While the racetrack-like Elliptical Road in Quezon City rumbles with noise, fumes, and traffic, a few silent automobiles make their own rounds in the Quezon Memorial Circle that the road borders. Humbly seating four persons max, the curious rides called G Cars (in a pun-loaded attribution to their inventor, Gerry Caroro) can be hired for PHP30 per lap. Caroro laments, however, that he never intended his invention as an amusement park curiosity. He intended it to be the solution to the country’s dependence on imported oil, as well as reduce pollution in the metropolis.

Unfortunately Caroro has difficulty finding an investor for his invention, a plight shared with most of the country’s inventors. As any dutiful citizen of the Philippines tends to do, Ronald Talion of the Filipino Inventors Society blames the government for this:

“It’s already mandated under Republic Act Act 7459 (Inventors and Invention Incentives Act) and yet, for some strange reason, our inventors have to fend for themselves,” Talion noted.

“The only support we get is the P178,000 that is given to us every November to celebrate National Inventors Week (NIW). Obviously this is not enough, which is why a lot of my colleagues were forced to seek support from abroad,” he lamented. [Inquirer.Net]

An automotive industry that never was

The plight of Caroro’s fledgling effort to produce a viable automotive technology is but an addition to the tragic history of the country’s automotive industry, shared with its ubiquitous mode of transport and cultural icon: the jeepney. Originally coming from surplus and left-behind military jeeps, roofs were installed and lavish decorations applied to convert former war-wagons into colorful passenger vehicles able to seat six to ten people at a time. From the 60s until the 80s, a vibrant backyard industry emerged, where jeepneys and “owner-type” jeeps were manufactured as low-cost alternatives to lavish, large-engined American cars or their cheaper Japanese counterparts.

The jeepney manufacturing sector was never able to make it beyond “backyard” status to become a genuine car-manufacture industry, though. Beyond metal pressing and stamping, and fabrication of various “mods” to adorn and embellish each jeepney, they never went to the stage of standardization, efficient mass production, and assembly line automation. Over fifty years of jeepney manufacture remained in the realm of hand-pressed, hand-crafted, hand-painted methods. Moreover, it is peculiarly unclear if any two jeepneys are exactly alike, and it is even dubious if any of them had followed a clear cut blue print of any sort.

The last straw, however, is the country’s dependence on Japanese-made surplus engines. Despite whatever expertise local mechanics could boast about in the knowledge of assembling, maintaining and repairing car engines, not a single company has attempted to create its own internal combustion engine with the intent of mass production. The country was relegated to using surplus engines for jeepneys, as well as assembling completely knocked-down (CKD) body kits for various Japanese and American car manufacturers (and even one type of Armored Personnel Carrier for the Philippine Army). Never was the country able to completely manufacture of any mass-produced automobile from top to bottom.

Due to higher-quality offerings of truck-cabbed alternatives with passenger modules in the rear, the jeepney is now dying a slow death. While they are still “King of the Road” in Manila, low sales and profitability has killed all but the most persistent jeepney assemblers of Cavite. Their demise, however, is more pronounced in Cebu, where Chinese manufactured “multicabs” and truck-cabbed jeepneys with Isuzu Elf and Toyota Hi-Ace engines, chassis and driver modules now rule.

An industrial pariah

This situation isn’t even isolated to the automotive industry: while the Philippines has been home to several multinational companies, none of these had resulted in the creation of large local counterpart enterprises. The Philippines hosted Intel since the 1970s, but has yet to have any local company that manufactures PC components (S3 Graphics, while founded by Filipinos Dado Banatao and Robert Yara, was established in Silicon Valley). This is in stark contrast with Taiwan, which is home to computing giants Acer and Asus, among others. Texas Instruments has long had its electronics plant in Baguio, yet no local electronics company has become prominent. American Power Supplies and International Business Machines has been in the country longer than Intel has. The list goes on and on.

It is obvious that, despite the brain drain brought about by the labor export industry, the country does not lack, or at least at several points in its history, has never lacked the means to produce technical expertise that industrialization requires. Neither is there a lack in investment and funding, as evidenced by the continued presence of big-name corporations in the country, notwithstanding moves to shift factories to China. Further evidence of the above is the continued establishment of business process outsourcing firms in the country, which implies both investment and skill.

