After writing about “Why we do what we do” post, I decided to write some thoughts again on similar topic little differently and make the article on little bit more interesting continuing from the last one…

I got this idea recently and liked it so much that decided to publish on my Blog. This idea is about how a typical employee lifecycle looks like in corporate world. Let’s see how the life of typical engineers looks like in a corporate when compared to circus.

The life of any typical engineer goes through three major phases:

In first phase of the career around their 20s to 40s approximately, it’s just like the chimpanzees in the circus. Chimpanzees do all sorts of jumping up and down, doing different things, doing a lot of activities only for a Banana or two. Similar is the life of an engineer in the early days of their careers, full of energy doing everything possible to please their employer, but settles for very little with hope to make it BIG one day…

In second phase of the career, approximately between the ages of 40s to late 50s, little progress is made. Little promotions, little salary increases (of course these come with extra work load on daily basis. Nothing is free in life), now the engineer is like Project Manager, Supervisor or so… Gained little status as compared to juniors, gained little weight, feels settled too. Now, let’s look at the Lions/Tigers of the circus… Well, Tigers in circus get little bit better treatment than the chimpanzees because they pull more crowd the chimpanzees. Thus, instead of Banana, they get to eat meat now!!! They get to roar a little bit too!! They have little bit status than the chimpanzees. Great!!! But at the end, they are in the cage too they do realize! Similar is the life of a typical Project Manager at their personal level.

In the last phase of corporate career, the same engineer having gone through previous two phases, now looks like the old big elephant that comes in circus at the end. Tired… exhausted… can’t move much…. not too much to do… just is kept to wrap up the show… may be asked to show a trick of two at the end.. and that’s all

How funny is it? Hmm… but so true it is. A typical employee who feels settled in their life after getting their first job is eventually headed towards this very cycle… how many of people we know are in this trap? How many of us have ever thought of coming out of this rat race ?

We all have the capabilities to break the system and get something bigger in life… but the question always is, are we willing to do what it takes! That is the key.