Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Inappropriately placed in the work world

Welcome Ms.Friz,
Have a seat and a virtual beverage of choice. We get it. I get it. LOL - I'm laughing because my brain just got a preview of what my fingers are about to type: I was in a job that had many good qualities, but just didn't really 'use my special gifts'often enough when this Forum opened up, and I decided to start posting so that no one would have to go through what I went through all alone. So posting here became my 'Afterworking' that I could do during working hours.

Weird to see myself anew here once again. And I thought that I was so 'different' LOL!

Anyway, my suggestion is afterworking, and make your second topic 'getting my financial life in order' with books such as 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad,' and 'The Millionare Next Door.' Once you know what's up with the household finances, the next topic could be exploring alternate careers. At the same time, I agree with the polish up the resume and look for a similar job in a different company or department at the same time as the Afterworking. Then you can have better conversations with current boss, once you know what the market actually is. Use those sick days if you have any accrued!

Smiles,
Grinity

That's just it! This has happened to me at two jobs in a row. I come in all enthusiastic and eager, learn everything there is to learn in a year or less, do the work in half the time that is expected of me, and eventually reach a point where I have little to do (and nothing challenging to do) for significant portions of the day. I have paced the floors of my offices, read novels, and taken on-line courses just to kill time at work--all the while getting raises and great performance reviews! I've asked both my last two bosses for more work and more challenging work, but both just wanted me to keep doing what I was doing. It's madness, really! You'd think an employer would want to invest in his/her employees. Maybe they think I'm getting too big for my britches or that I'll leave for something better if I learn anything at work. All I know is that after 2-3 years at a job, I seem to hit a wall where I have no choice but to leave. Bored to tears is just it!

I hear this! Suffice it to say I've managed to read much of what's on this forum and half the articles on Hoagies without stealing any time from my son. However, this only adds to my stress level and feeling of desperation! I consider myself to be a fairly principled person with a strong work ethic, so all those little things I do to keep myself from going absolutely crazy at work also leaving me feeling guilty, ashamed and, to the extent that I'm afraid of getting caught, paranoid. Consequently, the days when my work load is especially light are always the most stressful and exhausting for me. I come home absolutely drained. It's all just so unhealthy at this point!

I know I need to quit, but due to my work cycle, it will cause far less trouble for my boss and coworkers if I can make it another 4-5 months. I also need to take my time and find something that's going to get me out of this rut. I was running from an excruciatingly boring job when I took my current one, so there's definitely some pattern here that I need to break out of.

I have no idea what you mean.

Oh, wait...



Dead on, Grinity! Dead on!

I've been thinking about your post and remembered in Misdiagnosis by James Webb et al there was a section in Chapter 9 called "Employment Relational Problems." Gifted creative types have little tolerance for office politics, want to dispense with the formalities and get right down to business. They have to learn the art of being "business friendly" and experience daily frustration with mind-numbing routines, banalities, and "administrivia." Some companies have developed "skunk works" to group the most creative workers and emphasize innovation over conformity. It may be harsh but true when Arthur Jensen said for each person there is a "zone of tolerance" of plus or minus 20 IQ points.

At the parent teacher conference the teacher said DD seemed to prefer working alone to group activities. I looked into cooperative learning and realized many of the problems gifted children run into with cooperative learning are related to adult problems with the work world (or even the PTA world in my current SAHM position). Maybe key components of collaborative learning would help gifted adults: perception of a sink or swim relationship and individual accountability.

From Harvard Education Letter http://www.edletter.org/past/issues/2000-mj/cooperative.shtml

I have seen this problem in my family. My mother's brother was a gifted artist, loved to travel, very charming and articulate, and because he got bored so easily, he couldn't keep a job for more than a year or so. I know he was capable of doing so much more than he did. It is too late for him to do anything now. He had a stroke and retired with very little montly income because he didn't work anywhere long enough to earn a decent retirement.

My highly gifted stepson was smarter than a lot of his teachers in high school so he dropped out and got his GED. He took a few college courses but dropped out of college. Even though he dropped out of college he usually managed to make higher scores on tests than the colledge graduates and had no trouble finding IT jobs even though he didn't have the degree. He has had so many different jobs and he didn't keep any of them for very long. He had jobs that paid well enough to pay his bills, but he kept getting bored with his job or he said he hated dealing with office politics, so he kept changing jobs until there were no good places left for him to work.