The government is not entirely remiss in its support to local industry either. Just last month the Department of Science and Technology launched the One-Stop Information Shop of Technologies (OSIST) website (http://www.osist.dost.gov.ph) to assist technology experts and inventors in finding venture capitalists and buyers. While several online pundits question the PHP20 million funding of what essentially is a turtle-paced-loading website, the project will hopefully take off and become a useful tool in aiding inventors like Mr. Caroro in fielding tech innovations like his G-Car. It has to be noted, however that this is not the first time the DOST attempted to set up a program that it hoped would help local industries take off.

Asia’s uncommon manufacturing industry roots

Asia has, arguably, three main manufacturing powerhouses: Japan, China and South Korea, but they each have unique histories in terms of the growth of their manufacturing sectors.

Japan embarked on a sizable Meiji Emperor-sanctioned industrialization effort during the late 19^th century, and while for most of mid-20^th century they had the reputation of producing cheap imitations, relentless improvements in process and technology eventually allowed them to come up with advances above and beyond their Western counterparts.

China, meanwhile, isolated for much of the half-century after the Second World War, had to rely on reverse-engineering much of Western technology, as well as technology-sharing with the USSR, and thus almost forcefully expanded its local manufacturing capability, even before its shift to the capitalist market model.

South Korea, on the other hand, was a little bit more orchestrated, with the regime of Park Chung-hee implementing continuous 5-year development periods during the 1960s that nursed and encouraged industrialization, in a rapid expansion that was eventually termed as the “Miracle on the Han River”.

During the 1950s and 60s the Philippines enjoyed a vibrant economy and an apparently advanced manufacturing sector. The sense of security this brought, however, was false: the industries that the Philippines relied on were primarily American and non-indigenous; and whatever prosperity Filipinos enjoyed rested on the mistaken belief that these foreign investments will remain on the country indefinitely. By the time the problems brought about by the Marcos dictatorship manifested itself in economic collapse, the happy-go-lucky era of American-funded industrialization was already on the way out.

An unwanted local manufacturing industry

The local market was, itself, a challenge. While the Chinese had no choice but to use whatever products are allowed by the Communist government, and the Japanese and Korean markets are fiercely nationalistic in patronizing their own products, moneyed Filipinos were obsessing themselves with everything “state-side”. Everything imported from the US was a godsend; anything local was cheap and “bakya” (out-of-fashion).

Whatever local manufacturing industry offering there was on its own, save for those that were American-branded (e.g., Concepcion Industries’ locally manufactured Carrier air conditioners). Probably the only thriving local manufacturing industry was involved in textiles, clothing, or jeepney manufacture: the latter was even threatened to be usurped by the introduction of Asian Utility Vehicles like Ford’s Fierra and Toyota’s Tamaraw.

What eventually killed the jeep industry, however, were steady albeit imperfect improvements in the local transport systems, as well as increased spending power that weaned private vehicle owners to vans and cars and away from locally crafted jeepneys and owner-type jeeps. It did not help that the local market did not have a genuine automobile product to respond to the demand.

Questions in catching up with a global economy

It is not difficult to surmise that it is now nearly impossible to catch up to the manufacturing behemoth called China. It’s hard to compete with the business viability of going Chinese: cheap labor, power, and highly developed infrastructure trumps any sort of nationalist lament; it simply dictates against the principles of profitability and sustainability. It would be rather ironic to even note that Caroro and his G-Car might turn out to be better cheaply manufactured abroad than made in the country. It should be noted that the e-jeepneys in Makati, Bacolod and Cebu are all made in China.

However, the ill-effects of the Philippine labor-export industry tend to undermine whatever benefits, both real and unrealized, that the said industry has. Large populations of disunited families will be more damaging in the long-run, and skilled overseas labor has brought neither expertise nor industry that the country could positively exploit. The questions now arise: should the Philippines try, daunting as it may seem, to catch up with the Asian manufacturing giants? Should it refocus on other sectors, particularly in services (perhaps, business process outsourcing), which might have been effective for some economies (Hong Kong comes into mind)?

Will Filipino industrialization remain as an electric dream?

Three years ago I was employed with a company that regularly sends employees to the US. I got fired from that post and never got to go. With my next employer there were two occasions wherein I would’ve been able to go abroad, first to Hong Kong, then to the US. Neither trips pushed through. With my current employer I got the opportunity to fly to South Africa — that didn’t push through either. Finally, last month I applied for a position that would assign me in either Shanghai, or Copenhagen. I didn’t get the post, and as with the others none of the trips came into fruition.

I don’t really bewail the fact that I wasn’t able to travel abroad. I have done it before, for leisure (my sister and I went to the US a decade ago to visit our late grandparents), and I have some sort of vow that if I’m ever to travel abroad, it would be for leisure. In fact, I do have a written promise to myself that I’ll fight my battles in this country, in an earlier manifestation of this blog hosted by Friendster.

