Conference turris::womannotes-v1

    I took a seminar a number of years ago that suggested that many
    people have trouble in this area because they don't know what the
    long-term career choices are -- simple lack of information about
    what's on the menu.  
    
    The seminar used some complicated copyrighted forms that the
    instructors invented, but the basic principle was that one needed
    to uncover a lot more information.  Their plan had four steps: 
    
    1.  talk to your boss about career paths.
    
    2.  likewise personnel
    
    3.  Think of a dozen senior people in your area or in the company
    who look like they're doing interesting work.  See if you can find
    out what training they have, how they got where they are, that
    sort of thing.  Try to talk to them personally if you can.
    (especially helpful if you can find other women.) 
    
    4.  In finding out more about the work you're sure to have found
    at least a couple that make you think, "over my dead body." 
    But you probably also found a couple that interest you.  Think
    of what you might do to get to there from where you are now.

    I don't know if this will be any help for you or not.  I found
    it kind of useful for giving me a starting point for thinking
    about my life.
    
    --bonnie

    
    	I've read a claim that most people spend more time on their
    annual Christmas list and planning the shopping logistics than they
    do in planning *their lives*...If you think about it, you'll realise
    that there will be exceptions, but also, that you're not alone :')
    
    	Joe Jas

    Hearsay has it that women are less likely than men to have a career
    path.
    
    Re: not knowing about options
    
    That was part of my standard answer to the standard interviewer's
    question:  I didn't really know what I wanted to do because I didn't
    have enough experience to know what I could be doing.
    
    Hearsay also has it that most people change careers at least once,
    so there are even more options than you might be considering.

    lots of people have long-term plans. for the last ten years or so,
    i've pretty much done without. i landed in boston during an extended
    leave of absence from school only because i could think of no
    objections to coming here. i ended up with a short-term job with
    the boston ballet, then became a secretary at m.i.t., started playing
    with computers, and convinced someone to give me a job at dec. once
    here, i decided to become an engineer (at that point, i went back
    to school), and have fallen into a few jobs since. i guess i have
    a loose vision of the future, but it centers more around how i want
    to feel rather than what i want to do.
    
    liz

    Then again, there are some of us (like me, for instance :-) ) who
    have decided that our long-term goal is to not have any long-term
    goals - other than being healthy and trying to be happy in this life.
    
    I know that some of the goals I picked for myself when I was younger
    didn't end up bringing me happiness.
    
    Conversely, some of my happiest times have come from the least
    anticipated events, or from people I may not have even known existed
    yesterday.
    
    To me, life should be an adventure - not following a step-by-step
    set of instructions from a User's Manual (even though I may have
    been the writer of that document, originally). 
                                                
      Alan             

    My long term goals are always subject to revision.  Some of the
    best experiences I've had in life have come from deviating from
    the master plan.
    
    As long as I'm learning and supporting myself, what I'm doing doesn't
    feel bad to me.
    
    Another of my long term goals is not to get tied down to commitments
    like children or farm animals.  I see my friends doing that and
    know that I don't want to caretake in that way.
    
    I did a lot of personal growth work during my 20's, most of which
    was spent in school.  I had very little money, and I got in debt,
    and I learned things I would never trade for security.  At 35, I
    feel about my job the way many people at my age feel about having
    kids:  I've done enough different things for myself that I can settle
    down and enjoy this.
                  
    I think it's really important to set aside a certain amount of one's
    salary for intriguing workshops, seminars and courses.  I think
    that by following my heart, I stumbled across some things that sounded
    crazy when I thought about doing them, but once I learned about
    them, fit into my life plans in a stimulating way.
    
    I fantasize a lot, and then I look at my fantasies and see if it's
    something I want to try realizing.  
    
    In the last couple of months, I realized that even though I love
    my job, I want lots of career choices open to me.  That way I will
    be in my job because I love it, not because there's nothing else
    I really know how to do.  I decided that even though I have 3
    bachelor's degrees and a master's (liberal arts and social sciences)
    that I want technical training.  So I am pursuing a master's in
    computer science.  It means I have to face my biggest fear of failure:
    math, calculus to be precise.  And I'm doing it, and feeling so
    good about doing it!  Math made no sense to me at 16; at 35 it
    describes a lot of things I've observed for myself...
            
    And that's my most recent learning -- I can spiral back to things
    and have a different relationship to them at different times in
    my life.  If there was something that intrigued you once, check
    it out again a few years later.
    
