Put on your best clothes, check. Speed to the station, check. Pay parking ticket, check. Stand behind the yellow line, check. Take the train, check. Step out of the train along with countless bobbing heads, all walking fast, almost speeding with you like competitive eight-year-olds, check. Behold numerous larger-than-life billboards inside buildings, some reckoning you to move to warm Arizona, but all making you feel like someone important (just like a super hero), check.
About a decade ago, I worked in the city. Since then, I found a job in the suburbs as my family grew. A training course propelled me to take the train to the city for three days in February of this year. I went as a tourist, as an outsider.
In the decade of departure from the city, I had forgotten the energy that flourished in the city, the young that made even the middle-aged people like me, feel important, if only along the neck-to-neck walk with them.
The bustling cafes, the trendy clothes…ah, the list goes on.
My past years witnessed my ex-company relocate to the city. I heard of numerous others embarking on the same journey. Why?
When I had questioned my previous employer why, they said they wanted to tap into the younger, bustling crowd, go where the momentum was.
In that reasoning to move to the city, I was also hearing, I was aging. They wanted the fresh folks, just graduated with new ideas. When did experience become underrated? Hint, salaries. Why bother gaining experience when (relatively) cheaper labor can be readily available?
Are there no old people in the city? Sure, there are. They may live there. They may well commute there. They may be valued. But for the vast majority of my peers with little children moving with a company to downtown meant sacrificing family life and not seeing daylight at home.
The company probably was more interesting in my budding children than me.
This is the harsh reality for the tech industry. I wish I knew the exact formula for success past forty, as I have yet to reach that milestone as fast as it is approaching, but bubbling in the hustle of downtown Chicago, observing the fresh new faces, their confidence, I also wondered if merely moving the location of a company was a guarantee of a company’s success.
Because a great company should value talent, regardless of geography or age or gender or color. And when large corporations make such decisions to aim for profit at the cost of signaling the lack of value of employees’ personal lives or experience, it is a two-way street. They too lose in key fundamentals that make a place worth working for, period.
I spent the three days in city savoring the delectable food in the restaurants, staring out the train window listening to blasting music. But the most cherished part of my day remained coming back to a loving home. For companies can move where they wish and can be replaced but the truly irreplaceable parts of my life were taken care of. I enjoyed the oomph of the city and was afresh proud of my decision to remain close to family, so I could take pride in my work as a professional and as a mother at the same time. Downtown Chicago can continue to bubble with energy, and I with love. Maybe, some day when my kids have grown up, and I have more of “me” time in the day, a startup that distinguishes not between old and young, and only sees talent, will reckon me to check all the checks and take the train to the city and feel young again.
Until then…here is to another day, and another week in suburban Chicago.
