Knowing Which Screws to Turn: Job Skills For The Life You Want

Photo by Alan Light via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

The handling of family chores is an intricate set of negotiations that take place over the entire span of one’s married life. So it seems with us. Early in our marriage, my wife and I divvied up the household duties and yet we still have to debate certain activities needing to be accomplished. Sometimes it simply involves family members and other times the discussion centers on whether or not we should hire a professional with skills for a particular task. My wife is not afraid of hand tools or ladders, yet she shuns laundry and dishes. I grew up with a handicapped mother, so cooking, mending, and washing are familiar and easy chores for me. Our working relationship is different in other ways as well.

Many married men of my acquaintance look forward to lawn and garden chores. They enjoy the outdoor activity and anticipate a weekend of mowing, trimming, and plant care. A neighbor uses these chores to enjoy the cigars his wife refuses to allow in the house. Another friend actually lists his gardening hobby on his professional resume. I must be strange — I detest working on the yard.

I don’t mind pushing a lawnmower around cutting the grass and even trimming and edging provides me with some satisfaction. What I really dislike is planting and pruning. We have moved several times, and my wife always wants to arrange the growing things to meet her perceived needs and those of our family. However, I am always elected to dig the holes, cut the limbs, and shuffle plants from one location to the next. I’d rather be beat with a board.

My wife knows that when these needs arise, she will be greeted with groans and complaints from me. She has asked me why I have such an aversion to activities that bring her such joy. I again get to tell her the story of my days in landscaping.

As a young man recently accepted into college a loooong time ago, I wanted to break away from the backbreaking warehouse job I had through high school. I wanted a job out-of-doors where I could breathe fresh air and enjoy the sights and sounds of nature. To meet these rather simple requirements, I signed on with a large landscaping company in the Midwest. The first job they assigned me on that hot day was unloading a tractor-trailer load of sod. The next day, I went with a crew to plant some large trees in a city 40 miles away. The jobs changed every day, and I thought I would like the variety.

My landscaping career was based at a large nursery where customers came to pick out trees, bushes and flowers. When I wasn’t out with a crew, it was my job to help the people in the nursery by loading cars and trucks with mulch, plants and other supplies. I soon took note of the other nursery employees.

There were several people my age working in part-time customer support positions. They would greet people who arrived at the nursery and help them make selections. They knew the names of all the plants and trees. Some were even qualified to design a landscape for an entire residential property or office building. They usually wore crisply pressed slacks and open collar dress shirts that contrasted sharply with my faded overalls, tie-dyed T-shirt, and sweat-stained straw hat. What really frosted me was finding out they made a dollar and a half more an hour than I did. While on a visit with my father one Sunday, I complained about it.

“Dad, I found out those pretty boys with their combed hair and slick clothes make more money than I do. That doesn’t seem fair. I work more than twice as hard as they do. They stand around shooting the breeze with the customers and then call me on the radio to do anything that requires lifting or hauling. If they get a little warm, they go back inside the air-conditioned office. Just see what would happen to me if I get caught leaning on my shovel I get to drink water out of a hose by the barn — they have a soda machine and a coffeepot. If your union was in there, it would deal with that forthwith!”

“I thought you agreed to work for the money they paid you. Your bosses treat you well, don’t they?” he asked.

“Sure they do, but I do really hard manual labor, and I am getting less per hour than those people who are working on degrees in landscaping and agriculture. I should be paid more because of the nature of my work.”

“I see your point of view and I am not going to defend the hiring practices of your nursery, but I think I had better tell you the story of the car mechanic,” he said as he smiled in that knowing way of his. I knew I was about to get a lesson.

“What does this have to do with car repair?” I asked. Here’s the story he told me:

A man takes his car to a mechanic because it isn’t running well. The engine knocks, pings, and seems to be losing power. He stands anxiously in the corner of the shop while the old mechanic listens intently to the sputtering engine and peers around under the hood. After several minutes, the mechanic turns off the engine and reaches into his toolbox. He pulls out a flat-head screwdriver and starts turning screws on the carburetor. After a couple adjustments, he puts the screwdriver back in the toolbox and reaches in to start the engine. The customer is amazed when the car fires up and runs just like new. A quick test drive confirms the problem has been resolved.

The customer is flooded with relief and reaches for his wallet and asks how much he owes the mechanic. The mechanic replies that the repair will cost him one hundred dollars. The customer can’t believe his ears.

“A hundred dollars?” he explodes. “All you did was turn a couple screws!”

The mechanic slowly grins. “It was only five dollars for me to turn the screws, friend,” he replies, “but ninety-five dollars to know which ones to turn.”

My father explained to me that the nursery job was like that of the mechanic, but that the responsibilities were divided up among the employees. The nursery service personnel worked with the customers, explained what to buy and how to plant it, and also helped design area landscapes. My job was to perform the labor — or “turn the screw” as he explained it. It wasn’t a matter of my self-worth, but simply a matter of different values being assigned to different skills and aspects of the job.

I recalled this life lesson recently when I read another article in a trade publication about the cybersecurity profession. It reiterated the same old tired debate about whether someone had to be an expert “hacker” to truly understand the business. There were issues raised about a perceived skill requirement to have had experience as a systems administrator and even as a cryptographer. The discussion centered on the problems with what is required to define and certify a cybersecurity professional.

In our profession, there are an incredible number of facets to consider. No one would argue that a person who pushes legal boundaries by attacking computer systems understands security vulnerabilities. Most systems administrators have been required to deal with security considerations as well. So have database developers, systems architects, security professionals, risk managers, coders, cryptographers, and technology managers. Trying to define just what combination of knowledge, skills, and abilities is necessary must come down to the specific job to be accomplished. Because there are several distinct jobs that require information security expertise, the debate about what constitutes a cybersecurity professional will not be resolved for the foreseeable future.

This issue of matching a person’s skills to the job is exacerbated by the wide disparity of salaries, perks, and titles. Hands-on security experts often begrudge the remuneration received by a vice president with a large office and company car. A high-visibility expert may long for the peace and solitude to perform research. A hands-on penetration tester can find themself with a working life of on-the-road, on-site testing, while a corporate security manager may have to fight for an annual trip to attend a training seminar. The only important result, however, will be how you prepare yourself for a job that suits your desires, skills, and capabilities.

The division of responsibilities and job skills that are required for a job will always determine your work life and your pay. You may be turning the screw, or you may have skills in knowing which screws to turn. You could even learn how to build the entire carburetor. The lesson is to keep your goals in mind in order to develop the appropriate skills you will need for the job you want.

I was fortunate to have had roles I truly enjoyed. I like diversity and a bit of travel. I get that. There are always aspects to any job that are not so enjoyable, but at least I was never again asked to plant a bush or load bags of mulch — except when I got home.