    Good luck to you, Sarah.  Keep us posted!
    
    Holly

    
    Hmm, some interesting thoughts there. And one or two things I would
    like to mention.
    
    When I say I wish I had a few more long term ambitions, I don't
    want to have a direction to go in and ignore everything else. I
    agree with what some of you have said about the offshoots sometimes
    being the best bits ! If I had a better idea of where I was going
    I don't think it would stop me zooming off in a different direction
    if an opportunity popped up that was unexpected. It's just that
    I would like to have a bit more of a definite direction to start
    with !
    
    When I read Bonnie's reply, I thought, yes that's all good sound
    advice but that's not quite what I meant. Having thought about
    your suggestion to talk to people working in different roles above
    me, I guess the problem is that I can't see myself anywhere around
    here somehow. It's strange that although I am enjoying my job in
    computing very much at the moment, and don't feel that I'd like
    to change careers now, there's just this big blank when I try to
    imagine what I'd like to be doing 5 - 10 years from now.
    
    When I was at school, I always got on very well, loved exams ( well
    as much as any kid would, I didn't like revision but I liked coming
    top of class ! ), and there was always something to aim for. O levels,
    A levels, then I decided I wanted to go to Cambridge and was proud
    that I managed to get in on the entrance exam. Cambridge was wonderful
    for 3 years, then I was thrown out into the big wide world not really
    knowing what to next. Anyway I've been in computing for 3 and 1/2
    years now, and to some extent that feeling of `what am I doing here?'
    has gone, but I still feel that I'm not sure where I'm going work
    wise.
    
    Anyway enough of my woffle, when I start thinking about this I feel
    like I'm going round in circles till I'm not really sure whether
    there is a problem to be bsolved at all, or whether I'm just making
    a mountain out of a molehill.
    
    	Sarah.

    Sarah, I really identified with your base note about how you
    got into computing because it seemed like a natural extension
    of what you were interested in at the time.  I also liked
    math and science, and programming was amazing *fun*, and then
    I found out people would pay me for it!  (I've always
    wondered what kind of choice I would have made if the passion
    of my intellectual life had been, say, medieval French
    literature.  Would I have stayed with what I enjoyed, gotten
    a job in a library, as a teacher...or would I have decided to
    get a degree in a field where they'd pay me enough that I
    could have the leisure time to explore on my own?)

    Especially interviewing, people would ask me "what do you see
    yourself as doing 5-10 years from now?"  I always had trouble
    answering this, because I like what I'm doing *now*, why
    can't I do that 10 years from now?  Am I just short-sighted
    in thinking I'll still be interested in the same stuff that
    I've been interested in for the last 10 years?  For example,
    my father is an elementary school principal, and a quite good
    one; during the last 20 years he's had "opportunities" to
    move "up" into district administration but he's turned them
    down because he likes what he's doing *now*.  But I get the
    feeling that if a person says "gee, I don't really want to
    move 'up' the corporate ladder where they might pay me more
    money but I'll be doing work I hate" people think you're
    lazy, shiftless, not ambitious, not concerned about your
    future...

    On the other hand, sometimes I also wonder why I'm doing this
    work; sometimes it seems pointless and futile.  (I also
    thought you had to be older than 28 to have these feelings!)
    I wonder whether I'd feel more fulfilled in a "people" job,
    perhaps counseling or therapy, or doing something to change
    the world around me (that's usually called politics, an even
    scarier word to me), or whether I'd just feel frustrated at
    the lack of well-defined goals...although programming may not
    change the world, at least I can solve *this* problem *now*,
    and *that* problem next week, and feel I've made some
    progress when I'm done.  This reminds me of a discussion
    elsewhere in this conference about short-term rewards versus
    long-term...

    Anyway, sorry to ramble.  But I don't think you're making a
    mountain out of a molehill.

    -- Linda

    re: .8
    
    Do "long-term goals" have to translate to "moving up the corporate
    ladder"?  For me, they don't. And long-term goals definitely don't
    mean I have my whole life planned out. 
    
    I, too, love what I'm doing, and the only "moving up" in my career
    plans involves getting better and better as a technical writer and
    as a novelist.  And they deal with quality, not with job titles.
    And no matter how much the day to day job is the same, there's
    always new software to learn, new writing and production
    techniques, new ways to tell a story, new stories to tell. 
    
