American Thanksgiving
It's Thanksgiving weekend, so Janet and I have done what any prudent ex-pats would: hid indoors, as far from the shops as we could get. Janet went to work yesterday, and today we both stayed in the apartment. We'll have to be here a year or two before I'm willing to take on the natives on the streets on the busiest shopping day of the year.
Job Offer
Nothings in on paper yet, but I have been offered a post doing interesting work on an IT project at a prestigious company. The job is in Princeton, New Jersey, so the commute is going to be unpleasant, but as long as I can get some work done on the train, it won't be wasted time. I'll provide more details once I've got it in writing.
Lehman Bros.
I spent most of yesterday at an event organized by
Lehman Brothers, at their headquarters near Times Square. (I felt like a real New Yorker walking through Times Square, checking messages on my cell phone, on my way to the gleaming office tower of a major global financial services firm.) The day, part of their
Encore program, was organized for people such as myself who are re-entering the workforce after a protracted absence. Lehman Brothers is an unusually enlightened company in this way, because they realized that people who have been out for a while do have particular trouble re-starting their careers, and they believe it's a useful pool of talent that they can tap for experienced people - that in fact just because you've been out of work for a couple of years, there may be a reason for it that has nothing to do with professional shortcomings. Believe me, this realization on the part of an employer is unusual.
The idea stems originally from the plight of mothers who have left their jobs to look after their children, but all kinds of people were included in the event, people who'd been pursuing studies, trying to start a business, taking care of invalid relatives, and so on. But most of the people there were women who had been raising children for the last few years. The event was organized in periods and we changed tables at each break to meet people in the different divisions. I was the only male candidate in each group (there were some men among the employees who were there to talk to us) until I reached the IT table where four of us just outnumbered the female candidates. It was kind of strange being in the heart of the financial services industry, generally a bastion of white male supremacy, and feeling like a member of a very small minority.
The day was part pep rally for the job hunters, part commercial for Lehman Brothers, and only thirdly networking with hiring managers. Some very senior people spoke, and managing directors sat amongst us.
Joseph Gregory, COO and President, was a particularly good speaker, talking passionately and persuasively about the company and the program for half an hour without notes. The overall impression one gets, from the presenters and from everyone I spoke to, is that the company is one that really does care about their people, people really do enjoy working there, and issues of work/life balance get much more than lip service. A large number, if not the majority, of employees that I met had been there for more than ten years, implying a remarkably low turnover.
Unfortunately it's not a great time of year for hiring opportunities. The tendency in the industry is to wait until the new year when departments know how successful the previous year was and so what their budgets are likely to be in the one coming, and employees don't leave voluntarily now since they would forego their bonus. And this year is worse than most for uncertainty, following the upheaval in the markets this summer, and their continuing softness. When the Vice Chair,
Barbara Byrne, spoke she told a story in which her salary had been threatened, by men who thought flex time meant less time. She inserted a caveat to the effect that one must realize the annual salary is a relatively small part of compensation for positions at her level, and then she reflectively interjected "Well, this year who knows." Nonetheless there were areas discussed that merit some aggressive follow up. It's nice to know that at least I won't be rejected out of hand for the "sabbatical" line on my résumé.
Uphill Arabic
We have been spending our Saturday mornings learning Arabic this fall. Why? Because it's a challenge, it's spoken in a part of the world we're interested in and have enjoyed visiting, and it's not inconceivable that the we could find our careers leading us to the growing financial markets in the gulf. I started to learn Egyptian Arabic when I was posted to the Sinai, but since this course is teaching modern standard Arabic, I find I'm tripping over what I learned before as often as I'm helped by it.
Our professor is a very capable instructor, who teaches at Rutgers University as well as our NYU Continuing Studies course. He's not as fierce as he looks in this picture; in fact, he can be very funny. But he's a taskmaster too, and since we wanted a challenge we signed up for the intensive course, which is filled with very motivated people: many are taking it for career reasons, there's an archaeologist, and at least one person who married a native Arabic speaker. In other words, they make us feel like dilettantes, and we're struggling to keep our heads above water. Well, you know what they say about the brain: use it or lose it.
A HEC of a Birthday
Janet and I went to a reception on the floor of the NYSE last night. The event was organized by the alumni network of
HEC Montreal, in honour of the school's 100th anniversary. I didn't even know there was a HEC Montreal, however we received an invitation through the
Canadian Association of New York, of which we are members, and it sounded like a fun place to have wine and cheese.
It was a bit of a maze, which in some ways contributed to mingling, but made it hard to watch the speeches (oh well) or listen to the jazz band. The trading desks seemed to be left pretty much as they would have been at the end of a trading day, except for little signs asking people not to put their glasses down on the counters. I was a little nonplussed to see game controllers plugged into the computers in one area. Most likely they simply have unpredictable periods of tedious downtime; but I'd love to know if someone has come up with a way to expedite a trade using a joystick.
Photographs of famous people who have rung the bell were arrayed along the hallway leading to the restrooms (as toilets are fastidiously referred to in this odd country). I was impressed by the picture of Sir Edmund Hillary; Janet was delighted by the shot of Morris the Cat.
Our professor is a very capable instructor, who teaches at Rutgers University as well as our NYU Continuing Studies course. He's not as fierce as he looks in this picture; in fact, he can be very funny. But he's a taskmaster too, and since we wanted a challenge we signed up for the intensive course, which is filled with very motivated people: many are taking it for career reasons, there's an archaeologist, and at least one person who married a native Arabic speaker. In other words, they make us feel like dilettantes, and we're struggling to keep our heads above water. Well, you know what they say about the brain: use it or lose it.
Janet and I went to a reception on the floor of the NYSE last night. The event was organized by the alumni network of HEC Montreal, in honour of the school's 100th anniversary. I didn't even know there was a HEC Montreal, however we received an invitation through the Canadian Association of New York, of which we are members, and it sounded like a fun place to have wine and cheese. 
