"Good" Careers?

Yesterday I went to a hot-pot-restaurant for dinner with few seniors of Lab. The food and the pots that the restaurant provided do not matter in this post.

When we were chatting, some of them mentioned R & D Alternative Service, the economic situation, and their interviews. In brief, the economic situation has been quite bad, their interviews were not all positive, and they minded the pending results of the interviews.

A female senior said that she worried about the chances to get a “good” job when she gets the Master degree. The seniors said that a lot of big companies have been laying-off staffs and reduce the allowed number for hiring new staffs, but those companies keep the allowed number for R & D Alternative Service since if they do not do so, they will not be allowed to employ R & D Alternative Service applicants. Therefore, the female senior worried about the chance to get a “good” job (to get into “big” and “famous” companies) when she graduates from graduation-school since she could not apply for R & D Alternative Service, besides, there will be hundreds of people – including the ones from NTU, NCTU, NTHU, and oversea – compete for those scarce jobs. They worried about the degrees from our school are not “shining” enough for the few (liver-selling) jobs of the most famous companies in Taiwan.

However, the definitions of the terms “good-jobs” and “good-companies” vary from person to person. The big and famous companies, which are defined and covered by media, do not always treat their employees well or fair. Though people think that getting those “good” jobs and working in those “good” companies means that “good” careers are promised, I doubt about that.

Well, I have to admit that to have experience of working in companies which have well-examined, competitive and historically-long systems is pretty attractive. But, despite the truth of that big-size and great-brand are not synonymous to this description, it is not a necessity. Life is not constructed by capitalism, nor lived-up-to by working and earning. It’s not worth to be too eager for getting into the media-constructed and people-gossiped “good” companies, not to mention to put whole mind on the thought of to have a “good” career.