As I continue my career lesson series, I am wondering what teaches us better lessons: our failures or our successes. For the previous posts – see below

Part 1 of the series – The Greatest Teacher, failure is – Planes, Math, and the Red Light District,

Part 2 – The Greatest Teacher, Failure Is – Part 2: Million Dollar mouth gets me in trouble

Failure is easy to see and most times painful, and as humans, we are taught to avoid pain as much as we can. If you don’t learn from your failures, you are destined to repeat them. Pain in this way helps us learn what not to do. So I hoped from my last job.

Do we learn from success? Do we even recognize success when it does not come with external rewards? How much of success or failure is really attributed to us vs. just being a matter of circumstance? I’ve got to say, being on the slightly pessimistic side, I easily see my failures more than my successes.

The next stop in my career was me getting out of town from my first real “professional” job with my tail tucked between my legs. I had flamed out of a company that was basically all I had known after 3 years as an internship student and then a new hire with the company. My next adventure took me halfway across the country to a city I knew nothing about where I only knew 1 person – Wally.

I got the job because I had worked beside Wally at MegaCorp One. We got to know each other as we were the same age, came through the same program and were in the same department. We hung out outside of work and he was a good guy. Wally left MegaCorp One to follow his soon-to-be wife for her medical residency.

Six months after he left we were catching up on his life, his new role, and how bad I was screwing up my job due to politics . He mentioned his MegaCorp Two was hiring. A short interview later, and I had loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly, Hills that is. Ok not Hills but close to the Rockies.

had not quite earned my pilots license yet and this was all i could afford

Career Lesson #6: The Power of Proximity

You will likely get your next job from someone you know. Be nice and keep in touch. 

These were the days before LinkedIn and Facebook where you had to make an effort to keep in touch. When people move on that you like and respect, get their contact info and use it. When you are in a new job it is nice to hear from people you use to work with.

For this role I had become a Quality Engineer in an Electronics Manufacturing Plant. A department with lots of statistics.  I like stats.

Typically, a quality engineer takes a couple of different tracks. The first is the hated kind where they quote processes, ISO9000, and any other standard they can get a hold of and basically tattling that people are not doing their job. They don’t actually try to understand anything.

The second type, which I thankfully was part of, looked at defects and tried to figure out how to get rid of them. Not very different from my 1st job but just a different job title.

Career Lesson #7: The Title Mirage

Job titles rarely describe what you end up doing. Feel free to create the best one on your resume as each company has unique titles

I tried for this title in my last job but didn’t get it

Ok so new job – check. Fresh start – check, lessons from my first job remembered – I would say some of them so half check.

My first monthly meeting was with the  Engineering Departments Managers going over monthly defects.  I am new and at this point have not figured out who is who. Just as important, I do not know how good my new company is at manufacturing. This meeting is my first chance to see. Each department head would present the metrics for their part of the manufacturing process and then a discussion would follow. I don’t know any of these people.

 I am sure you can see where this is going.

Now some context. This company is country-based. By that I mean they have 5 manufacturing plants across the country that all grew out of the main mothership over a 30-year period. It is not by any means an international world power in Electronics Manufacturing. My first company was.

In this meeting I am seeing reports on defect levels that in my mind were astronomical. I had come from a company where these particular defects had been eliminated years before. MegaCorp 2 was using all the right manufacturing equipment but didn’t really understand how to use it or why it wasn’t working.

It did not take long before my mouth opened and said such.

Department Head: “We’ve hit our defect target of 2 percent this month and we are happy where we are.”  

Vader: “How is 2% acceptable? It should be zero.” 

Department Head: “Who are you?” 

Vader: “Hi Vader, just adopt this cheap technology written about in these 36 articles in the last 5 years and that Defect goes to Zero. Overnight.”

Department Head: “I have been doing this for 30 years and you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

What he really meant to say is: 

You young punk. I am going to torture you and make you spend a year proving it to me and others before we will allow any changes. Moron. 

From there other department heads went through their spiel and I was good. I only called out one more.

So let’s just say a week into my new job I had announced my arrival. Thankfully my manager liked me and was well-connected with everyone. He was well liked overall. He was able to take me aside and manage the situation.

Over the next year I was able to prove my theory through painful long drawn out experiments. Once complete the process change was implemented and the defect went to zero overnight. The company likely wasted a million or so dollars while I proved it.

Career Lesson #8: Tact vs. Truth

Tackling issues head-on can make people lose face. Praise publicly, criticize privately. Being right isn’t the same as being effective. 

Career Lesson #9: The Whisper Campaign

Whisper in the ear of the person who can make the changes easily. They will get credit but also give credit.

Ironically Wally, my friend, was the expert in this process at our first company and taught me all this. He just knew better to play a longer game than I had learned to this point. If I had tackled this problem more tactfully it would have been faster to get done. Head on is usually the wrong approach when you are going up against the Old Boys network or 30 years of experience.

My boss knew what he had in me. With his gentle direction over the next year I basically went around implementing processes from my previous world-class company to a company that was 10 years behind the times. Some I was able to do overnight. Wally just for you – “Think like Solder” wins again. 

can you still say you’re handy when you only have one ?

Others improvements I had to prove. I think in my first year I likely set up new processes that would save $2M to $3M a year at this one plant. This was an important lesson from me that helped me throughout the rest of my career. The 3 years at a world-class company were the best education I had and have paid dividends throughout the rest of my career.

Career Lesson #10: The Research & Development  of You

Learn as much as you can at your company (even if you are not doing it). It will make your next job easier as you transfer knowledge from one company / industry to the next.

MegaCorp 2 was also strange to me in a culture way. People did not work hard. At 4:00 the parking lot was empty. People went home to their families. 

They worked to live, not lived to work. At MegaCorp 1 threre was always something broken that needed work. 50 to 60 hour weeks were normal. And as a new grad overtime was great. MegaCorp 2 was salary. No one worked a sec more than they needed to. This actually caused me issues.

Life Lesson #6: The “4:00 PM” Epiphany

There is more to life then work. You need to find it to enjoy yourself. 

I did not expect to be lonely when I moved across the country to this job. In my first job there were 70 to 100 people of my age all doing engineering and we naturally hung out when we had time. This included some dating opportunities and with the limited time we had off work the time was easy to fill.

In MegaCorp 2 the employee base was 15 to 20 years older, married with kids, and at a different stage of life. There was no natural circle for me to get to know people. My natural tendency, when I am outside my element like work, is to be pretty introverted.  I had left a girlfriend behind as I wasn’t ready to take the next step to marriage. Outside of my one friend who helped get me the job I didn’t have much outside of work.

I was lonely. I made some attempts to get out there but it was slow going. In the end I missed my old life. My work at MegaCorp was enough but my life wasn’t. My on again off again girlfriend came out for a couple of weeks but it was basically time to choose. Move back across the country or be single.

Life Lesson #7: Work will not fill a hole

Work is not enough.

no stormtroopers to work or play with makes Vader lonely

With nothing personal to keep me where I was I made the decision to leave the job and move back. Thankfully MegaCorp 2 had another plant not far from where my girlfriend lived. I had been doing good work and I had been working with this new plant on some process improvement. It was easy to change jobs but stay in the same company which I am thankful for.

It was one lesson that did sink through my thick skull from my first MegaCorp experience. Be useful and nice and people will help you.

Career Lesson #11: The Connector Advantage

Be nice and work well with others who are well connected in your company and they will help you when needed.

Onward and upward to my next job that really laid the path for the majority of the success in my career. I am 26 at this point and off to my 4th job since graduating.