Saturday 12 May 2007

Pic of the day: Please don't turn people into pie charts!

About my job...

It's payday again! It seems likely that I'll have 6 more of those. After that, things are very much up in the air. I am not talking about some terminal illness, thank the Light, though of course this is always a risk and not least at my age. But in this case, it is my job that is scheduled for termination, from 1/1/08.

Long time readers will know that I've promised not to talk about my job. But there are explicit promises and there are implicit promises. Among the latter is that I'll actually have a job to not talk about. And I've hardly promised to not talk about that.

Luckily this is Norway, so there is no risk of starvation or homelessness. We're a loving, caring social democrat society where even the most hardened criminals are coddles and helped. And while the people who spend all their day drinking beer do earn less than me – at least if they started early – the difference isn't all that enormous after taxes on me and various social supports for them. Losing my job would be an inconvenience, not the end of the world as I know it. (And I feel fine.)

That said, it isn't exactly like I'm fired either. Rather what happens is one of the many reorganizations that sweep public sector here. I believe this is one of the good ideas we have imported from the USA. If you keep reorganizing the workplace frequently enough and to a large enough degree, the workers will not grow complacent and demand higher salaries without working harder. I think this is a great idea if you have very simple manual labor to be done. With a more complex organization you have to factor in the effect of workers simply deciding to find other employment, and the cost of training new ones and retraining existing ones to new types of work.

Since I work for the Divine Hen Mother herself, the State, I'm almost impossible to get rid of even if they wanted to. Which they don't. They have simply reorganized pretty drastically and it has been done on such a high level that they didn't know the nature of my job. So the computer support unit for southern Norway will be gathered in the eastern city of Skien rather than scattered around where the people actually live and work. The bosses on high have not expressed any opinion on whether they expect the current support people to move to Skien, or whether they expect us to retrain to the other jobs that will be here and other people in Skien to suddenly become support personnel by the end of the year, after having fully worked in their completely unrelated job every workday until then. OK, if we assume that the top bosses are not complete idiots, it is pretty obvious which alternative they imagine. Unfortunately, this is an assumption we cannot make; for it is written in the Holy Scripture: "Fools are put in many high positions, while the rich occupy the low ones." (Ecclesiastes 10,6)

On that note, I sincerely doubt that my fellow sysadm will sell his farm and move to Skien. Nor are we the only ones reorganized. There are a bunch of women, some of them in their 50es or above, who are supposed to start working in another city too, whereas a similar number of people from other cities are expected to come here. I see that when I believe it.

Ironically, I'm probably the most mobile – quite possibly the only mobile – worker here. I like where I live now, true. But I don't have children here, don't get any hot loving here, and I call on my friends mostly only when my life is in danger, and they me mostly when their computers break down, if even that. It matters little to me whether I live in Kristiansand or Skien, or Sunnfjord or Texas for that matter, as long as I have food, roof and DSL. It is mainly a problem for my coworkers.

Of course, it is not entirely sure that I will get one of the jobs in Skien. I am almost entirely self-taught so I don't have papers to show for my computer and teaching skills. People in my arm (or should I say tentacle) of government know, in a gradually widening radius around Kristiansand. But not as far as Skien, I'm pretty sure. So maybe I'll have to take a job that I'm totally unqualified for, like answering phone calls or nosing around in shabby restaurants together with the police. Who knows?

What I certainly won't do is go back to college, despite the sweet college girls that abounds around in this city. I shouldn't have a hard time going through it, with all I've picked up already, but I'd be well past 50 when graduating. Even though Norway has negative unemployment and one of the world's highest life expectancies – well, number 15 actually but many of those above are micro-nations where the rich gather – employers still don't hire people above the age of 49. Partly this is because Norwegians like to retire earlier and earlier. Most do so at 62 these days. And I am very much an exception with my computer and software know-how, while young people have absorbed these skills through childhood. So I'd be unemployed for a while then get disability pension, since there must necessarily be something wrong with a person who can't be hired. (No really, this is very common in Norway.) Not that I would mind such a pension. Being paid to not work is awesome! But it would seriously be a waste of resources, even more so than continuing to work for the State.