Many times we take for granted things that we say to ourselves, whether or not they are half-meant, but it occurred to me that a big chunk of the realities that we experience were things that we always talk about.

For example, back when I was newly married and had a low paying job in a local bank, I had often wondered when and how I would reach a pay grade like that of my managers’ back then. Now, only four years later, my salary is around four and a half times (before taxes! :p) my pay the day I asked that question. Back when I was a teenager I vowed that, before exploring the world, I would explore the Philippines first. Today, aside from the fact that I was able to visit several tourist destinations in the country within 14 months, my wife actually owns the travel agency that made the trips possible in the first place!

Indeed, that promise — that vow, to stay in the country and work our way to progress despite the difficulty in doing so, has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Those little promises allowed me, along with my wife (I’m very, very lucky to have a wife who shares my dreams and ideals), to recognize potential, read sign posts in our lives, and take advantage of what to others appear to be an environment bereft of opportunity.

Over the years I have learned not to mind the fact that I haven’t been able to go abroad to work or corner a job opportunity out of the country. It doesn’t matter. I’ve told myself once before that my fight is right here in this country, and the way things are going, I’m really, really enjoying it.

Reading the following passage made me reminisce about my high school alma mater, which with its reputation and demanding curriculum, such stories are not unusual at all:

One graduate was Kim Soo-yeon, 19, who was accepted by Princeton this month. Daewon parents tend to be wealthy doctors, lawyers or university professors. Ms. Kim’s father is a top official in the Korean Olympic Committee.

Ms. Kim developed fierce study habits early, watching her mother scold her older sister for receiving any score less than 100 on tests. Even a 98 or a 99 brought a tongue-lashing.

“Most Korean mothers want their children to get 100 on all the tests in all the subjects,” Ms. Kim’s mother said. [The New York Times, emphasis mine]

I also had a batchmate who would freak out and weep when he got 99/100 in quizzes. He supposedly got beatings from his parents from such scores. It’s toll on the guy was obvious: he was socially inept. And by inept, I do not just mean that he’s a dork: by inept, I mean that, at 14 or 15 years old, he exhibited the emotional maturity of a 9 year old.

I’m not kidding, nor do I mean it in a degrading nor insulting way — he genuinely exhibited the emotional maturity of a 9 year old. While a lot of people was dealing with their adolescence hormones (although many, who are similar to him, are not), dealing with their relationships with the opposite sex, this guy was drooling (literally) in front of his Game Boy trying to finish The Legend of Zelda. He acted in this weird, comical way, as though he was always acting out a skit from some sort of cartoon. He wrote in the school paper, but his material never went beyond echoing the preachings of parents who made sure that their little boy behaved properly.

And all of that to satisfy the whims of parents who determined from day one that they will measure their child’s worth through the name of the school he went to, and through the numeric scribbles of some stranger on a thickened piece of paper.

While I agree that honing the talents of a gifted child is necessary so that talent does not go to waste, I believe that elevating perfection to some sort of sadistic standard and measuring a child’s worth through their adherence to that standard is pure and unadulterated child abuse. Indeed, many of us from that school, myself included, reached a point during our college years where we just burnt up, bombed out, and got disillusioned by the meaning of all the numbers ruling our lives, despite the absence of pressure from our parents at the time. It was simply expected of us because we came from that school.

It was tough being unable to distinguish one’s self worth from that stigma, the label of being a graduate of an elite school. Many people, upon learning that you’ve come from that school, immediately expect you to be some kind of superhuman or ubergenius; a person who is expected to be “successful” by excelling in all aspects of life, especially in academics and, years later, in a career. It’s as if failure is not an option.

I deeply appreciate my parents for not burdening me with the kinds of expectations some of my batch mates had to go through.

I am not discouraging people from sending their children to Philippine Science High School, or to any other science high school, or for aspiring for entry into Ivy League schools for that matter. Neither do I regret going to Pisay, because the challenges there certainly made me a stronger, more resilient, and more reflective person.

However, fourteen years’ worth of hindsight makes the repercussions of a high-pressure academic environment much, much clearer. Now that I am also a parent, at least the effort becomes more conscious: never ever make your child feel that they are only worth the grades they get. Being in an elite school is hard enough — lowering their self esteem will only make it worse.

They will thank you for it when you get older.

