| Work – How to Leave Corporate America |
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| Written by Samir Nagheenanajar | |
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At the end of my tenure with corporate America I was being paid $84,000 a year, had full benefits, a matching 401K, an office Uptown, and did almost nothing for 40 hours a week. Well to be 100% truthful, I would tell people I worked at least 40 hours a week, but really I worked from 9:30 in the morning to 4:30 in the afternoon with a generous one-hour break for lunch or a trip to the YMCA. Okay, ‘worked’ is the wrong word. I was there in my cube for a minimum of 24 hours a week, and amazingly enough, I hated my job and couldn’t wait to get out. I finally did, after 7 years, and you can, too. First, though, let me fill in the gaps of my life in corporate America. After graduating from a top ACC school and attending a prestigious international MBA program, I was sufficiently groomed to begin my ascent through the ranks of many Fortune 500 companies, starting with what was then a Big Five consulting firm in Atlanta. For some reason, Atlanta didn’t have any jobs for us, so they signed us up to travel 5 days a week, and travel we did. We went from Atlanta to Charlotte on a weekly basis, living in a corporate apartment and flying the client’s corporate jet for close to a year. All to do basically nothing with a bill rate of $125/hr. (And yes, they do have free booze on those corporate jets.) So after doing nothing there for close to 2 years, I couldn’t take it anymore and decided to do nothing for a lot more money for one of our clients in Charlotte. I interviewed with gusto, blew the guy’s socks off with my pedigree and enthusiasm, joined up, and quickly learned their style of doing nothing. And this is where my first tip comes in: while doing nothing for your company, do something for yourself. At my second place of employment, we had access to real-time stock market data. Those screens with all the blinking lights, graphs and numbers were called Bridge Stations, and I had one. I had access to the same information your stock broker does, and man, I traded. Not only stocks, but options, put, calls, LEAPS, Spiders, you name it. As long as I could spell it, I traded it. It was during the dotcom boom and bust, and wow, I was making a killing! Lycos, Ciena, and Lucent, all these companies I had never heard of were making me a lot of money. Too bad I couldn’t keep it, lost it all as quickly as I made it. Not my salary, but a little nest egg I had put away. (I wasn’t stupid--my company was still paying me to fill the role of IT Project Manager.) My second tip enters the story here: if your first option does not succeed, try another. This tip is like throwing spaghetti at a wall; if the first handful doesn’t stick, pick up another and throw till your arm gives out. While still working for the large corporation in Charlotte, I went from trading stocks to creating a business on the Internet. It was called degreehunter.com. It was a job-recruiting website that I created because I couldn’t stand my job (no irony there!). Without ever making any real money at this, I continued the website for a couple years and even brought in a couple partners who for some reason thought it was a good idea. It wasn’t. I left the partnership and they continued for a good while longer, eventually shutting down. This leads me to my third tip: if your attempts don’t succeed, learn something from them. Even if what you learn is that it was a dumb-ass idea to begin with. And, of course, keep your corporate job so that you have plenty of time to work on these ventures. By this time I had moved around in the same corporation for about 5 years--5 long and very boring years. This was causing friction in my life; the constant boredom was causing a very harsh chafing, like sand in your swim trunks, you don’t notice it at first, but then it starts to make you walk funny. That’s what was happening with me--I was starting to be uncomfortable as well as being stressed at work. Doing nothing, as you probably know, is difficult to pull off for long periods of time, especially when you’re trying to look like you’re doing something. The inertia would bleed over into my home life, and I found myself with my ass velcroed to the couch on the weekends, unable to accomplish much of anything. So, thankfully, I was fired. I learned this lesson by jumping over the edge: being fired from a job you hate is a good thing. It is scary as hell at first, but then you realize that you have a multitude of options available to you, especially if you have a severance package and one of your options is resting on the beach for a long weekend.
This was my big break. I was able to sock away one paycheck every two weeks, live on the other paycheck, and come up with another idea. I had learned a lot about the Internet from the first business I started, learned I don’t work well with others when I brought partners on for that business, and took those lessons into my next venture, another business selling on the Internet. Only this time I was doing it by myself. I didn’t stop there, however. I also hooked up with some friends and invested badly in real estate. I just didn’t realize how badly until it was all said and done. But this leads me to two of the most precious lessons I took away. Lesson 1: It pays to diversify. Don’t think linearly. It takes too long. If you’re doing only one side venture at a time while working in corporate America, you’re going to be stuck there like old chewing gum on the sidewalk. You must multi-task; do as many projects as you can at all times; one will prove golden. Lesson 2: Network. My definition of networking is taking long lunches with your co-workers to find out if you can bust out of corporate America with them or realize if they plan to be ‘in it’ for the long haul. If you’re lunching with a long-hauler, move on. Eventually you’ll find someone who shares your interests and wants to bust out. It does not pay to eat lunch at your desk or in your cube. Six months after I started it, my Internet business was moving along smoothly, but it was also getting tedious. But instead of shutting it down, I sold the website for $15,000. I also sold most of the real estate I had invested in and now I had some real money, to do what with I wasn’t sure, but I finally had options. And my options expanded when my contract wasn’t renewed and I was asked to get the hell out of corporate America. This leads me to lesson 3: When you finally leave, suck the marrow out of your government-sponsored unemployment insurance. For six glorious months I was paid $1,600 a month, to do nothing from the comfort of my home. I signed up online and set up automatic payment so I didn’t even have to cash a check; it was automatically deposited into my account. I never thought I would see all the money that I had contributed through my payroll deductions, but oh, how sweet it was to be paid by the government. And of course I didn’t do nothing. I definitely did something with my time. It was hard to see when I was there, but once I had severed the umbilical cord that tied me to corporate America, I realized that not everyone works there. Not everyone works in the glass and steel buildings Uptown; there are quite a few people who take pictures or close mortgages, sell real estate or create art, and make a good living at it. Now that I’m self-employed, I make less than half as much as I once did, work at least 4 times as much, and haven’t taken a vacation day since I left. And I couldn’t be happier. (Besides, they’ll always take you back.) Send us your stories of corporate America, we’ll print the good ones! Desk and chair courtesy of: |
In my case, I thought I was unbelievably lucky. I received a six-month severance package from my first job, and then was hired back in two weeks to the same corporation that fired me. The lucky part was not getting another job; the lucky part was keeping my severance and getting paid as a contractor by the same company. More simply put, for the next six months I was paid twice for doing just about nothing. Even as I write this I find it hard to believe, but at the time even the human resources folks I spoke with encouraged me to do it and said that it happens all the time. 