[If this writing space is a blog, this is a post. And when oral sketches or resumes don't convey the texture of things very well, a narrative might, noematics notwithstanding.]
Conventional wisdom says the grass is not greener--don't make a move. Stay in your pasture.
I have researched this hypothesis for years. Perhaps soon I will prove it one way or the other. I may also be able to answer the related question: Have I have caught up with the times, or have they caught up with me? These thoughts are not necessarily related. I should explain.
I just completed a phone interview with a company a world away. They called me, and with the mobile service at my end I didn't have to pay. Greener-pasture types, particularly those looking to work in the service of a vision, appreciate any breaks they can get wherever they are.
It came up during the interview that it would be possible to work at a distance. Echoes of dreams past and partial realizations--I recorded for my interviewer my strong interest in this possibility. And now that I have made it this far through the gauntlet toward legitimate employment again, I am anxious to talk with the decision maker for hiring at his earliest convenience. I can smell the green grass.
It has taken many miles and turns in the road to get to this point and see why at-a-distance is compelling for me, maybe an imperative. If you know there is a better and right fit for you and your skills but have yet to un-Earth the job, you might be interested in my indirect paths for doing so and a few of the milestones and bumps I encountered along the way.
First, if you have read or heard Barbara Ehrenbach on the plights of US worker-bees and career changers, know that this road I have travelled has had all the obstacles and potholes she has mapped in today's labor landscape. Second, if you have considered Thomas Friedman's flat world thesis and supporting illustrations, you will recognize my discoveries on his map. But enough prefacing.
In the early 1990s, I took my employees out to lunch. (I was practicing a management behavior.) Bogdan, an escapee from Soviet-era Poland who could never return before this point in history, always seemed to enjoy socializing on company time, and even better with lunch on the boss. I, a frequent European traveller and one-time resident of West Germany, liked to talk about world affairs. I followed what was going on in what was Czechoslovakia and Russia-allied Poland. Shipyard worker Lech Walesa and Solidarity and writer-dissident Vaclav Havel were familiar figures in The Economist issues I managed to devour during this period in my life.
At our employees lunch, I asked Bogdan, "What are you going to do now that you can go back to your country?" He replied, "What are we going to do?"
In this pre-Web era, that challenge led to my founding a nonprofit to support international and intercultural projects, recruiting consultants via listservs, arranging logistics via fax, and working out program particulars via e-mail. A goodwill tour to Bogdan's hometown of Wroclaw to teach some courses in Western business practices at an economics institute took place. And we also had talks on possible joint business ventures. After having delivered a series of not-terribly-successful courses, but having had promising business start-up discussions, and while on my way to visit old haunts and friends, I decided that the ideal life would be to live in Munich and commute into Poland and get this international and intercultural consulting stuff down better. Plus there might be a business or two I could start with the insiders I would meet. There was a living to be made and it was challenging and personally rewarding. I was and continue to be a student of cultures.
I returned to my home in the mountains of Colorado, and some people were talking about running their businesses as "lone eagles" from where they preferred to live, the physical plants, production, staff, and so forth located elsewhere. This idea appealed to me. I could keep my nonprofit going and do good works from where I wanted and where I might be needed. Idealists make good greener-pasture types.
Milestone one. A brave new world could be realized by working where you wanted using the tools already and becoming available.
All arrangements for my first personal Peace Corps mission of Polish (ad)ventures had been essentially successful. I told myself this bi-continental "space" where I wanted to be was possible, and I had experienced how temporary teams of consultants, future partners, and clients could meet our interests virtually and tangibly. I wrote a short article at the time noting how I had created an instance of a project-focused, virtual organization to deliver a one-off goods and services mission using modern communications technologies. And we delivered based on cross-border collaboration, not from a one-way/top down/here's-our-aide perspective. There was vastly rewarding work for those with interests and skills to share to create the new where it might be needed.
One thing led to another, and didn't. Personal and Polish plans got interrupted, and so the dream of being "world citizen" as envisioned did not materialize.
Milestone two. Unanticipated stuff always has to be factored into the best plans; or equally true, stuff just happens and we try to recover as best we can.
My connection to Eastern Europe and education had been somehow soldered into place with my business consulting trip to those clamoring for greater and greater acceleration along the transition highway, from central command and production quotas to democratic and market-driven inventories. I logged time in the Czech Republic and the former East Germany teaching the language and concepts new capitalists needed to know. I supported my students and stretched them. Using computers and the Internet to store and transmit learning materials was my signature. The virtual work and learning spaces intrigued me and extended and expanded my classrooms. And so as I learned and practiced this new specialty called e-learning, I started and completed my own graduate studies, at a distance, and, based in part on world-of-work and education lessons learned, I legitimized myself as a tech savvy, modestly travelled, culturally inquisitive training programs manager and educator.
Note what I was doing and how as mile markers if not milestones. I began supporting my students and clients via information and communications technologies as I was supported in the same ways for my own intellectual and career development.