When Microsoft came up with its Heroes Happen {Here} campaign as part of Launch {2008}, I found the campaign name cheesy. “Hero” is something you reserve for people who do truly great things, and hardly fits into the portrait of a software developer — someone like me. A flawed person who makes mistakes, writes bugs, and tries his best to go home early to the family every night even as QA bug reports come pouring in for immediate repair.

Deep inside of me, however, I knew the kind of power, and consequently, the kind of responsibility, software developers had in our hands.

Four years ago I joined the IT department of Philippine National Bank, and was assigned under the ATM unit — that small team (3 of us actually) who maintains the software for the various ATM models (which span three decades of ATM development!) the bank uses. Many days were boring drudgery, but there were some days wherein we are up on our toes all because of some error on the system, some bug that was found, some COBOL report that crashed, or some cases of fraud that required investigation, or your new software was being QAed not by your usual QA staff but by the meticulous, devil-in-the-details ladies of the Audit Department.

Whenever those days ended I always find myself spewing out a huge sigh of relief.

But beyond relief, the experience whenever I step outside of the PNB offices and use its public ATMs is quite exhilarating. It sounds weird, sure, but it was dogfooding (for the laypeople — dogfooding is when a developer using his own software for real world purposes) at its finest. Whenever I line up for PNB ATMs and everything works as intended for everyone, I’d be happy. Whenever I line up for PNB ATMs and something doesn’t work right — the machine is down, very slow transactions, unresponsive networks, I’d personally pull out my cellphone and call my colleagues over at operations to inform them of the problem. Sometimes, just seeing PNB ATMs in far-off backwater towns with the card receptor light blinking happily green makes me smile.

Sure, it sounds shallow. But there is an immense satisfaction to be gained from the knowledge that you’ve got a software working that genuinely helps people — the power that a public facing software application (which an ATM essentially is, tightly coupled with hardware as it is) holds.

(Continue reading A portrait of a software developer as hero)

One of the things first time job hunters don’t realize is how both HR and, in the case of smaller companies, non-HR employees pore over, read, snoop at, and (here it goes!) critique and ridicule resumes, from the way the applicants look (if the resume has a picture) to their grammar (we love you Janina San Miguel!) to their mundane extra-curricular activities.

Of course we also try to convince the boss to let us know when a photogenic candidate will come in for an interview so we can take a look.

Naughty snooping notwithstanding, the first thing a graduate should think about is how to write a resume that will make a good first impression, at least enough to land an interview. Making a resume is not very different from advertising a product or service (more specifically, you are trying to sell you with it) so one must be meticulous in writing one.

Having had 5 different employers of over the 6 years of my career, here are some tips that I can offer (some learned the hard way!) that might be helpful. While most of these tips cover only IT/software development jobs, many of these tips are general enough for other industries as well:

• Revise, revise, revise. After you have revised your resume multiple times, have a parent, a close friend, or better yet, your English teacher read and revise it for you again. Nothing is more glaring (and turns employers off) faster than wrong spelling and hideous grammar. Having another person revise it is very important because it’s very easy to overlook mistakes after you had been staring at your resume for more than an hour. Take my word for it (I used to write in the school paper and per experience, obvious mistakes are the hardest to detect!).
• Do use a consistent, professional-looking font, and do not use colored text. Black is a very professional looking color on print, so stick with it. Likewise, choose a font that is readable and stick to it. Resumes printed in pink and have the font Comic Sans will immediately be thrown to the trash can, if not the paper shredder.
• Include photos at your own risk. This is so standard in Philippine resumes ever since the “bio-data” days that people automatically do it. But seriously, it’s not necessary in a resume. Usually what happens is that guys will look for the prettiest faces in the pile and ask to be told when her interview would be. If you do put a picture on the resume (or if the employer requires it), do NOT use your graduation picture. Put on a decent, professional looking ID that follows the conventions of passport photo requirements (e.g., white background, collared shirt/blouse, minimal make up).
• Avoid stating a career objective if you don’t know what your career objective is. One of the ugliest characteristics of bad resumes are cheesy, corny little career objective statements of people who don’t know what they are talking about. Statements like “I want to be one of the greatest programmers in the world” are so full of crap no one would allow you to pursue that path even if it’s really what you wanted. So just leave it out. If you have to put one in, an statement like “I would like to pursue expertise in technology X” might work. But be careful doing that: you don’t want to stereotype or limit yourself into technology X, and you certainly don’t want to say that you want to be an expert in Linux server management when you’re applying to a company that uses Windows servers exclusively.
• Immediately under your name, indicate which technologies you have experience using. HR personnel are very busy people, with tons of resumes to go through, so seeing the right skills immediately will help them notice your resume and have it go to the “for processing” bin.
• Write only the skills/technologies you have specific experience with, not those which you are merely “familiar” with. Nothing ruins an interviewer’s day worse than a person who claims to have an expertise in, say, SQL Server, but turns out to only have learned about it in a whole-day seminar. If you haven’t used it for even a small project, it’s okay, really. If you appear to be intelligent, we will teach you as you go. Promise.
• Do NOT include skills/awards that we don’t need to know about. I mean, really, we don’t care if you know how to drive and have a professional driver’s license. Neither do we care if you won Little Miss Philippines in 1989 or if you’re a runner up in Star in a Million in 2006. If it’s not relevant to your position, leave it out. But do underscore awards that are related to your desired position, like winning that programming contest in India back when you were in high school.
• Do NOT put in the IT certifications that you’ve earned. At least not if it’s not asked for. I know this sounds oxymoronic, because IT certifications are supposed to indicate proficiency in a certain technology and subject matter. However, if you’re a fresh graduate, it might work against you. First of all, what it does prove is that you’re good at memorizing reviewers and taking tests — that’s it. A certification, specially without field experience, will make you appear to be desperate at proving your worth, and it might work against you. Second, a lot of companies and IT managers abhor certifications because of the proliferation of websites like Braindumps, which leaks certification test items. Indicating certification raises eyebrows. Do indicate certifications that you have attained only if a potential employer asks for it explicitly. Otherwise, play safe — leave it out.
• Be prudent with divulging your personal information. We don’t need to know when you were married, how many kids you have, your religion or what your vital statistics are. All we need are some contact information so the employer can reach you if they want to, like your email address or your cellphone number.