    The project I'm working on now will ship in a couple of months;
    after that I'll be moving into a new role on the same project for
    the next major release.  After that, I don't know what I'll
    be doing for sure.  But I do have some general ideas about
    the kind of work I'd like to be doing (challenging, technically
    difficult, including not only writing but working with and
    contributing to a larger group, for example).  I don't know
    of a particular project that would interest me right now --
    but then we're talking three years down the road and the project
    I'm interested in probably only exists in planning documents
    right now.  
    
    But I have to know myself, my interests and abilities, my
    pleasures and goals, the things that satisfy me, the things
    that repulse me, and the things I refuse to do, so I have a
    better idea whether a particular opportunity is good for me.
    
    Many people (both sexes) are so good at adapting that they can
    find happiness in almost any job or activity they're in, and
    because of this they've never stopped to ask themselves what they
    would find *really* satisfying, really rewarding.  It's almost as
    though they don't believe they really have choices, as if life is
    something that happens to them and all they can do is react. 
    
    Lately I've been feeling the same feelings you describe about
    wanting to do something about society's problems, but "politics"
    is a dirty word in my vocabulary, too.  So what I've been doing is
    getting involved more in local activities -- this year I coached
    an Odyssey of the Mind team (an extracirricular intellectual
    competion) for my daughter's junior high. It was very rewarding to
    work directly with people who can benefit from my experience and
    knowledge.
    
    Is this making any sense at all?  I'm still working on my first
    coffee . . .
    
    --bonnie

    In the past couple of years, some of my long-term goals have finally
    gelled.  They include:                        
                                                  
    	-  Have a second ("homegrown") child      
                                                  
    	-  Possibly adopt a "special" child, if Paul and I feel we feel
    	   	we are able (competent?) to do that
                                                  
    	-  Be a good parent                       
                                                  
    	-  Strengthen my relationship with my husband
                                                  
    	-  Finish my MBA                          
                                                  
    	-  Become a published writer              
                                                  
    	-  Start my own business(es)              
                                                  
    	-  Build a bigger house                   
                                                  
    	-  Buy a summer home                      
                                                  
    	-  Become politically active and make a difference in the treatment
    		of women thru these activities (as well as thru my
		business, writing, parenting, etc.)
                                                  
    	-  Make a contribution (my time and energy vs. just money) to
    		eradicating the problem of battered women and children
    
    	-  Become a decent tennis player.
    
    Hell, maybe I can't do it all.  But, I can try.
    
    	   
    		                                  
                            
                            

    Re: .9
    
    >Do "long-term goals" have to translate to "moving up the corporate
    >ladder"?
    
    I came across an article once on talented-and-gifted people - how
    successful were they?  It then went on to talk about how many of
    them, say, ran their own little shop, as opposed to those who had
    become major executives.  Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

    
    re .11 
    
    Why the Grrrrrrr ? I'm not sure what you're getting at, could you
    explain please ?

re .9

    Bonnie, I have the impression that if I say to people that my
    long-term (career) goals are to keep doing what I'm doing,
    hopefully getting better at it, then I get taken less
    seriously because they perceive that I am not taking my
    career "seriously."  I *think* others perceive that attitude
    as "really" meaning "she's not career oriented; she's a woman
    and her family/personal life means more to her than her
    career; she's willing to stagnate doing the kind of work
    she's doing now rather than looking ahead." 

    As you pointed out, and as I believe from my own family
    experiences, getting better and better at what I like doing
    is a worthy long-term goal in and of itself.  But I have this
    impression that in Corporate America (I can't speak for
    differences in corporate culture in other countries) that's
    "not good enough."  I have the impression that if I want to
    be taken seriously in the position I have *now*, if I want my
    opinions to be respected and evaluated, then I must be
    perceived as interested in moving up and out of it. 

    I don't, by the way, think there is much difference here
    between women and men.  There probably *is* a difference
    between the way people perceive a 30-year-old with "no
    ambition" (even with 8-12 years of experience) and a
    50-year-old with years of proficiency (possibly only 8-12) in
    a particular subject (and possibly no longer any interest in
    "moving up").  So maybe doing what you like and you're good
    at eventually you get taken seriously, whether you've climbed
    the traditional corporate ladder or not.  And then again,
    sometimes people perceive that hypothetical 50-year-old as
    having "stagnated" and "not fulfilled his/her potential."