In Germany, I had access to a wonderful English library. I picked up Ehrenbach's Harper's article about working at minimum wage. I found her story and observations fascinating. She was doing a kind of systems research by living and working in a new-for-her, not-so-green (in the sense of money) pasture, and reporting on and giving analyses of her experiences. I felt reinforced I was on the right track with my research and teaching interests, headed perhaps to my own greener parcel on this planet. I was the webmaster for a university institute teaching teachers cultural studies and how to use stand-alone and networked computers to support learning.
I peeked through the fence and decided that my next career move would be straight for further qualifications in technologies and teaching where it was happening, the West Coast. I also wanted to practice what I was preaching, not unlike in a former life where I had trained managers and supervisors and then became one. Only a nine-month-long fence called a job search prevented me from assuming my duties in a traditional American post secondary institution as quickly as I had wanted. Barbara was probably correct in her assessments of the US employment market. But I somehow escaped the un- and under-employment abyss.
I became a webmaster at a multi-campus community college with one of my duties being to support teachers and the technology to take the traditional classroom online. My experience there was that no one knew what I looked like or where my office was. I was always accessible by phone or online. But I was almost invisible providing needed services and products. If I sensed having a face-to-face meeting or personally support a teacher or department with this new at-a-distance world, I would meet where they worked or taught. This partial realization of how to blend education and technology seemed to be working in academia.
Milestone. Where you think it is at is a moving target.
While in Prague in the mid 90s, a friend from California and I demonstrated voice over IP to a live multinational audience of educators from Eastern Europe. Later my friend would start a company to teach technology using the Internet and the latest e-learning tools. He invited me to become the e-learning director and technical helpdesk for his dot-com company. With the college, the new company, and me on board and on the same page, I moved to California to work at global headquarters, a rented office with two desktops, one server, and one employee. During this 24/7/365 job, I didn't skip a beat as the college webmaster and the e-learning resource "on campus." Once every three weeks, notebook and mobile phone in tow, I would return to my other physical office and meet with those who needed the touch part to get up and running with the tech part. Everyone was happy except me. I was unable to enjoy the new pastures.
Milestone. Ironically, there are physical limits to working virtually. Being accessible and responsible non-stop, round the clock doesn't mean you physically can be. (The key to success is you and not the technologies that permit you to extend and expand yourself.)
Now as a dot-com e-learning guru, I could not serve the needs of system administrators and instructors around the world each day. It was impossible, and keeping up with the changes in software versions and features we were using became overly complex and sometimes chaotic. We were suffering. Our firm was undercapitalized, and I knew where that usually led. And I saw in late 2001 the writing on the wall for the era. Sounding like one affected by a work ethic experienced abroad, I concluded I needed a vacation and a simpler work life.
The obvious destination would be Central Europe, plus Rome and Munich as personal treats. Just as with my move to California, I could service my only employer now, the college, at a distance. Throughout my time in California and on vacation, I responded to every inquiry and request plus facilitated Web and e-learning initiatives back on campus. Never skipped a beat. An Internet cafe here and there plus diskette or CD-ROM, I was good to be gone.
While in the Czech Republic, I met Milos, Czech, who worked for an American software company somewhere in the US, or located several places. I could never figure this out. Anyway, he was living well on dollars in his country. He had his family, leisure and work schedules, infrastructure, and programs in place. And he, with his employer, never skipped a beat. Now this is where I have been headed, I thought.
Hold that for a moment. Milestone formulating, but perhaps not on the order of two plus two.
Community colleges are among the most conservative institutions. I have worked for and studied them for years as administrator, adjunct faculty member, and incessant job applicant--they are particularly hard to break into on a full-time basis. Now that I have worked with and for them sufficiently, I have ceased my sap-plications. Few have found where it is at these days, but this is perhaps a personal assessment and not worth pursuing here. In any event, I, not being the brightest on the block, or perhaps having spent too much time in the former Eastern Bloc (living outside your culture changes your perspective in all but the most stubborn of cases), thought the college might like to stretch a bit. I was already three weeks off and one week on campus with accolades, without complaints. And I had kept it going while really gone, outside the country. Let's take this one more step, this sap thought. I would live in Munich for two months and return to campus in the US for three weeks. Two months again in Munich, three weeks on campus.
My proposal fell flat in the still/round world of those who held a vision for their college's future. This was late 2002. It was just too big a stretch, or the administration had other plans I was not aware of. In any event, like an errant child, I was summarily summoned to return to campus full-time. And I like to think in part because of my unorthodox ways, and places, of meeting my obligations, the college and I were destined to part.
Milestone. Early adopters may risk--sometimes their livelihood--if they get too far out in front. (Early adopters are a species of the greener-pasture type.)
I knew my instincts were somewhere right and my e-learning interests persisted, so I returned to the Czech Republic to take up the challenge of helping an American-style graduate school begin to work towards supporting their business students online. I would hone my e-learning/at-a-distance knowledge and skills, practice what was becoming a true movement in education and the world of work, and complete my studies of a mystery culture I had yet to unravel.