One thing that worries me about the idea of changing jobs is the fact that when companies lay off employees, the last people hired are usually the first people to be laid off. I once worked for a manufacturing company in the accounting department where I was just a number. I was out the door when they had a lay off not because of the work I did, but because of my number. I had only worked there five years and had just bought a new house. It happened right before Christmas when I was a single parent. Things I have heard recently on the news about the economy and loss of jobs are bringing back bad memories.

My highly gifted stepson has been working at a convenience store for over a year now because he couldn't find the right job when there were jobs available and now nobody is hiring. He is 34, can barely pay his bills now and he is afraid his hours are going to be cut. I worry that it will be even more difficult for him to find a good job now because he will have to explain why he worked so many different places and why there were times when he wasn't working at all for months at a time. The years between ages 34 and 40 go by way too fast and I know it will be harder for him to find a job even with a degree after 40.

I also think the average employer has about as much sympathy for people who are bored with their jobs as the average teacher has for gifted kids who are bored in school.

Our family has talked a lot lately about this "problem" that often comes with being gifted. At least my 10 year old is learning something from it. He sees the difficulty that his older half brother is having and is motivated to get a college degree no matter how smart he is and he is already listening to advice from his dad who has to hire and fire people as part of his job and his grandfather who worked his way up in the military, retired, went back to work as a low level clerk and worked his way up again as a civilian government employee. My son heard his brother tell us about not being able to go to the doctor because he couldn't afford the co-pays even if he had insurance. He heard him talk about not having money to go to a movie or even enough money left after paying bills to buy the gas to get there. So my son thinks it might be a good idea to get more than one college degree so that he will be qualified to do more than one type of job. He wants to have the education necessary to write a book, design video games, be a psychologist, and maybe do a little acting on the side.

Several members of my family worked for the federal government where changing jobs and working up the ladder was expected. They always found another job before they got bored. I have a younger sister who was gifted in math. She works for the federal government and she makes over six figures a year as a supervisor but she is at a place now where she feels stuck. She would have to take a cut in pay and a lower level position to change jobs now and she is having a hard time with this. She has to decide if the stress she is feeling is worth the money she is being paid.

One of my uncles, an engineer, had so much energy after working all day that he enjoyed working on televisions, electrical appliances, all kinds of things just for fun.

My husband once hired a woman who had earned a law degree but decided to work as a librarian for a while before she looked for a job where she could use her law degree. I noticed her when she worked at the library. She moved very fast and efficiently compared to the other employees and when she spoke it was obvious that she was very intelligent. I remember that she didn't find it the least bit strange that my son was reading things at a very high level for his age.

I am not so gifted, don't have all this surplus energy that a lot of gifted people seem to have, and I haven't felt bored or unchallenged since I had my son, quit my job, and started homeschooling. If had any more challenge in my life I am afraid I would be increasing my risk of a stroke so I look for ways to find challenge and fun at home.

If the world is constructed for one level of person and the interfaces are for a given bandwidth, someone who operates two orders of magnitude above the norm will always feel stuck.

I am very fortunate that I get to research new technologies every few months and then construct a working system out of them while hiring some smart and hard working people. I get to work in the seam between business development and our development team.

One flaw in how my workplace is constructed is that the current HR process would screen out most of our star performers hired at a time when no one screened resumes. Our current crop of new hires are an unimaginative bunch and rather boring. Our older hires have eclectic pasts and are also quicker on their feet - and most did not have degrees or significant work experience when we hired them. We would not succeed today if we started out with the screening process we have now. As a firm, the policies value coformity to a norm over performance and achievement. We are not developing our farm team.

IMHO, if we administered IQ and emotional maturity tests to people and took the top 10% no matter what their degree status or knowledge base, we'd be an order of magnitude ahead. I was once at a startup that did this and we took some fresh college grads who were first-chairs - and they became phenomenal developers in six months - they could read and learn by reading, they had phenomenal concentration, great work ethic, could take criticism, and they were fun to be around.

This concept is so 90s and is how I got into the tech world. How a lot of people did for that matter. For the most part the concept is gone but for some companies developed out of the hate for corp. politics it still lives on. My husband works for one such company and they still live in the '90s'. It is fast paced but they take care of their employees. I never saw why it was a flawed system. Yes you got some dead weight, but what system doesn't?

My top goal this year is to inject this into our corporate culture.

Sign me up!