    -- Linda

    Re: .12
    
    The article implied that success := climbing the corporate ladder,
    which is entirely bogus.  It never occurred to them that running
    a small shop could also be a successful occupation.  Success can
    be measured by things other than salary and power.

    re: .14
    
    Gee, I'd have ranked them the other way around.  On the whole it's
    a lot harder to plan, run, and be responsible for all aspects of
    your own small shop than it is to fit in as part of a team in a
    corporate environment.  Your own business takes a wider variety of
    skills; the corporate worker can specialize.  And it's very rare
    that a corporate executive, except a very high-ranking one, can
    make a decision that makes or breaks the company, while decisions
    like that happen every day when you're running your own company. 
    
    
    re: .13, Linda
    
    I think I understand what you're saying, but I also think you may
    be worrying too much about what you think other people think. You
    seem to be assuming that everyone will think less of you for being
    dedicated to your trade.  While that attitude certainly exists,
    it's far from universal -- especially in DEC, where there's a
    countervailing tendency to think that the only people who go into
    management are the ones who couldn't hack it technically. 
     
    I also think a lot of how people react to you will be determined
    by the way you present your goals.  If you view acquiring new
    technical skills and becoming super-good at your job as
    challenging opportunities, the people you work with will be more
    likely to see you that way, too. 
    
    --bonnie 

    When I think of my long term goals I always think not of what I
    want to be doing but how I want to be living.  To that end, it really
    matters naught what I have to do, (within reason), to get that
    lifestyle.
    
    You can push anybody's paper around.  You can meet anyone's metrics,
    work for any company, what does it matter?  The place I want to
    work is the place that will let me get the things I want to have
    in my life.  If it doesn't, then I really don't care how wonderful the
    company is - it means nothing to me.
    
    Maybe some people really do work because they enjoy it.  I agree
    with Paulina Porizkova who said work is "an irrational intrusion
    into one's personal life".  But hell, she makes more in one fashion
    shoot than I make in ALL my presentations, goals met and skills
    learned and used.
    
    It would be nice to do something for work that one likes to do but
    I can't imagine anyone paying me for watching the sunrise, making
    coffee, watering my plants, weeding the garden, putting the canoe
    in the water, making fabulous dinners and patting my cat.  Given that, 
    all work is indeed an "irrational intrusion" and it had better be able
    to buy me the BEST coffee and the BEST plants and the BEST catfood
    and so on or else its a useless irrational intrusion.
    
    I simply want the job that pays the best and no other.  If I gotta
    "tune out" of my life on a regular basis in order to earn a living,
    I may as well make payday the best it can possibly be.
    
    I want a passive solar home on the water, a Targa or a Jag XJS,
    a canoe, a garden, a few animals, a winecellar and travel.  But
    I'm willing to work for it, I just don't really care much what that
    work actually is.  As John Ruskin once said, (and I don't know who
    he is I just loved the quote), that "the best grace is the knowledge 
    that one has earned their dinner".  I want the knowledge and the
    dinner.  The "earning" is the variable.

    I won't say my mother got paid to do all those things with the
    sunset and the coffee and the dinners, but she never had to work
    for money since my father took care of the bills. 

    --bonnie

    Most married, supported women work around the clock for an ever-present 
    boss and their duties involve their entire beings.
    
    Not an option.

    re: .18
    
    Actually, that hasn't been true of most married supported women
    I've known (except when preschool children were home).  Their
    husband wants their attention for an hour or so in the morning,
    and for dinner and a couple of hours in the evening, but the rest
    of the day was pretty much theirs to do with as they wanted.
    During the work week (which can be pretty long for a blue-collar
    man) he usually doesn't even have the energy to want sex. 
    
    Maybe the women I know are not representative of the women
    in society as a whole, but that's my experience.
    
    --bonnie

    	My long-term goals involve what I consider an "enrichment"
    	process in both my professional and my personal lives.
    
    	As I recently mentioned in another note, I'm going back to
    	school (starting next month) to finish a second Bachelor's,
    	and then move on to a Masters in CS.  Next year, I also
    	hope to appear before whatever_becomes_of_what_is_currently_
    	called_the_Corporate_Engineering_Review_Board (to follow up
    	on the series of boards that I started by the successful
    	completion of the T.P.R.B. board this past fall.)
    
    	In addition to that, I'm involved in other extra projects for
    	my group (and we're *all* going through a lot of the necessary
    	prep needed to support the new VAX products that are coming
    	out now, and in the next year or so.)  The next few years
    	will bring some exciting changes for my group (and for me,)
    	but the road to get there will be extremely hectic (which is
    	OK by me since I *thrive* on all the activity of a busy/changing
    	work group.)
    