Corollary milestone. Studying cultures--countries or companies--from as inside as is possible is necessary. ("Ya gotta live and/or work in the pasture at least a bit to begin to understand 'em.")
My friendship and envy(?) of Milos continued. Ehrenbach's Bait and Switch came out, and I heard a podcast of her observations while on book tour. Scary stuff, I thought. Glad I have a secure job.
But the Czech Republic is not a place where this foreigner could make much money, especially as techie/academic. The graduate school closed my department in a year. Something about not being able to show a profit. And in short order, I returned to the US to try to get a real (i.e., well paying) job. I stretched my savings to two extended visits to my home country totaling over a year and a half, looking, should I say pleading, for work. I was turned down at every turn. What was it Barbara wrote about impenetrable terrain in the changed employment landscape?
I was feeling the pains of not fitting in with the employment conventions I was familiar with. To keep the candle lit, I taught off and on for a Czech technical university using a learning management system I set up and administered first for myself and then for others. Although this somehow met the at-a-distance work model I had known or suspected as a personal greener pasture, something was missing. There was more than a minor inconvenience. I was teaching part online and part in the classroom. I needed to be available for the neo at-a-distance learners. All that worked fine. But the learning was disconnected from the world of work that my students would face. Thus, there was little interest in the wonderful (for me) required courses I was teaching. They were almost all cultural studies courses. When you have students who don't want to be there in the first place, though, teaching becomes listening to your own echoes in a vacuum. Silence.
When you can't get a job, perhaps the first best thing to do is make one. I came up with an Internet business that seemed to combine all the stuff--at-a-distance, a bit of do-gooding, business, learning (mostly my own), income. It is called World Business Links (WBL) even today, and the idea was that companies would pay for advertising if it increased their Internet presence and search engine ranking.
I never met my Pakistani programmer in person, who outperformed my expensive stateside guy at less than a third the cost. He was great. My Denver one was the first Web programmer for this business. I met him in person, and he convinced me he was the man. He wasn't. So much for relying on face-to-face.
For several months I cleaned up what the Denver programmer did with the help of the guy in Karachi. It was a great cross-border/-time zone collaboration. And WBL was up and running, but I came to see with the wrong business purpose. Advertising by itself is fine, but there are so many other alternatives for meeting that need, businesses would likely not choose my little Web site. But all the same . . .
Milestone. Conceive of a worthwhile enterprise and you can work from anywhere. (And I still am. WBL just needs a bit more tweaking. And I will get to that shortly.)
I have concluded my job juggernauts to the US for now, and I have come to a more relaxed if decidedly foreign place, except for these two interviews for a job in my hometown in California, or at a distance from there. I interviewed first, by phone, same time zone as I was. The interviewer lived a stout commute from the corporate office, but I thought he could be calling me from the corporate office. He wasn't. The second interviewer was higher up on the ladder, a good sign, I thought. It didn't consciously cross my mind as the interview progressed, but he must have called from the corporate office. After all, one in his position must be accessible to other top management types for meetings and such. He called two time zones away and two hours from the corporate headquarters. It was at the end of this interview that he told me he had people in similar positions as the one I was interviewing for at various locations--around the US, if not the world.
I am here, and it is hot. And humid! Which means not necessarily a good place for a guy used to four seasons and white stuff, not sand, in the winter. But I am getting used to it slowly, getting in step with the pace here, and the weather will become milder I am told. The phone situation is quite reasonable as I referred to at the start of this piecing-together. Housing and food are great for the money. Internet is not impossible to nail down so that I can work again on WBL and perhaps at a distance in e-learning. This might be a great base of operations. A lone eagle stuck in a place like this working for the betterment of humankind and on his career path? Why not?
I hope the guy who makes the hiring decision contacts me by phone, fax, VoIP, e-mail, instant message, or podcast soon. I don't have a physical address, and it is becoming quite comfortable living, and working like this, some distance from the main office or campus or classroom. I won't skip a beat if I get the job. And I can really work here or there, under any given conditions. I have demonstrated I can do that. It doesn't really matter anymore. It just seems this is the pasture--not the physical one--worth breaking down the fence for, or going through one as I have been doing. After all, we have un-Earthed the Earth. It is a flatter world, that is we have taken our notion of place and space and equalized them in time for purposes of some kinds of work, and learning. And toiling in the fields of making learning accessible to more in more different ways is a good vision to have, still.
I have tried to test the hypothesis sufficiently to say, yes, work at a distance is possible and suitable and appropriate for some people and some work. Milestone for me and perhaps others. Perhaps it is time also to more fully realize the promise and possibilities of this brave new world for me. I think it is personally greener in many ways. And to be honest, I think I have caught up to the times, or they have caught up with me. I am ready for the next adventure.
Postscript
"Have you heard about that job you interviewed for the other day?"
"Should hear soon. They're a pretty fast-paced company."
"Is that really the Margaritaville Jimmy Buffet sang about?"
"Let's check it out after I post my comments on this student's essay. He will be looking for feedback when he wakes up his time."
