On Friday September 1^st 1995 I started working at my first full time job and I haven’t been jobless since. I have worked at 3 different companies throughout these 20 years and there has never been a single day of rest in between them:I have never been unemployed since September 1995. Is that the definition of success? Not necessarily, really. What is interesting is to know the details. The whole story. Starting with what happened beforehand. My life was very different 20 years ago….

Chapter 1 . The initial struggle

I had already finished my studies at a technical oriented high school in late May 1995, with awesome grades. That fact made me believe that I was the king of the world! I was so wrong: I was unable to find a job for 3 months. By August, all of my 20 class mates who wanted a job had already started working. Yet I was still at home, desperately hoping for an opportunity to start getting some very well needed additional income at my parents’ household. When it comes to my professional life, that situation was my first real life lesson: good grades, even when they could mean that you are at least smart enough to deal with multiple tasks, they don’t mean a thing when it comes to get you a job. Don’t fool yourself: you will still need more than good grades.

I believe that I was the only one in my class who didn’t have to take general/complimentary exams in June 1995, which I thought was a clear advantage that I had to easily get one of the available spots at electronics and computer oriented companies. I was sadly mistaken: I saw the days go by and very quickly June had ended and my job search that month was fruitless. July had also ended and August was going down the same road. Please remember that back then there was no Linked In, no Facebook, no Whatsapp. My family didn’t have any acquaintance that could get me at least into one job interview. My close circle of friend was the same one on the hunt for jobs or had just landed in positions where they had no leverage to include me in their organization.

If I wanted to apply for a job I needed to physically go out on the road and search for the opportunity. I dropped my CV at every single business I could afford to go to. And printing my own CV wasn’t as inexpensive to me back then as it sounds to any of us right now. Even public transportation fees were challenging to me at the time. Logistics were not easy. And nobody was knocking at my door to offer me a job.

Therefore, when I landed that interview that led me to my first job I accepted the first offer they put in front of me: my first salary was only 40% of what some of my colleagues were making already. I was 17 years old at the time. At that age most kids are already getting ready to go to college and continue their education. That was not my case. I had a high school student loan to pay before getting the certificate which would allow me to apply for any university. I needed a salary. Life lesson #2: if you are in need you take what you are being given. Then work your way up from there. 

I was happy. I had one foot in the system, finally. I worked for a company who specialized in electronic article surveillance, closed circuit TV (CCTV) and electronic access control systems. It was a small company (less than 15 employees). It was interesting not only learning how the electronic systems work (boring part, for most people) but how humans interact with each other in a work environment: this is not something you learn in the classroom. You meet all different types of people. You are not surrounding by your peers anymore. Some of you co-workers are 15 or 20 year older than you are, with very different lifestyles and burdens than yours. You really start learning when you listen and watch carefully how people interact. And, man, did I interact with the customers! Those first years of my professional life gave me a face to face know-how of what being a customer oriented professional must be!

By December 1995 my 3 month probation period finished and a new contract was offered to me: I would get a 50% salary increase. “Well done!” they said. And all I said was: “Thanks, but no thanks”. In a normal situation that is a pretty sweet salary increase, no? That was life lesson #3: an employer will always pay you the minimum they can so you don’t quit. And usually it is far from the maximum they can pay. That is why you need to know your value and you need to be aware of how much the company you are working for is able to pay somebody with your qualifications as an employee. What value do you bring to the organization? What makes you better than the alternatives? You need to know that.

After a full one day length of negotiations, the CEO of the company agreed to give me a 100% salary increase, plus commissions on the installed systems; it ended up being, in average, a 150% salary increase. And the more systems I installed, the more money I would be taking home. I still look back and that time and wonder “what would have happened had I accepted the 50% salary increase?” But I also think “what would have happened if I would have demanded a 300% salary increase?” The bottom line is that, at the end of the negotiations, we both felt like we did well. And I was happy.

And, at that moment, I felt like I was the king of the world! It wasn’t due to the increase in the salary per se, since in the grand scheme of things, I was only making then as much as my other friends (which, when I look in retrospect, is a ridiculous way to compare yourself with your peers. But, hey: I was a kid! Remember!). I was happy on realizing that I proved them (and myself) that I was more valuable than what they thought I was. I was back in the game. I could conquer anything! I went home and raised my arms to the sky a la Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption!

Within 6 months I paid my students loan and got my high school certificate. I was debt free. Life lesson #4: stay out of debt if you can. Don’t go into debt if you don’t have to. Education is key, so I would encourage anyone to try the least expensive way to get a good education. I could not avoid taking a student loan, since I took it when it was needed, 2 years into high school. I could not back down. The alternative would have been to quit the technical school and go to a regular one. It wasn’t going to happen. It would have jeopardized my future. The plan I had when I was 13 years old was to be able to start working after finishing high school.

I was ready now to go to college, although realizing that I had lost one full year of education. I was already 18 years old and was already feeling the pressure to go back to study. It felt good to be out of debt, but I had neither savings nor a monthly income that would give me many options regarding which university to attend. I had 2 questions running in circles in my head:

• Should I go to the state university to study something I don’t really like that much (Electrical Engineering), but almost for free? It would have taken me about 5 years to finish it (very unreliable time frame, as the state university was going constantly on strikes at that time!)

• Should I go to a private university and study something I really liked (Telecommunications Engineering), but having to take a loan to do so? It would have taken me 3.5 years to finish it.

I opted for a 3^rd option, which was a defining moment in my life: I decided to wait for another year and join the private college in an effort to be in a better financial position so I didn’t have to take a loan to study at the institution I wanted to study at. That decision, in June 1996, implied that I would have to wait another year to start my application to college. I would have been 2 years behind, but I would have enough savings and income to pay for university expenses…. and enough savings to buy myself a car. Why a car, you say? Let’s see:

I was working full time. 8:30 am to 5:30pm, which means that I could only attend college at nighttime… which meant that going back from the campus to my parents’ house, would have taken a good 1 hour of commuting using public transportation… I would be reaching home every night around 11 pm… not safe…not time efficient. I needed a car if I wanted to be able to reach the campus on time and wanted to have enough time to do my college assignments before going to sleep. Logistics were an issue again.

But the decision to buy a car was actually triggered by another compelling reason: it allowed me to work on my first business case. The company I worked for didn’t own a company vehicle. Every time I needed to go to visit a customer the company paid for a taxi fare. So it hit me: “if I am going to visit the customer, and the company doesn’t own a car… and I drive my own car…. and …”(do you see where this is going?). Not only would I be debt free: I would have an additional income by driving my own car to the customers and keep the taxi money in my pocket. In that case owning a car was having an asset! That was an opportunity that I only realized I had a few months into working there, but my priority was to pay first for my student loan. Once I was debt free, my mind was racing with thoughts of how to increase my income. Once I was debt free, the sky was the limit!

And so it went: I spent that year working as hard as I could to save as much as I could. I bought myself a 16 year old car, from a friend of my older brother, in February 1997. I bought it in cash, following my life lesson #4. While learning how to drive, I managed to crash that car into innumerable motionless objects: parked cars, parked trucks, garage doors, trees, etc. But that is a different story. The point is that I was happy! I had 4 wheels and a radio. I could drive anywhere I wanted to (which to me, at the time, meant anywhere within Santo Domingo!) and I wasn’t feeling any financial burden because of it. I was saving more money towards college. I was ready for the private college, so I joined in August 1997.

 

Chapter 2 . The college years

To be continued….