Is It Time for LinkedOut??

As noted in this space a while back and still included on my profile, I’m retired, but not entirely adjusted to it. As a matter of fact, I’ve retired twice. Actually, that’s not quite true: I’ve been retired twice, without my consent both times. Placed in retired status, they called it the first time. The second time, I finally began to accept that my working days were over, whether I wanted them to be or not. It’s been close to 2 years now. I still haven’t adjusted to it.

What to do next? I have a pension that pays the bills. My kids are grown, the mortgage is paid off and I’m in relatively decent health. No sense in trying to get back into the workforce, if only just to relieve some of the boredom, because I keep being told “the industry has changed”. Yeah, like there’s been a sea change in the last 19 months.  Spare me the ageist BS...

I’ve come to realize that LinkedIn doesn’t work very well for those of us who have put in our time and finally hung up our tools, whether voluntarily (as in most cases), or somewhat less than that (as in my own situation). For people like me, it really doesn’t work at all these days, but I stay here to keep on top of what’s new in the worlds of business and IT, and see what my connections are up to. Not that it really matters, though: the knowledge I glean from here makes no difference to anyone but me since the contracts have dried up, and I don’t hear from most of my connections very much now. But I must confess that watching the kids argue and grouch over my bon mots here does liven up the day...

Then I had a thought. Since LinkedIn doesn’t do anything to help me anymore, what about LinkedOut, a meeting place for those of us who don’t take part in the working world anymore, but who still have a lot to offer in terms of knowledge and experience in subjects that the kids are only now just beginning to discover?

Soooo... Let’s build LinkedOut.

First, we need a Mission Statement, because apparently every organization has to have one (an edict of some kind, I think). Like any Mission Statement, it needs to be vacuous: say nothing, mean nothing and apply to any situation...

LinkedOut: Your turn is coming... (OK, so it’s not great. Send me a better one and I’ll credit you on the update.)

Next, we need to define our target membership. LinkedOut is a meeting place for people who are no longer in the workforce, whether by their own choice or not. It’s NOT for people who are temporarily out of it. So if you’ve been fired, laid off, outsourced, or “on the bench” (as one monumentally brain-dead outsourcing organization told me), and plan on getting back into paid work, LinkedOut isn’t for you. LinkedIn is where you need to be. If you’re able to wade through all the ads, spam, Pollyannas, self-promotion, posts irrelevant to you, and inappropriate topics (things that should go on Facebook, Instagram and all similar wastes of time and bandwidth), you should be able to find opportunities here, or at least useful contacts. You’ll have to dig for them of course, but it’s a good place to start your effort to get back into the workforce.

If you’re still here at this point, welcome...

I Guess We Need an Agenda Too...

What would we discuss in LinkedOut? There are a myriad of potential discussion topics, but here are a few suggestions:

·        The Door Swings Only One Way: Out. The exit “experience” and how it happened to you. Exit Interviews (if you were lucky enough to have one), the psychology of the early days and weeks, and coming to terms with it all;

·        Preparing for the Big Day. What you suggest that people do or not do. Welcoming them to the ranks of LinkedOuters...

·        To Stay In Touch or Not? Relationships with former workmates. Are they really friends or just acquaintances?

·        Things You Kids Need To Know. Our accumulated wisdom and observations;

·        Consulting. Does it give you what you need? Should you bother?

·        Do I Really Want To Own A Hardware Store? Striking out on your own.

·        So What To Do With All That Spare Time? You can’t play golf all the time. I don’t even like golf;

·        Ageism. It exists;

·        The War Story Catalog. Things that happened to you or others in your environment, with emphasis on what you learned, how you learned it, and what you did to ensure if didn’t (or did) happen again;

·        Would I Go Back If You Begged Me? Thoughts about whether or not to consider it;

·        The Industry Hasn’t Changed, You Just Think It Has. A variation on ageism, but also on whether or not you’ve adjusted to your new situation;

·        Great or Poor “Leaders” I Have Known. No names to be sure, but exploring what made them “special”;

·        The Joys of Not Always Having to be Positive: Throwing the Pollyannas out of your life;

·        ...stuff like that. You get the idea.

Here’s something that would fit into LO’s The Door Swings Only One Way: Out category. About 40 years ago, my late Uncle Roy retired after a long career in middle management. He got what was at the time the traditional send-off: dinner, drinks, stories with workmates, and the obligatory token remembrances. I thought he needed to cut the cord completely, so I bought him a cheap alarm clock and a hammer. On the first workday morning after his retirement, he got up, shaved, showered, got dressed and had breakfast as usual. After that, he took the clock down to his workshop and beat the living crap out of it with the hammer, then went out to play golf. He told me many times in his later years how good it felt to make such a clean break. We should all be so lucky...  I would have loved something like that.

Consider what might also reside in that thread. How The End came for you; how HR helped or didn’t, The Lunch (or Dinner and Drinks if you were lucky enough): that kind of thing.

Why, You May Ask, Do We Need This?

It’s simple, really. LinkedIn exists to allow business people to connect, with a minimum of cat pics, religious rants, political posturing and other diversions that take you away from your work. People like me, who aren’t in the workforce anymore, left the treadmill with varying levels of willingness, and to be honest, varying levels of interest in the 9-to-whatever lifestyle.

Volunteering is all very good and noble, and travelling the world extensively to make it up to the Significant Other / kids for years of working nights, weekends, and holidays is a good thing too. But there still exists a desire to be in harness, to be able to contribute to making things a little better today than they were yesterday.

This is the real beauty of LinkedOut. Since you’ve departed the wage brigade and have no interest in (or possibility of) a return to the working world, you don’t have to pull your punches any longer. I don’t know about you, but the endless positivity and gung-ho nature of LinkedIn gets to me after a while. Everything always has to be bigger, flashier, newer, cheaper, AI-focused, and whatnot. I was in the workplace (using the past tense is something LO’ers have to adapt to) long enough to know that the real world doesn’t work that way.  Things go wrong, office politics has destroyed departments, the economy tanks sometimes, and not everyone around you is always happy and joyous. The team doesn’t go out for drinks and sing Kumbaya every Friday night. Very little of that world ever makes it to LinkedIn.

That’s just the way it is. Planet LinkedIn has its own Standard Operating Environment, and the real world just doesn’t fit in. And many of us don’t anymore, either...

So consider LinkedOut. I’d set up a site but I’m sure that TPTB would have a snit and get litigious, so I’m happy to let them set it up, as long as I’m credited for the idea and made Site Administrator.

See you there. Sooner or later.