Dreaming of a Corporate Life
Ever since I was a teenager I had always dreamed of becoming a hard, and “competent”, corporate exec who traveled around the globe wearing a crisp tie knot at 8 AM every day.
AM crisp tie knots must have been a true destiny of mine, as they were “fortunately” waiting for me, years after moving to the US for my studies. Seneca said luck (L) is what happens when preparation (P) meets opportunity (O). For a geek wanna-be like myself, this would translate into | L | = P + O. My luck in particular arose in college during my last semester of hope.
| L | for an international student was dependent upon the internal policies that US companies must adhere to based on the hopeless immigration system preventing bright foreign minds from building on their dreams.
Curious what the alumni of my program had to say about the Big 4, I decided to make an appearance with my buddy at an information session one evening on my college campus. It sounded like just what I had dreamed of when I was a teenager. I loved it. I was *insanely* in love with it.
Yet, just there I was, a powerless dreamer, bearer of a student visa (i.e. tagged as a unwelcome invitee to any interview because of the required “work sponsorship”) hoping to take home a couple extra meat pizza slices before they got too cold. Raised by a single parent myself, it really felt similar to an orphan who sought out a father figure in the corporate world.
Thanks to the divine intervention (of a professor I admired, pioneer of the first IT degree program in the country), and to forever quash my skeptical perception, agains all odds, I received a slot for an interview the next morning at this reputable accounting firm. Since I was one of the only students to graduate one semester earlier than expected, this played a significant role in the aforementioned opportunity element.
My New Home: The City that Never Sleeps
As soon as the new year started, I moved to New York City in order to start my career as an IT consultant, or for the refined world of finance, as an IT Advisor. I had entered the space of industry experts, a full realm of knowledgeable professionals whose feet and minds were stuck on one side of the knowing-doing bridge. Nobody dared to cross to the dark side of doing. Except for me.
It did not take too long to realize, as awesome Dudley Dawson puts it, that I was well on my way to become a modernized form of indentured servant. First they told me I would work on innovative IT projects. Yet, second Monday at the job, and I was already scheduled on a weekly plane to Buffalo, NY for the next eight months to serve at a monstrous bank as an an AML specialist. To put this in context: bank-employees, who now had became my colleagues, were not even required to hold a bachelors degree — or have graduated from one of the best engineering schools in the country (like me) — in order to be hired into the job. Indeed, cheap and uneducated labor is how one of the largest financial corporations in the world pretended to remediate its customers’ accounts in what later became a public scandal. Regardless, what in the world did that have to do with IT, or even more, a competitive workforce in which I could thrive?
A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
- Oscar Wilde.
That dreamer was me. On a plane to Buffalo, NY every Monday morning. The smile on my face vanished after the project finalized. Better said: client engagement for the unrefined bastards who sent me there. I had counted every single morning I was on board a plane, barely awake, always trying to look beyond the window seat. Reality is that I had lost faith, self-confidence, and above all, hope to find the right fit within my inner nerd.
A New Client Engagement: Breath of Fresh Air
After Buffalo they tried to lock me in a small room in Jersey City for another eight months, to serve as a change-management auditor this time. Absolutely unrelated to what I had done or studied until then. I never understood how hard and “competent” professionals could be so knowledgeable in such a wide range of areas and be paid millions of dollars to do nothing more than what a high-schooler could do in their debate club. Fact remains that the underlying mission was to know everything, do nothing, and convince clients you are smarter than them.
During a sunny summer afternoon I was talking to my buddy while walking around P-Town in Cape Cod. He shared some exciting thoughts that had been wandering across his mind while studying at Harvard, ranging from trending business models and technology to life in general. He was having a hard time understanding his faux interest in investment banking. So he thought I could help him out to research and develop these ideas further. His eloquence convinced me instantly. After all, our disbelief in the corporate financial world was shared, and anything outside of it sounded deeply interesting to me.
After that conversation I wanted more, much more. So, I had to make time for it. Certainly my current circumstances in Jersey were far from ideal, since a fat Southerner wearing the most inelegant, flashy suits supervised every click I made on my laptop.
Not one month had passed and I still had seven more to go. Honestly, I wanted to kill myself and throw the fucking crisp tie out the window. Long story short, soon thereafter I seized an opportunity to get out of there and was brought into a global risk campaign to act as an intermediary between US and Latin America teams. At first this was an important project, where managers and senior members had their control over stuff (i.e. stAff like myself), even offshore teams were supporting it. Then, something extraordinary happened. For the first time in my young working life, I was introduced to teleworking (i.e. the “flexibility” to work remotely for a client). God only knew to the extent I would exploit this! All I needed to get started on those promising ideas my buddy mentioned were: plenty of time, money, more time, and engineers.
