- Act Before It’s Too Late -
Sooner or later, all of us will have to acknowledge that work as we know it--the 40-plus-hour a week variety--has become obsolete. Economic and technological trends ensure that the ranks of the un- and under employed will continue to grow. If we continue to ignore this demographic shift, social disintegration is inevitable.
Regardless of how one defines selling one's soul, what could be more hypocritical than to work longer hours at a meaningless job? Not only are you selling yourself out and wasting your gifted talent, but you are also contributing to the decline of society as you do it.
But waiting for the government or the employers to wise up, is only your lame excuse to avoid taking destiny into your own hands. The longer you wait, the more dependency of consumerism and materialism would grow. You will only trap yourself deeper, hoping that some mysterious catalyst will come and magically change your life around. It's up to you to make the decision to act, and not waste your talent and passion while you still can. Life is short, and you only live once.
- Ultimate Sell Out -
As for me, my case was the ultimate sell out.
By mid 2000, I was really fed up with End-Run and all the non-value-add activities. The endless meetings and number crunching was driving me nuts. I started returning head hunter’s phone calls and sending out resume to a few select firms. I quickly found out that most of the companies that I wanted to work for were already cutting more than half of their workforce, their stock value dropped by more than 80%, and the some were at the verge of bankruptcy. Meanwhile, End-Run continue to beat earning quarter after quarter, and the stock price kept going up and up (eventually became one of the best performing stock for year 2000). I decided that I would give myself one more year, to ride out the bad-economy as a “bad-economy sell-out”. So, I quit that (2nd) group and found a more interesting job within the company. I bullshit my way into a group that wanted to expand new business globally. For the next year, I was living La Vida Loca such that I could no longer quit, even though the desire of doing so hasn’t diminished. I traveled routinely to NYC, LA, Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taipei, for business. Everywhere I went, I flew first class, stayed at most luxurious hotels, dined at the finest establishments, and partied like no tomorrow. I accumulated 250,000 plus miles on my frequent flyer cards, spent US$100,000 plus on my corporate credit card, slept average 4 hours a day on business trips, met hundreds of corporate executives and low life bottom feeders during the day, partied with friends and acquaintances during the night. I got a promotion, a raise, a big fat paycheck, and a promise to further promotion to start a trading desk in the Asia office, plus MBA tuition subsidy. I was BOUGHT, to become an ultimate sell-out. Despite the fact, that we knew from early 2000 that the company was a house of cards and that it will eventually collapse, we didn’t leave. By mid 2000, we knew that most of the earnings were made up and some of the deals could blow us up like the next LTCM. Still, I didn’t leave. By early 2001, we knew that the business couldn’t generate free cash flow and some of the write-offs were catastrophic enough to trigger debt covenants and credit downgrades. I still haven’t left. By August 2001, while we were living “la vida loca” and the CEO abruptly said “hasta la vista”, we knew that the titanic has hit the tip of the iceberg. We were trying to jump ship but there was no one to bail us out. It was too late. At the end, I didn’t even bother to leave. Since I already sold out and boarded that ship, I figured I might as well stick around to watch the spectacular plunge. Despite many desperate attempts by senior management working with politicians and investment banks, End-Run eventually came to its knees and filed for the biggest bankruptcy in history, wiping out more than US$60 billion dollars in market cap, US$40 billion in debt. It also brought down a big five accounting firm and other companies with it, and the rippling effect continue to plague the industry and the financial market till this day.
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