24 years ago, I quit my job at IBM’s East Fishkill semiconductor facility to go to work for a small, high tech company in California. It wasn’t an easy decision at the time. I had grown up in an IBM family in the Hudson Valley. IBM was in my blood. At that time, very few people voluntarily left jobs at IBM, and people thought I was crazy to leave a big, safe company. I told them I was pursing my manifest destiny, a reference to the 19th century concept that the US was destined to expand to the West coast. I was destined to go to California. Two years later, the safe and secure IBM started to layoff large numbers of workers. Yesterday (October 20, 2014), IBM sold its Microelectronics unit, including the East Fishkill facility, to GlobalFoundries. IBM actually paid GlobalFoundaries $1.5 billion to take over the money losing division. These outcomes would have been inconceivable 24 years ago when I was making my decision.
Leaving IBM to pursue my manifest destiny was one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life. IBM was a great company (and still is), but for me, pursuing a career with bigger challenges, higher risks, and more opportunity made sense. I did not foresee the difficulties IBM would experience a mere two years after I left. Rather, I saw the greater opportunities of a new beginning in California. I was young and impatient. For me, the risk was worth the substantial gains that I envisioned.
Today, many of us face decisions like I faced long ago at IBM. Do you stick with the safe, secure present or pursue a riskier, but potentially more rewarding, future? Of course, this will depend on your circumstances, but what seems safe and secure today might not be so in the future. The past is littered with many companies that were once great and are now gone. These include Kodak, Woolworth’s, Pan Am, RCA, and General Foods, among others. Today’s big, secure, dominant company may be gone in 20 years. This is especially true in the technology industry where innovation can render today’s competitive advantage obsolete.
In today’s world, we must be the masters of our future. There are very few paternalistic companies left, so each of us has to look out for our own interests. We need to constantly reinvent ourselves to stay relevant in a dynamic working world. America was not built by taking the safe road. Pursue your manifest destiny!