If any of these tips are unclear to you, do leave a comment and I’ll try to get back to you the soonest.

Now if you can’t do it yourself, perhaps you should hire a professional resume writer to do it for you. It is that important.

I have been meaning to do this myself, but somehow, that “passion and excitement” of writing down my dreams has not reached me. For some reason, I find it difficult to write it in serious detail, the most plausible reason of which is not really knowing what I want to attain. I do have some vague idea — the birth of my wife’s travel agency business is certainly part of that. But my inability to do so does not erase the need to write it down.

So here’s my meager attempt at writing at least some of my dreams, and then maybe I would be able to add details unto it slowly in the future:

1. Set up my own ISV (Independent Software Vendor) business – or simply, put up my own software company, which will most likely dabble with the travel and tourism industry which my wife is already in. I have already taken baby steps towards this direction, although I am keeping my day job until I’ve completed some extensive preparations. So far, I’ve been drafting a feasibility study for this, which is a requisite to writing a good business plan.
2. Put up our own resort/hotel – actually this is my wife’s dream, but after hearing of the idea and thought about it, I figured… that’s not a bad idea at all. Perhaps set up one of the real Value Hotels in the Philippines. Considering the fact that the Philippines suffers from a lack of hotels vis-a-vis interested foreign visitors, it’s actually crazy not to pursue this dream.
3. Be a “real” entrepreneur – By “real” entrepreneur, I mean someone who has set up a system or an otherwise efficient business model that creates jobs and generates a decent profit. The two previous items should lead to this.
4. Become a pilot – despite defects on my vision, I still hope to be able to afford laser eye treatment and learn how to fly a real plane, whether for recreational or business purposes. As you can see it’s still quite related to the business we’re in
5. Move/retire to a home away from the city – My wife and I have, at one point, considered moving to the province as an option, but we didn’t push through it because of the lack of employment options for either of us. But that was more than two years ago, when we didn’t have a business on our own. When we visited Puerto Princesa in Palawan last year, we were so impressed that we toyed with the idea of moving there, since we’re in the travel industry anyway and the city’s main industry is eco-tourism. Once I am able to go on my own and really set-up my ISV, it might actually be possible to do that.

So far that’s it. It’s not much, but I figured it’s a start. Wish me luck.

P.S. I’m flying to Cebu City tomorrow and will be visiting Bantayan Island. Not sure if I’ll have internet access there, and my wife and I do intend to enjoy ourselves, so I might not be able to moderate your comments until Monday. I’ll update if I ditch Puerto Princesa for Cebu City, but I think that will be highly unlikely :p

In that blog entry, I posited that the “the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer” mantra was part of a “gospel of hopelessness” that poisons people’s minds into believing that there is absolutely no way for them to rise up above a life of poverty.

