In mid January, James Altucher wrote a post for TechCrunch titled “10 Reasons Why 2013 Will Be the Year You Quit Your Job“. It was a tug at the hearts of technologists during a motivational time of the year and ingeniously designed to keep readers coming back for inspiration. Altucher is one of those unsuspecting souls from high school that went on to become quite successful as a writer for the Wall Street Journal and lucrative investment entrepreneur – all launched from a stint with HBO as a computer programmer in the mid 90’s.
While there is a radical school of thought that you should start a business in a down economy, quitting your job with the current economic turmoil to start a new venture is just plain crazy. In the late 80’s, I traveled the nation implementing bar coding and scores of data entry personnel went on to do more meaningful, better paying jobs like inventory analysts. Even at that time, much of the Northeast was littered with massive, empty buildings. It’s more than ironic that someone from Wall Street would just now notice causal vacancies. Not to mention that failed, huge government, welfare states like New York have forced the average person to work multiple jobs for the last 30 years to stay in the middle class.
Today, I help business owners and their management escape broken legacy thoughts about technology in order to improve profitability. Smart IT people don’t lose their jobs to managed services. They are happier doing brain work moving their organization forward, rather than worrying about mundane updates and backup. The rank and file employees also embrace cloud computing and other new technology, knowing their worth only improves. Any lost counterparts that throw up their hands in resistance and confusion quickly land in unemployment.
Improvement is the harsh reality of the world and has been forever. Live every day, improve your skills, learn new things, and follow your dreams. However, I’d be wary of Altucher’s message to choose yourself for success and escape the job prison. I envy him because he’s made it to the show. Unfortunately, it’s not from self-publishing books as most books sell less than 250 copies per year and 3,000 copies in a lifetime. Once you start with that fact, I wonder how Altucher was able to quit his job and don’t you then question the rest of the article?