    	In my purely personal life, I bought a new piano two weeks ago
    	and have recently begun taking lessons in classical music again
	(as a refresher.)  I studied classical piano for 7 years as
    	a child, but haven't played much at all in my adult life.  It's
    	going to take me awhile to get the strength and agility back
    	into my hands, but it is a labor of love (completely!)  It's
    	every bit as thrilling as I remember it (to hear myself play
    	again.)
    
    	I also bought an encyclopedia set recently (to be delivered
    	in June.)  My son and I were so tired of being curious about
    	things and not having handy references, that I decided to go
    	for broke with a brand new Brittanica set (bound in leather,
    	no less.)  :-)  My son is the most avid reader I've ever met
    	in my life (*especially* for a teenager,) so I figured it was
    	something that would give us both a lot of pleasure in the
    	next few years, in *addition* to the books that we regularly bring
    	home to read.

    	My biggest personal goal in the next couple of years is the
    	remodeling of my house.  I want to expand the master bedroom
    	and add on an enclosed deck (or sun room) on the back of the
    	house (adjoining the enlarged master.)  I have a good-sized
    	(for the neighborhood) corner lot, so there's plenty of room to add
    	on to the house (while still having plenty of backyard left.)
    
    	Decorating and remodeling my house is almost an obsession with
    	me.  I'm having the outside of the house painted this summer,
    	and want to redo the front lawn and possibly put up a new
    	back fence and upgrade my underground sprinkler system (so
    	there's lots and lots to be done to my house.)  It's sort of
    	a never-ending "hobby," I guess, and lends much credence to
    	the saying about how houses own PEOPLE (instead of the other
    	way around.)  :-)  But, it's another labor of love, and it
    	helps to balance out my hectic life at work (and the other
    	things that interest me in my private life.)

    	In my life, the problem is not the lack of long-term goals,
    	but rather finding the time (and the funds) to do all of the
    	things that would be great to do.  I often realize that there
    	are so many more things I could do to enhance my life much
    	furthur, but I'm content (for at least the next few years) to
    	do the things that I've already planned.  
    
    	Then it's on to the next adventure.  :-)

    While I was waiting for my daughter at the eye doctor's yesterday,
    I did what any red-blooded American would do -- read old women's
    magazines.  One of them had an article by Dr. Dwyer (one of your
    basic inspirational I'm-okay-you're-great-too pop psychologists)
    about setting and working for long-term goals.
    
    He made the point that almost everybody has long-term goals,
    whether they call them ambitions, dreams, or goals.  What most
    people don't have is the ability to figure out what to do today,
    or six months from now, that will bring them closer to that dream. 

    His claim was that because of this, millions of Americans were
    enduring family and job situations they found intolerable and
    assuming they could never have anything better.  
    
    There was a kind of checklist of questions to ask yourself about
    your dream, but it boiled down to figuring out what you'd have to
    do to become a doctor, for example, and then finding something you
    could do today to make that dream closer to reality.
    
    I'm not sure I agree with everything he said, but that explanation
    did match fairly closely my experience with women returning to
    college.  Obviously they had long-term goals or they wouldn't have
    been there.  And most of them were highly motivated.  What they
    didn't have was the ability to divide a long-range task up into
    little pieces and do a piece of the task today, another piece
    tomorrow.  
    
    They had a strong tendency to be what I would now call
    interrupt-driven.  Then I didn't have a word for it.  But
    housework is that way.  What has to be done, has to be done now.
    You clean up juice when it spills, you do the laundry when it's
    dirty, your kids need you now, not in ten minutes. On the whole,
    there isn't much difference between urgency and importance. 
     
    In school or work, you have to learn to keep working at the same
    task despite interruptions.  You can't let yourself get distracted
    by less important but more urgent demands.  

    And that was a good explanation of the way the women I worked with
    seemed to react.  After I helped them think through the tasks
    involved in writing a research paper, they worked out a plan of
    attack.  And when I'd talk to them the next time, I'd find that
    they hadn't done any of the things on their plan because they had
    to work on "more important" things that had come up since then.
    But "more important"  usually meant not "more important" but only
    "more urgent." 

    And I've seen enough people who felt they were 'trapped' in bad
    marriages they were afraid to leave because they didn't know how
    to take care of themselves or unrewarding jobs they didn't dare
    leave because they didn't think they'd get another job to believe
    that basically lots of people of both sexes have trouble in this
    area.
    
    --bonnie