In turn, Sidney pointed out an article from Newsweek describing how, in many countries – even our more progressive Asian neighbors with so-called “tiger economies” – the gap between the rich and poor are widening, with the already-rich hogging any economic gains that a country achieves, leaving the poor to settle for the scraps from the dinner table which they fight for their lives for.

It was very painful for me to read that issue of Newsweek, and it boggled my mind as to how to answer Sidney’s challenge. I was in a quandary as to how view the situation – for every story of a successful individual borne out of poverty and raised in poor families but are now in the upper echelons of corporations or own businesses, there are a thousand stories of despair and failure in the filthiest of slums and squatters’ areas.

How do I resolve that? I knew that somewhere, somehow, there was an answer to this contradiction.

Then finally, I read about Gilbert, and posted my rather controversial take on his story.

Education has been the traditional answer to the scourge of poverty. It is the silver bullet that many believe to be the true ticket out of subsistence living. Finish college, find a secure job, perform well, get promoted, receive raises, and you’re on your way to becoming big. Gilbert’s story belies that – despite finishing an IT degree, he went abroad taking on a menial job more suited to a person who had finished high school.

While taking a job overseas is absolutely fine, he totally wasted his education in a field that promises big bucks and ample opportunities both within the country and abroad.

On the other hand, there is the story of Mariannet Amper. Although her alleged suicide is undergoing reinvestigation, assuming that her suicide note is true, she is a case of a person who has given up long before she could even start. The irony is that there are tycoons that have started from exactly where she was, and have made it big 40, 50 years down the line.

So now I ask, what was the difference between Gilbert, Mariannet and the big business figures we know that hadn’t finished college, and actually started from poverty-stricken backgrounds – Socorro Ramos of National Bookstore, Henry Sy of SM, John Gokongwei of Robinson’s, Julie Gadiongco of Julie’s Bakeshop to name a few?

Is it just a matter of, 40, 50 years? Was that world really so different — one that was devastated by war — that opportunity was just there right for the picking? If that were true, why isn’t every one of our grandparents filthy rich by now? Is it that the rich weren’t “preventing” the poor from getting richer back then?

There is no question that the answer to Sidney Snoeck’s challenge is no. Mariannet Amper cannot possibly have gotten out of poverty. If her suicide note is to be believed, she simply didn’t have the fight within her to have what it takes to get out of her rut. The same goes with Gilbert – his choice of career – or lack thereof – clearly shows the inability to take advantage of opportunities presented to him.

However, for a person who has both characteristics – that is, the relentlessness by which they refuse to succumb to adversity in their situations, and the ability to spot and exploit opportunities in every situation, whether positive or negative, being successful is inevitable. Throw in some talent, and you’ve got an achiever. Throw in a lot of guts, and you’ve got a surefire winner — rich preventing poor from taking a share of the pot or not.

There are a lot of talented people out there who don’t have the guts, or a lot of people who have the guts but do not or do not know how to hone their talents, and unless these change, it is unlikely that they will even be able to rise up to the nearest higher socio-economic stratum.

Some people will argue that there’s also luck — that some people are extremely lucky to have had certain opportunities in their lives. I, however, would argue that luck is a talent — it is no different from the ability to spot opportunities and make the best use out of them. For example, there are cases wherein people rose out of poverty because they had a benefactor — who gave them a scholarship and saw them through their education and eventually employed them or helped them put up a business. While some would think that the person is extremely lucky, it is unlikely that he will find that luck had he been not recognized by the benefactor by performing well in school.

Fortunately people are not born with these characteristics. These traits — skill, opportunity spotting, risk taking, and I dare say even luck — are learned, whether through others or through one’s life experiences.

In the end, it is totally up to an individual if they decide to fight back, or if they will believe that they do not have what it takes to rise up to the challenge of life.

Yesterday, Janette Toral of DigitalFilipino.com twitted about “Experience of a first time OFW“, an article on the Kabayan Hotel OFW blog that discusses the thoughts and feelings of first-time OFW Gilbert Roque.

Gilbert’s plight is something that most of us have heard of already: not satisfied with meager wages and limited opportunities locally, he flew to Dubai earlier this year.

However, subtle revelations within the article raised my already-raised eyebrows. Do read the entire article, so that you can correct me if I took the quotes out of context.

First, the article talks about his education and job history:

Gilbert also took up computer programming in college. After he graduated, he worked as a sales executive in Makati for several months only. He quit the job after deciding to work in Dubai and also after much prodding from his mother. Thus, he became an OFW. [Kabayan OFW Blog]

Emphasis mine.

