Comments From Gimmick Command:  Who’s Controls Your Career Passion?

Good afternoon, it’s Gimmick Commander Ben Faltinowski once again.

It’s been awhile since I put together a commentary.  I’ve been in the midst of building a PARW/CC participant Resume Writing business, taking on a Senior Engineering Consultant role with my friend’s firm Iteknowledgies, and . . . of course this blog The Great Galactic Space Gimmick.  My Linkedin profile has further details.

I have been part of the corporate engineering world for 20 years now, first with automotive (which wasn’t my passionate career) and then with Space-borne Aerospace projects (my true calling and passion as you know).

10 years ago, I finally realized that I was not as happy in the automotive industry as I would be working in aerospace. When I found out that the project that would ultimately become NASA’s SLS project was building up in Utah, I left the auto industry and moved my family from Michigan out there to work in the space industry.  It’s a move and direction that I have never regretted making. Yes every industry has its pros and cons, but ultimately my career passion is aerospace and I’m glad I made that move!

While corporate Engineering might have some great projects and advantages, I am beginning to see a dark side beginning to rise up more and more in mainstream (beyond just engineering) corporate America:

Inter-employee rudeness and disrespect.

1. Management playing favorites with employees, siding with their favorites that are rude and mean-spirited, and coming down on those who report it (because the reporter needs these team members input to get their work done, and they WANT to team play).
2. Lack of empathy toward employee’s personal situations (e.g. belittling family deaths, accidents, sickness, children’s plays, etc).
3. Complete ignorance of an employee’s positive performance and falsely accusing them of wrongdoing for self-serving political reasons (with HR taking the manager’s side simply because the manager wants it).
4. Treating employees like they’re overhead that can just be offloaded like the latest smart phone that needs replacement every 2 years.  No corporate loyalty and complete indifference to employee’s financial needs.
5. Gaslighting, which is what some power-hungry, self-serving employees do to kind-hearted and loving employees which involves deliberately sowing chaos, name calling, sabotaging their projects and input into a team project, and slanting other employees (especially along with the ones in their clique) against them, and then “gaslighting” which means somehow making the mistreated question their own sanity for daring to question what’s happening and refusing to believe it’s “THEIR fault”.
6. Other companies adopting these excuses because “all the other companies are doing it”, almost like the old 1980’sexcuse that using illegal narcotics is ok because “everyone else does it”.

DISCLAIMER: Now please don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that all corporations are guilty of this. I know many reputable companies that have great employees, great management, and great team spirit and playing. I have many friends that are program managers, engineering managers, Chief Engineers, and other higher up corporate brass that are excellent individuals who are personable, compassionate, nurturing, team playing, and let their employees do their work without a political/ulterior slant to it or fear infliction. I am only speaking of places where one or more of these problems might be.

As many can attest, it seems often that one of the lessening options to thrive in some corporations is to literally compromise their manners and becoming mean-spirited, clique-supporting, backstabbing, resort to these negative behaviors.

In contrast to this, you’re taught for the most part as children to love and respect others, play nice, be friendly, loving, and respectful to others.  But somehow increasing amounts of corporate American workers and managers have decided to “throw out the gold-watch giving to employees for a half-century of service” and resort to favoritism, bullying, and clique-like behavior that could make the questionable Junior High School clique immaturity look alot more minor.

As I work more and more in my business ventures, I’m convinced that the old-school way of company functionality is increasingly more to blame . . . and it’s got to be amended . . . and soon.  It might have worked before, but in the name of the modern efficiency and money-savings overdrive movement it now is starting to serve as host to negative, self-centered, roguish urges like the list I cited earlier that has been held at bay a lot more for decades (but obviously closing in on no more).

One of the worst things that companies have done (that resort to the earlier list) is behave like your ability and passion for your career can be shuttered at THEIR will.  I have heard that some employees act like this, especially if the legitimate victims show even a hint of greater enthusiasm than they (as they might not be there anymore for the same reason, but are there for other reasons such as money and prestige).

Please know this . . . they DON’T control your career or your passion.  YOU control your passions and YOUR career. One of my resume companies’ most popular advertisements is when I cited the fact that you, an employee, are a human being that loves and is loved by others and that any company that respects this needs to be worked for and the companies that don’t care are calling for abandonment. Often this is very upsetting to some of the latter type, and get threatened when their employees know differently.  This is THEIR problem, not yours.  I even heard of some managers laying off an employee, and when the employee literally shows no sign of being upset over dismissal, it was the ONE DOING THE LAYING OFF that got angry, almost like a thinly veiled sadism they would otherwise have relished got “struck with a rainy day”. This has also been seen when some managers find out their dismissed employee got another job and are thriving despite the dismissal.  I’ve heard of some of them literally  storming away when they run into an employee they helped dismiss and see how well the employee is doing (despite the effort to inflict the opposite).

As you can see, corporate America has become increasingly vulnerable to fostering this nonprofessional behavior, and finally proving point-blank that the way it’s been run needs to change to stop this.

Again, let me reiterate that not all employees and management are like this. Sometimes, projects get canceled, money runs out, and other things might precipitate a layoff.  You can find yourself being laid off by a manager you really like and is actually a very nice person.  I myself have been in this position before, and I am still friends with several of them. If there was true blame to be had, it was not theirs (NOTE: It was management above them).

As for career passion, I ask clients oabout whether they’re passionate about their career each time I work with them. Most are positive about it, but wonder how they’ll stand up against the sometimes-seen negative movement seen in their industries at inopportune times.  That’s one of the reasons why I’ve chosen the career path I’m on.  In a small way, I want the Engineering Consulting I do to encourage innovation and joy in Space, Renewable Energy, and Aerospace technologies again.

I want my resume business to help clients think about their work passions and pursue them, making for better employees and better corporate work places.

I hope and pray that every one of my clients in the 12 states to date that I have helped thus far can and will find that for themselves. The good news is that they are out there waiting for good employees like them to join their ranks and make a great difference in the land of commerce.

And finally for The Great Galactic Space Gimmick, put the passion and fire for the Space Industry and Space Exploration back in the hearts of the peace-loving human race.  Nobody can stop it.  It’s an idea, an idealist idea, and the right one to have! Neil Armstrong said “All great societies that grow and become advanced take on exploration”.

Maybe your passion is different from mine, but your career passion is no less important, has true merit and value in this world. I want to encourage you to follow through, and realize that YOU control that and you don’t need to live in bondage anymore believing that it is dependent upon a small group of individuals. Whether benevolent or self-serving others can be, it is your passion and you need to nurture it no matter what

Time to embrace what you love, launch into the heavens above that is your career passion,  and throw off lies that says your passion is controlled by external entities like companies or individuals controls it.

YOU control it, but you have to make the decision to soar and not let anything or anyone control it physically or ideologically. I and others want to help you achieve that, whether through helping you find better work or sparking your imagination and enjoyment of life through the purpose of this blog.

For The Great Galactic Space Gimmick, I’m Gimmick Commander Ben Faltinowski! 🙂

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