, but most agencies were still state owned. My parents were college professors so we lived a pretty middle class lifestyle. We lived in a condo provided by their employer and had enough for all of our basic needs. The biggest purchase my parents made was a color television, and it worked quite well for many many years. I remember watching Ninja Turtles, Denver the Last Dinosaur, The Smurfs, and lots of other American cartoons from the eighties. The government also provided health care and schooling so everything seemed quite fine to me. The education I got in Chinese public schools was quite excellent and definitely gave me an advantage in school later. I knew that my parents didn’t have much money, but for the most part I felt that we had everything we needed. As far as I know, apparently many American people my age had the same kind of middle class suburban childhood as I did, and even watched the same cartoons.

Then we moved to Hawaii, and my parents were students and had no money at all. However,we always had a place to live and I qualified for the free lunch program at my school so I don’t remember ever going hungry. Hawaii is also a beautiful place and I loved living there. There was a kid in my class who came from Los Angeles and he hated Hawaii. I didn’t understand why he hated Hawaii, but he said it was because it is an island and it is so damn small. Since my family didn’t own a car, I felt that the island was huge. I didn’t understand why anyone would hate Hawaii, and I still don’t.

After my parents graduated from school we moved to the San Francisco Bay Area because my aunt already lived here and the economy in Hawaii isn’t that good. They both found jobs and we got a nicer apartment, and then a house, and cars to get to work.  In terms of material wealth, we did have more.  However, the entire Bay Area lifestyle was just so much more stressful than any other place we have ever been. People are just much more competitive and aggressive here and even after ten years I don’t think I am used to it. My parents made more money, but I don’t think our family became happier because of money. Instead, I think money actually created a lot more stress and worry for my parents and me. As they say, “mo’ money, mo’ problems”.

So now my husband and I both pull in decent incomes, and to some people it may seem that we make a lot of money for our age, but I feel that our quality of life is perhaps a little lower than my childhood in China. We have to deal with driving on crazy highways, the lack of job security, and potentially substandard education for our future children. We do live a comfortable life, and we are thankful, but I still long for a simpler and less stressful place to live. Perhaps my memories of China and Hawaii are a bit idyllic because I was still a child, but I would seriously give up my income to live in a place where things didn’t move so fast and the basics of quality education, health care, and housing are not so hard to come by.

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