I work as a software developer in a foreign-owned IT company, and I participate in some local IT communities and organizations. The problem in the local IT industry lately has been the lack of skilled labor — too many highly skilled software developers have flown off to Singapore or elsewhere.

As a result, the salaries of developers with merely 3 years of experience and above have been skyrocketing, with local companies almost pleading for experienced developers to at least have an interview with them.

If Gilbert pursued the career path that he chose for college, there are quite a number of opportunities that he could have taken up so that he wouldn’t need to leave the country at all. Unfortunately, he took a job as a sales executive, a job that is certainly not as high-paying as one in the IT profession. Certainly, his job is not one that would easily present opportunities to earn a relatively high salary after only a few years, without leaving the country.

But what did Gilbert get in exchange of not pursuing a career in the degree he finished and dropping the sales executive job? A “robotic” job, apparently:

Q: So now, tell me about your experiences as a first-time OFW.
A: I left for Dubai in May 13, 2007, to work as a service crew at a fast-food restaurant. Upon arrival, we were picked up by a shuttle to bring us to our assigned flat. There were ten of us then. In the three days that we were in the flat, we were not allowed to go out. The only chance that we were allowed to go out is to have a medical check-up.

We started on our job after three days. I thought that they would somehow give us a few days to get used to the job. I was wrong, on our first day, we were treated as seasoned workers and expected to act as such. [...] Eventually, after a month of fearing for the worst, I got used to the job and was doing it mechanically. [Kabayan OFW Blog]

That his mother — herself an OFW for 15 years as revealed in the article — prodded him to take the same path, it appears to me that Gilbert clearly had choices that he either overlooked or chose not to take, because there was a more “tried-and-tested” approach that he could take up.

A subsequent question reveals that he never even entertained the possibility of working locally:

Q: During your early years in school, did it ever cross your mind that you would become an OFW someday? Did your choice of course in college have something to do with it, and your desire to finish your schooling?
A: I may have thought about it then. Because when you are surrounded by people who work overseas you tend to walk that path also. If I remember correctly, there was a time that computer related courses will get you a job abroad fast. So, yes I did choose computer programming, because I had plans of working abroad also. [Kabayan OFW Blog]

It is ironic that Gilbert blindly walked down the same path his mother did, when earlier in the article he shared the pains of growing up seeing his mother only a month at a time every two years. Ironic too, that he said that he knows that his mother wouldn’t have left if she knew “another way” to support her family:

Q: Was it hard for you to have an OFW for a parent?
A: Yes, but not because I despise her for it – but simply because she was not there as much as I would have wanted too. I know she worked so hard to provide a better future for us. I know also that if there was another way, she would have never left.

Q: For how long is your mother working as an OFW? How often does she go home here in the Philippines? How does that feel?
A: My mother has been an OFW for 15 years. She goes home to us every 2 years and stays for about a month or two. I feel that it is not enough, but what can I do. It is always so hard to say goodbye every 2 years, you never get used to that. [Kabayan OFW Blog]

Clearly Gilbert does not know that he is running in circles drawn on the ground by his mother and grandmother (whom he says was also an OFW), which is evident when he says that overseas work is a handed-down “legacy”:

Q: Do you think that OFW nowadays are getting younger and younger? What can you say about that? Do you think it’s a trend or a legacy passed on?
A: I know how it feels to be separated from a loved one. It is one of the reasons why I decided, now, to work abroad. It is better to be an OFW while you are still young, so that you will have ample time later to enjoy life. [Kabayan OFW Blog]

Which makes me wonder: how many OFWs told you that they were only going to work abroad for so and so number of years until they are able to save money? How many of them actually accomplished that feat so they don’t need to work abroad until they retire?

Reading the whole article, there are simply too many things that make me scratch my head: the lack of the ability to recognize opportunities presented, the lack of any real passion or concern for career other than a means to make ends meet, the treatment of overseas work per se as a career option, the acceptance of an abusive, menial, meaningless job just as long as it pays higher than — a job that could be matched financially and attained locally if only people try.

Gilbert is not alone however; how many people get jobs as call center agents, or take up nursing and caregiving, even if they are not genuinely interested in developing their careers in those fields? How many people work for the sake of working? How many people tolerate 8-5 drudgery, here or abroad, just to be able to pay the bills?

In the end, the OFW phenomenon might actually not be driven by simple poverty. Rather, it is being fed by a huge number of mismanaged careers, masquerading as a last resort to be able to feed and clothe one’s family when there are real alternatives that people simply fail to see. People always say that “beggars can’t be choosers”, but there’s a serious problem when a person begins to see themselves as beggars before they even pay attention to the choices they really do have.