Playing technopreneur and surfing Corporate America
Below is a summary of my two-year journey, maybe limited only by teleworking practices and those in consulting firms, with some unique experiences when building my first tech startup (and still keep a faux corporate appearance). In other words, how I received a steady paycheck while figuring out how to create value to a group of early adopters, fundraising, building a team, etc.
*Disclaimer: the below notes are not intended for [insert your passion] lovers who want to free some time in the evenings to practice while pretending their job is satisfying, every morning, over and over again. It is directed towards those [insert your passion] lovers whose desire to be the next [insert your idol] remains from the moment they wake up until midnight. I was obsessed.
Becoming a solo smart player* = gaining quality time for your side-project
- Disappear from team sight immediately if you can. Luckily for me (and many other consultants out there), I had to reserve work seats at our offices in advance as part of a so-called hoteling system. In fact, I never had an assigned workspace for more than three years. Hence, unless your ridiculous team requires face-to-face interaction, there is a sweet opportunity to argue that you always find a “better” office space in a different floor/location for [insert reason]. *For reference, my reason was that I had a tendency to speak Spanish loudly with the client during my daily phone conferences, thus did not want to disturb my other teammates in open areas and required single, closed rooms. Simply perfect, this kept me out of sight every workday for over two years, except for occasional meetings every now and then. This empowered me to travel to Boston and meet with my other co-founders in person regularly, while simultaneously being responsible of my client needs.
- Demand your superiors for feedback and improvement methods constantly. This will help in two complementary ways. First, it will probably increase their self-esteem above and beyond, considering themselves accomplished for coaching junior talent at the firm, which in reality turns out to be far more relevant during their yearly performance reviews. Second, the more persistent you are at it, the faster they will delegate additional tasks to you, increasing so your overall responsibility. Thanks to my efforts, I was encouraged to lead the weekly report calls with the critical stakeholders (see #5 for further explanation) at the client site, which immediately turn out to be key in order to become the ultimate owner for the information flow. Among other benefits, this allowed to convey my calendar availability directly to the client, after mixing my tasks from work and side-project altogether. Of course, leaving no room for any of my supervisors to discuss or question it. Basically, this translated into quality time (read more in #6) for me to lead and follow closely the development of our first prototype with our offshore team.
- Establish your own personal brand (not your team’s, not your company, not anybody else) that is all about completing work timely, hassle (and drama)-free, always 5x above respective peers performance. If this sounds unreasonable, then you should at least market yourself as a valuable asset, if not essential to the entire process/operation. As a consultant, progress reports often become the ultimate, most visible, and easily alterable element that clients receive and monitor somewhat attentively. Hence, you should ensure that historical and current reports highlight remarkable performance statistics, even if that requires playing a bit with the numbers. Everyone is keen to review positive results, so distribute your workload accordingly. You are smart enough to understand how to accomplish this.
- Aggressively remove critical (most of the time unnecessary) barriers to operate freely, by yourself. It is not rocket science what these accounting firms offer to clients. Less scientific is the value your supervisors/managers add to the projects’ overall success and deliverables efficiency. So, figure out each key step in which they are involved in your work processes and cut them off, literally. In a subtle, professional, and polite manner, make them feel what they are: useless. Sooner or later they will begin to scratch their head wondering where to stick their nose next. For instance, if reports/documents are regularly sent by them, be the one who hits the Send button in the first chance you get, regardless of whether it was delegated to you or not. This really translates into: be proactive, volunteer outside your comfort zone. I did and was rewarded eventually by gaining control. Trust me, patience is the quintessential virtue to exercise in this case. Do not lose faith while you are at it.
- Become friends with so-called critical stakeholders, individuals who hold higher decision-making power than the pretentious hungry middlemen above you. Bonus points if you apply #3 above during this process. They are usually more approachable, as they do not spot you on their close competition radar. For this, first respond to absolutely every email you receive from them, even if it is not written for you namely, just reply with a simple “Got it” or “Thank You”. In the virtual world of emails and phone calls, it helps a lot to exaggerate when your goal is to build rapport. Eventually, they will become your most aggressive advocates to continue working for them in the foreseeable future, which translates into helping you to buy more quality time to invest in the foundation of your side-project. Typical in consulting, I was recommended at least four times by these generalist salesmen to become more involved with internal business development initiatives in order to expand my skill set… And I did, but to the just enough extent. Little did they know that I was quite busy creating a company on the side: hacking its user growth in every possible way, pitching to investors real presentations rather than tweaking the font on powerpoint slides. So, in order to maintain my privileged position I needed their support; this is exactly when I showed the client’s local Chief Information Security Officer’s note demanding the entire region work process to follow the Diego way.
