World Bytes

Surviving Without a Salary

by Terrance Malkinson

A Thought to Chew on

Many of us trade our happiness and well being for the reliability of a steady paycheck. We work long hours at jobs we find unfulfilling so that we can purchase things that never seem to satisfy us. The increasing reality is that long-term continuous employment is becoming the exception rather than the rule for many. How to Survive Without a Salary by Charles Long (Summerhill Press, 2003, ISBN 1-894622-37-5) offers valuable and practical steps on how to survive economically by reducing cash needs without compromising values or happiness. Long tells readers how they can create their own practical plans for leaving the world of wages by changing from consumers to conservers.

Since its first publication more than 20 years ago, this book has helped many realize their dreams by choosing the conserver lifestyle. Leaving the consumer lifestyle can be a little frightening because it means breaking away from the status quo. Long suggests that the "key to security is not in trying to earn more, but in learning to need less and to spend less."

Perhaps you have thought about alternatives that will allow you to unshackle the corporate chains and focus on what you really value in life. The conserver lifestyle may not be for everyone, but it might be worth giving it a try.

Other Bytes

Here are some of the things going on in and around the engineering community:

• With offshore outsourcing, information technology workers are not simply shifting employers; in many cases, they are losing their jobs altogether. In "U.S. Stays on Top" (CIO; 17(6): 45-52, 2003; www.cio.com) Stephanie Overby discusses the future of IT jobs and innovation. She estimates that the IT workforce situated in the U.S. will be 25 percent smaller in 2008 than it is today. Even though some IT jobs, such as application development, legacy maintenance and call center operations will continue to move overseas, the author believes that the United States will always have a sizeable population of IT professionals doing high-level work on strategy, implementation and design. However, these positions will require new skills, particularly business acumen with a global understanding.

• Globalization is an inevitable world event. In "We Can Shape the Global Economy" (CIO; 17(6): 78-81, 2003; www.cio.com), Art Jahnke reports on his interview with Lester Thurow, who enjoys an international reputation as a social and economic provocateur. Thurow suggests that globalization can have long-term benefits for all Americans, but only if American businesses and political leaders step up and help shape globalization. Thurow discusses this issue as well as the implications of globalization on U.S. jobs and wages concisely and candidly.

• Geographically distributed teams operate differently and may experience different outcomes than traditional teams. Team members must often communicate by way of technology. In "Out of Sight, Out of Sync: Understanding Conflict in Distributed Teams" (Organizational Science; 14(6): 615-632, 2003; http://web.gsia.cmu.edu/orgsci/Default.htm) Pamela Hinds and Diane Bailey discuss their explanation of how geographical distribution provokes team conflict. The authors provide suggestions for mitigating these negative impacts.

• Workplace disputes result in conflict that reduces job satisfaction and, consequently, productivity. In "A Jury of Their Peers" (HR Magazine; 49(1): 54-59, 2004; www.shrm.org/hrmagazine/), Margaret Clark discusses how giving employees a say in resolving each other’s workplace disputes can yield big dividends. Clark discusses Eastman Kodak’s experience in implementing a peer/management conflict resolution program. Both sides found the review system to be fair and open. However, the author cautions that peer review systems are not for every organization. For them to be successful, companies must have an environment that lends itself well to participatory processes, and those processes must be in place before establishing a peer program.

• Experiential knowledge accumulated by organizations operating in the international market reduces the risks associated with operating internationally. Successful internationalism involves learning about foreign markets, cultures and institutions, as well as about the organization’s internal resources and capabilities. In the special issue of International Business Review (12(6): 657-782, 2003), six articles relate to internationalizing the business organization. Knowledge and learning are important themes in all six articles.

• Innovation and invention have reshaped the way we live, conduct business and communicate with each other, and they transcend political borders. "Spotlight on Inventors" (Far Eastern Economic Review; 167(2): 33-42, 2004; www.feer.com/) features the finalists in the 4th Young Inventors Awards competition, a program that celebrates the best in imagination, experimentation and ingenious thinking among young scientists throughout Asia. The Young Inventors program is offered in association with Hewlett-Packard and judged by an international panel of corporate leaders and leading scientists.

• Employee benefits represent a significant portion of overall employee compensation. Many business owners fear that if workers’ compensation premiums continue to increase, they may be forced out of business. In: "Staying Alive, How Your Business Can Survive the Killer Costs of Workers Compensation (Entrepreneur; 32(1): 57-59, 2004; www.entrepreneur.com), Joshua Kurlantzick discusses the issues surrounding the dramatically increasing compensation costs. The article highlights California, where workers’ compensation premiums increased by more than 100 percent in the past two years and whose insurers paid out nearly $20 billion in compensation claims last year alone.

• Identifying and cultivating an organization’s future leaders is vital to long-term viability. In "Developing Your Leadership Pipeline" (Harvard Business Review; 81(12): 76-84, 2003; www.hbr.com), Jay Conger and Robert Fulmer feature five organizations that have established healthy succession plans and outline five rules for establishing a good succession management system. The authors conclude that good succession management is possible only in organizational cultures that encourage candor and risk-taking at the executive level. The organization must be willing to differentiate individual performance and value truth more than politeness.

• In another article on the same topic (HR Magazine; 48(11): 45-50, 2003; www.shrm.org/hrmagazine/), Susan Wells discusses how companies that consistently use a formal process to help their employees advance are also the highest performing organizations. Without a formal plan, employees don’t have the levers critical for building talent — skills development and motivation — to grow their futures in their organizations.

• Business intelligence holds the promise of extracting value from resources so that decision makers can bring greater efficiency and efficacy to their business. "The 2004 Editors Choice Awards" (Intelligent Enterprise; 7(1): 16-26, 2004; www.intelligententerprise.com) recognized companies that provide the strongest vision, market leadership and technology in their quest to align information technology with business objectives to establish an intelligent enterprise. In this sixth annual competition, the awards were divided into two parts. The first highlighted 12 leading companies in each of the categories of intelligence, integration, infrastructure and collaborative businesses — categories seen as the pillars critical to an intelligent enterprise. The second featured the 12 most influential companies from the full list of 60 companies.

 

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Terrance Malkinson is a proposal manager/documentation specialist; an elected Senator of the University of Calgary; an elected Governor of the Engineering Management Society, international correspondent for IEEE-USA Today's Engineer; editor-in-chief of IEEE-USA News and Views, and editor of the IEEE Engineering Management Society Newsletter. Opinions expressed are the author's.