The Panda Bear on Ayn Rand, Career Coaching and LinkedIn

When people ask the Panda Bear the purpose of her blog, she says she seeks to be the voice of a certain type of intelligent average person who is muddling through life.  

As the readers of the Panda Bear Blog know the Panda Bear daytime career is stalled.  She has been in her present position for six years with no indication that she is promotable from the organization despite getting some excellent performance reviews.   She has held a similar kind of position in other organizations for ten years.  Her day job is an administrative position for a large Boston nonprofit organization.

 Recently,  she found out that the organization she worked for has a career coach(after working there for six years).   This morning she had a phone interview with the career coach.   The career coach said the Panda Bear would have to apply and let her manager know she was interested in career coaching.   The Panda Bear says that her manager already knows she is interested in career development.   In fact the Panda Bear has been quite open with her organization that she thinks there lack being lack of organizational career paths is a problem for the organization especially as it is a large organization has the capacity for a workforce development program. 

The Panda Bear started her work life in a large profit making corporation.  They had corporate career ladder.  While workers, were not guaranteed promotions, a good worker who wanted to move ahead had a fairly good chance of doing so and the company provided some help and gave workers some sense of what they might need to do to get ahead.   The Panda Bear on the whole was happy working for this organization.  She felt her efforts were appreciated in what were very humble positions and she received six promotions in seven years.  The Panda Bear was layed off from this organization.

The Panda Bear misses the lack of organizational career path.   She thinks it is a good thing both for the organization(it keeps skilled talent) and for the worker(the worker can keep senority).  The Panda Bear thinks in a capitalistic society people expect hard work to lead to advancement and will feel frustated if it does not.

Often when the Panda Bear feels overworked/under appreciated she will think of Ayn Rand's philosophy in that she is has some self interested reasons for doing the work that she does. However, the Panda Bear has many misgivings about the philosophy of Ayn Rand.  This link has some interesting discussion about Ayn Rand and her philosophy.   The Panda Bear read both Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead and she did not like either book.  However the Panda Bear did like the book We the Living which takes place in Russia which is probably part of the reason the Panda Bear liked this book.  

However, some women have taken to Ayn Rand because she is a woman philosopher.  In this respect the Panda Bear has some respect for Ayn Rand and a greater sympathy for her perspective.  According to the link mentioned above Ayn Rand was a great business woman and she was very successful in getting her way on things.   The Panda Bear has often felt that women are expected to put other people's interest ahead of their own and be "nice" and cooperative in a way that is not expected of men.  From this perspective, the Panda Bear have some argreement for Ayn Rand's philosophy in when women work the motivations are purely altruristic and they have the right to expect advancement.

The Panda Bear wishes to end this post on work issues by discussing LinkIn.    When the Panda Bear joined linked in about two years ago she did not find it very useful.  However, within the past two years LinkedIn professional network has vastly expanded and the Panda Bear finds many people in her field now part of LinkedIn.   The Panda Bear now finds it to be a valuable part of her profesional life.