- Consider time more valuable than gold. If you have to split two (or more) fully demanding jobs in twenty four hours, quality work time must become your ultimate goal. Although one must prioritize where to invest such quality time. I would not hesitate a second whether my side-project would come out as a primary task on any given day. Truth be told, Corporate America employees’ actual work performance is quite questionable, at least in large organizations. In my case, my daily duties could usually be condensed in three/four hours (out of the eight/ten hours per day). In short, I realized that I could become more and more efficient at consulting in order to clear my day for my side-project. If this sounds strange to you, then I suggest you to learn how to re-distribute your workload to your advantage. It became natural to me, the more occupied I was with the uprising demands of being a startup founder, the more focused and results-oriented I became at consulting with my client.
- Play harder, smarter, and longer than any of your surrounding colleagues. A simple example, I scheduled the client’s report conference calls every Friday afternoon as often as I could. Everyone in Corporate America loves Fridays; their minds wander from working tasks. Thus, it becomes easier to have a friendlier conversation (such as inquiring about weekend plans!). Due to the nature of my role, I paid close attention to culture too. For instance, when speaking with (South) American stakeholders I would clearly mock (North) American habits and demands, but still establish reasonable deadlines to which they should be held accountable. Whereas when speaking with (North) Americans, I would joke around and openly complain about (South) Americans unable to meet my deadlines. Ah… you have got to love consulting: the art of escaping blame. By the way, in case it sounded as if I slacked at all, I must mention that I highly surpassed the working expectations from every stakeholder on both sides responsible of my work.
- Last but not least: Do not ever convey your plans and dreams to change the world — that is: inside the corporate one you are paid to serve. As excited, powerful, bright, or intelligent you may feel over your peers, do yourself a favor and keep your mission as a secret. Nobody loves to work with colleagues who aspire to greater heights than theirs, which comprise of responding to three-line emails and typing formulas on Excel spreadsheets. Deep down, they too feel motivated to make their dreams come true, but unfortunately are either not brave enough to fight against their personal conformism, or let “circumstances” stand in the way infinitely. So really, consider yourself a 007 agent working undercover. Disregard all of this and decide to open up yourself about your side-projects, and your risk of being perceived as an “overachiever” will certainly kill all your goals to stay under the radar. Instead, you will become a target model to compete against. Moral here, when it comes to trust in Corporate America: look for it within thyself, not outside.
*The client I used to work for willingly paid over half a million dollars just for (me) my chargeable hours, to keep performing (solo and smartly) at the pace and quality standards of an entire team of consultants. Hence, please avoid misinterpreting the above as if I became a slacker at work, because I did not at all. I was a totally different kind of animal.
My Startup Lessons
After going through my almost two-year journey, my annual performance review turned out to be above average. In fact, not only I was given an award for my exceptional client quality, but also I was promoted to the next level with a nifty bonus. Above all, I had acquired the necessary skills to work and excel within Corporate America.
If you wonder why I never quit my job to become a full time entrepreneur, well, the reason is simple: startups in their early stage cannot justify the cost of sponsoring an H1-B visa for a founder, unless they have already secured a seed round and/or formed a pseudo board of directors. As much as I believed and fought for it, I did not want to risk becoming an illegal alien before our operation matured. Sad but true, the terrible immigration regulation only hindered me from making this decision. This system is broken at all levels, even for those of us who created jobs for American citizens.
Despite the obvious stressful circumstances of juggling two jobs simultaneously and my determination as a founder, I decided to separate myself from the startup operation when my primary co-founder declined to meet his financial obligations with the business. Sadly, I discovered he had been employing the Business Debit Card to finance his personal life without ever consulting first.
Even though we pivoted from our strategic target significantly, we were capable to acquire over one thousand users interested in our mission early on before launching our product. Nonetheless, by that time we had wasted so much precious time iterating over and over in our product design that we kind of lost sight on the core feature-set to ship and the real problem we were trying to solve for our users. Needless to say, we also ran out of money.
Stop Looking for a Tech Co-founder! Start Coding
This corporate-entrepreneur symbiosis that I lived through, which once fueled me to go above and beyond, had clearly ran out of fuel. A few months after halting my entrepreneurial activity, I entered into a state of mental burnout. I disliked the lack of creativity in my IT consulting job, and really saw no light at the end of its tunnel. However, when reflecting upon my college studies at RPI — my peers, my professors, and the encouraging tech atmosphere that propelled me to move to the US — I started to revolve the dots from several years back. As Jobs wisely said, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So I did. And for several months, I assessed myself with the aim to improve my technical background, and to never let my ideas cease simply because they were not being built.
“Many people think you get career stability by minimizing all risk. But ironically, in a changing world, that’s one of the riskiest things you can do.” — Reid Hoffman
This time, instead of embarking myself on a startup journey or to continue devoting my time and energy to a large corporation, I decided to make a sharp turn in order to simply focus on Me. Now, I am solely dedicated to improving my skills, my life experiences, my family, my balance, my health, my love, my friendships… I feel as if I have just begun. Yet, taking one step at a time in this direction has been so thrilling and enriching that I had to write about it. It has strengthened my self-belief to the extent that I am proud to say that I am a technology optimist.
