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Go with the Flow
by Mike Morris
November 9, 2000
Learning to be a contractor in California
By Mike Morris
If you want a step by step guide to making a fortune in the City of Angels, I can't help you. After a while, LA takes over, and the sun and the beaches seduce you away from the path of hard work and self-discipline.
But one thing I can tell you: a contractor with a green card can obtain a much higher standard of living here than he can in Britain.
I came to Los Angeles after working for 12 years as a regular employee in upstate New York. I had set up some interviews in Southern California, and was treated royally.
I was amazed to be told by a a few senior managers that my atrocious Birmingham accent was actually “really great.” And a lot of people assumed that I had lived in a castle surrounded by butlers and maids.
So, who did your facelift? It looks great by the way
Californians are excessively polite and exuberant. Shoppers meeting in a supermarket checkout line greet each other like long lost friends, and ask questions a Brit would find embarrassingly personal.
The trick is to realize that they don't really want to know about your emotional state, sex life and bank balance. They just want to exchange assurances that all’s well with the world.
Once you get used to this, it's quite an appealing social convention.
Californians are taken aback when a Briton tells them, truthfully, that he has had a rough day and is fed up with his wife’s cooking. For a Californian to admit this means he is seriously contemplating suicide or murder.
So, go with the flow. After a while you get caught up in the boundless optimism and energy of the place.
Feast or famine
This optimism carries over to the workplace, and quite often contractors are given impossible deadlines. If you're too honest, you may not survive.
On the West Coast, projects often take much longer than the original optimistic estimate. Your project could go on forever, fueled by renewed surges of optimism and cash.
Or, more likely, you could arrive at work one day to find your desk cleared.
On one contract, my client, with no embarrassment, apologized for dismissing me at – literally – 30 seconds notice. I also got a good job reference. A Brit can get totally confused by the great friendliness with which an American manager ruthlessly prunes his staff.
Cube with a view – or not
Physical working conditions vary wildly in California. But there is almost always an abundance of supplies, mountains of yellow legal pads, piles of three-ring binders and electric pencil sharpeners that grind a pencil to a stub in seconds.
I've been assigned a huge modern office to myself, with a full-length window overlooking the Bonaventure Hotel pool, and I've been shoved into a narrow corridor, opposite the lavatory, with a tiny drawerless desk.
One of the most interesting places I worked was the headquarters of a supermarket chain, a huge gothic building from the turn of the century, which had been a movie house, and before that a theater. It was full of statues and sweeping stone arches, and had a labyrinth of underground dressing rooms, most of them flooded. It was probably one of the oldest buildings in LA, and the owners tore it down a few years ago without a second thought.
I’ll never understand
As a contractor in LA, I soon discovered that I was expected to work with a minimum of training. It's also not unusual to be shifted around every few days, and even to have to share a desk. And with all this, contractors are expected to produce much faster and more reliably than regular staff.
I used to feel a little hurt about this, but after a while, I realized it was normal practice. By definition, contractors are mercenaries, hiring on for anyone with money.
This makes us outsiders, not part of the corporate 'family'. I was very pleased when I reached this insight, but as usual my understanding of Californians was far from complete.
On one contract, at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday, with absolutely no warning, security guards rounded up all the regular employees. In five minutes they were out of the door, clutching pathetic bundles of personal possessions like refugees. We contractors were told that the company (an offshoot of a bank) was winding up, and we could stay to document all the software while we looked for other contracts.
East vs. West
One of the more subtle traps for a Brit working in the USA, and especially California, is a tendency to think that fellow English speakers are a lot less foreign than, say, German or French speakers.
Wrong.
To some extent the East coast was a tougher, more exciting and dynamic extension of the society I had left behind - a sort of Anglo United States of Europe. The real America emerges as you travel West.
It's a land of contradictions that I don't fully understand. The language is the same - but different.
When a Californian tells you that somewhere is five minutes away, he means five minutes in a fast car on the freeway. Any journey of more than 50 yards requires an auto or cab, which runs on gas and has a hood and a trunk. Anyone who walks for pleasure is considered eccentric at least.
Californians are terrified at the sight of a speck of dirt, but guns, knives, and even the earth moving are shrugged of without concern.
These are my own views, and I make no guarantees about the experiences of others. It occurs to me that I have been influenced by my wife, who was born in Santa Monica, and is a Hollywood girl to boot.
I've said a lot less about working conditions in LA than I intended, but in my case at least, the sunshine and excitement of California came to mean more to me than money or success; the journey became more important than the destination.
I suppose I'm a little bit of a Californian myself now.
Mike Morris was born in the UK, and has worked with computers since the dawn of civilization. Prior to that, he worked in factories and foundries in the now derelict industrial heartland of Britain, known as "The Black Country."
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