They go for broke, they take it to the limit, they reach for the
stars and they never look back. Whose shoulders are they standing on? Oh
bother who cares, they are on a mission of professional advancement, and petty
considerations of courtesy and bona fide professionalism mean little.
This is to say I got on the train. I came to Seattle, and I am in
what I gather some around me believe to be a shark tank. Survival of the
fittest is the rule of the game. Back-stabbing and petty positioning pervades
even the most polite of moments. Territorialism is the by-word, and scramble to
the top of the heap is the order of the day.
I, on the other hand, find it patently ridiculous. There is no
reason for me to get excited over this little gig I have found myself. R&S testing
or some such thing, software development, as if respectable people still do
such things. Ordinarily my skills are only required when one of the hustling
little upstarts (like Apple) finds themselves infringing multiple patents or
copyrights. One holds such parties at a distance, a wide and perceptible
distance. One does not lie down with such dogs.
But up here, in the Emerald City as they say, it seems to be en
mode. But it isn’t entirely fair to get down on Seattle. I see this everywhere
if not as prevalent.
The underachieved now
overcompensating Asian is a genus all too itself. The family is invariably
disappointed, the marriage wasn’t what they wanted and very few even bothered
to show up assuming it wasn’t a rushed civil ceremony. Now, all efforts are
placed, rather fruitlessly, into asserting dominance over co-workers who aren’t
even co-workers. We work in the same vicinity, vaguely on the same subject
matter, but in a matter of weeks the project will be over and all the hustling
and obnoxious jockeying has achieved the same as it has always achieved. No
substantive results other than an entire group of people who would prefer to
never work with you again. Ah-So.
The Jettisoned Dot-Com employee: They are all over the place up here. Most have made a decent
living bouncing around from ‘non-profit’ to ‘non-profit’, trying to impart some
knowledge garnered in the heady years of 1996 – 1999, and possibly trying to
recapture old glories. They relentlessly name-drop people you have never heard
of, the type of people who had a ‘position’ in the tech field some years ago,
but got out after making a sizable amount of money and now work for some
oversees charity which allows them to travel and maintain a ‘worldly’cosmopolitan aura. The
Jettisoned Dot-Commer envies the name dropped, but there is also a scarcely
concealed trace of resentment like ‘Why not me? I'm talented.’, but there is always something
accusatory in their tone, as though they are inviting you to mention someone of
similar vague accolades. You realize there are free snacks in the breakroom and
you veer away from the miasma of self-pity as quickly as possible. When you
return you notice the process is repeating itself in an even more open area of
the office which you now avoid.
The “My Wife is the primary
breadwinner and I’m grudgingly OK with it” dude is almost as common as the
underachieving overcompensating Asian. In many ways these guys represent a
level of Gen-X Slack that I haven’t even been able to approximate. Their
participation in itinerant temporary work is augmented by their wife’s hefty
salary so it tends to be even more sparse than my work. This primary income
allows them to support their 2 children which would ordinarily be impossible on
a temporary employee’s salary. The reason I’ve been able to skirt workforce
responsibility for so long is quite easy: No kids, no mortgage, medium student
load debt = I do what the fuck I want whenever the fuck I want. Full stop.
The ‘always sad and
always in North Face’. They are like cockroaches in the Southland. They are
everywhere, they multiply, and they have a collective consciousness that rivals
anything like the Borg. Their fetishizing of everything outdoor and technical
belies a soft romanticism of everything trivial and immaterial. One of them
freely admitted to being ‘competitive’ when it comes to their work. When
reminded that they were on a fixed term temporary assignment the blank open
mouthed stare gazing back at you draws the eye to the ubiquitous North Face
logo. It’s like someone always said, ‘Go climb a mountain.’
They all have something to prove, but they also are not
above hoarding free snacks and food. Their pride has limits, and those limits
are being tested on a daily basis and I have a front row seat. I literally have
a front row seat because for all of their jockeying, positioning, and mindless
curry-favoring they at least have enough sense to stay clearly out of the line
of fire. Save that spot for the adults.