There’s nothing wrong with Gilbert working abroad per se. It is the reasons why he is working that has to be questioned and — subsequently — people has to ask themselves about.

Melynn and I along with her barkada have been planning this trip for months, but the latest pair of typhoons, Lando and Mina come way too close of each other, and typhoon Mina threatens to become a super typhoon.

To further underscore the risks, a client of I-NAV Travel & Tours informed us that their flight went back to Manila after two failed landing attempts at Kalibo, Aklan, due to heavy rains. Melynn and her barkada might push through with the trip on December 1, but I won’t be able to come because of work deadlines.

As with anything in life, you win some, you lose some. Our Boracay trip last September was so summery, anyway, despite September being a typhoon month.

Like my Dad, I spent many years after college flitting from job to job. I had nothing to complain about. I was making a great living. I was never on the market for particularly long before some new opportunity would come up. I enjoyed my work. But I wasn’t choosing a career path. I was letting happenstance determine what I was, and what I was becoming. [Coding Horror]

I found it amusing because I can relate to it. For the most part of my career (although I did stick to software development) I was also flitting like a feather, and I have been with five different companies in as many years. I was even struck more when Jeff stated his frustrations with his work environment, a frustration I shared back when I was working in Philippine National Bank:

The work was interesting, but it was abundantly clear that software was not the lifeblood of this organization. Outsourcing was in the air. Although my coworkers were competent, nobody was quite as obsessed with the software as I was. My passion for software, and everything around it, was clearly not shared. [Coding Horror]

While I was at PNB, I could count on my fingers how many of my colleagues see software development as a craft and skill that has to be improved upon and learned, while the rest merely see it as a means to an end; just another profession that comes with a check to pay the bills. I hope I am wrong about them though.

Jeff Atwood’s post is devoid of techie jargon his blog is often about so please do take time to read it; I’m sure you’ll find it quite insightful, even if you’re non-techie.

I only left PNB a little over two years ago, and a month before I left I wrote a piece wherein I accused people who were taking up nursing to fly abroad, or taking employment as call-center agents as people who see themselves as having no choice, and taking up jobs that they do not really love or care about just to be able to make ends meet:

This reasoning of a lot of people on why they give up their dreams and likes for jobs not to their liking is something to the tune of “beggars cannot be choosers.” Sure, because of the hardships of life in this country we can’t really choose what career path to take.

But come to think of it, we lost our choice simply because we see ourself as beggars. And we push the choice of “doing what we love most” away because we fear that we would die of hunger if we do not.

However, in the end, it’s all a matter of choice. Push that choice away and you end up with the misery of not really loving what you do. Without love for what you do, you would not excel. Without excellence you would not attain fulfillment. Without fulfillment, you’ll die without really feeling you did anything else but merely survive. [Ang Kape Ni LaTtEX]

In the two years since I wrote that piece a lot of things have changed. For the record, my sentiment with regards to call center agents and nurses have softened somewhat. I now believe that it is perfectly understandable that people take up these jobs if only to better provide for themselves. However, I still believe that they won’t find fulfillment until they finally shift to a job that they do love, or if they use their hard-earned money to set up a company or a business that they are passionate about.

I have a friend who is taking up nursing right now, if only to be able to raise her daughter to a better future (she’s a single mom). But this woman loves to write, and I am sure that if she does get to the US, she would look for opportunities to be a writer there. She’ll need the nursing job to pay for her bills, sure, but that won’t stop her from doing the thing she’s passionate about.

In those two years, I can also say that my passion for what I’ve been doing has paid off. At the end of that piece, I wrote this, and it made me smile:

If all goes well, in time, I can tell myself that I did not merely survive but found fulfillment, despite the ramblings of those who see themselves as “unfortunate.” [Ang Kape Ni LaTtEX]

Today I am earning around four times what I was earning when I was working at PNB. My wife and I have also been able to set up a travel agency business, allowing us to earn (my wife, in particular) revenues that would have been unimaginable back when I was in PNB and she was in her 8 to 5 job. At least in my case, I could attest that there is truth in believing that following your passion will lead to fulfillment, both in terms of doing what you want to do, and in financial terms.

It is perfectly fine to accept a call center job or to take up nursing and go abroad if only to make ends meet. But find out what you love to do, and never lose sight of your passions in life. Use the call center or nursing job as a means to save money until you are able to jump to a career path that you really want to take, or to set up a business built on products you love and rely on. It will not only make you immensely happier, it has the potential to make you much much wealthier than you can imagine.