7-10

Some people in my office recently asked me how old I was. They said it was because they were trying to figure out who was the youngest, but I have a sneaking suspicion that someone had bet on my age. When I admitted to being 30, there was surprise all around, so I am not sure who won the bet. And yes, they thought I was younger, which in the work place is not such a great thing.

Anyway, that, coupled with conversations with Ashley about her job search, got me to thinking that unless you are Tommy Reiser, boy-wonder, this is an awkward stage in our careers. If you look at job announcements, they are all advertising for “entry,” “5-7 years of experience” or “more than 10.” Where’s the 7-10? What is wrong with us? Is the theory that once we’ve been working 5 years, we should have figured out where we our dream employer where we will stay for the next 5 years? Seriously, does no one value 8 years of experience? What about 9? What makes someone with 6 or 11 years better than someone with 8?

I feel like people don’t value the experience we have – or they don’t want to pay for it or something. It is sort of baffling and very annoying, and causes you to make a lot of lateral moves while you wait to have 10 years of experience. I guess it is different in the consulting world where there is a set schedule for promotions, but everywhere else we are screwed for 3 years...

Summer Update

Well, it's been a while since my last post, and it's scary to say, but it's now mid-August. In just a couple of weeks it'll be September and summer will be over. The summer has flown by. I guess that's what happens when you're busy. I've been splitting my time between work, volleyball, basketball, poker, soccer, lifting, running and trying to spend some quality time with Rita and you fools that read this blog every now and then. I find myself torn sometimes because I want to do everything, but I also want to do everything really well, and then I run out of hours!

Volleyball is a pretty good example. I've been playing pick-up about twice a week all summer, but I've only been able to play a couple of tournaments. The pick-up is ok, but it's not the same kind of competition as tournaments. The result is that I play well but not great. I end up beating the average and bad teams, competing against the good teams, but not being able to make enough really great plays to beat the good teams. Here's a picture from the first tournament 2 weekends ago:

That's me jump serving in the semi-finals against Jes and Ray. The result? We got absolutely crushed. Last weekend we came off second of our net again, and this time we played a much better game in the first round of the playoffs. We were up 10-8 (game to 15), then went down 14-11, came back to 14-13, and then lost 15-13. Again, played pretty well, but just wasn't able to come up with enough great plays at crunch time to make the difference. It's that little edge that I'm missing from not playing enough high level ball. Oh well.

I'd write more, but it's Monday night = cards night. Gotta run!