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Business
商业版块
Bartleby
巴托比专栏
The crab-like career
螃蟹型职业路线
The secret to professional success may well be off to the side.
职业成功的秘诀很可能是横着走。
The conventional language of career success moves in only one direction: up.
关于职业成功的传统话语只有一个方向：向上。
You scale the career ladder or climb the greasy pole.
你要么去攀登职业阶梯，要么去爬油腻的柱子。
If you do well, you have a rapid ascent.
如果你做得好，就会快速晋升。
And if you really succeed, you reach the top.
如果你真的成功了，就会到达顶峰。
No one ever rings home to share the news that they have reached a plateau.
从来没有人打电话回家，分享他们已经达到平台期的消息。
But there is another type of career trajectory.
但还有另一种职业轨迹。
Sideways moves, to jobs that don’t involve a promotion or even necessarily a pay rise, can be a boon to employees and organisations alike.
横向跳槽，即跳槽到不会升职，甚至不一定会涨薪的工作，对员工和组织都可能有益。
A study carried out by Donald Sull of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his co-authors in 2021 found that the availability of lateral career opportunities has a marked impact on employee retention.
麻省理工学院的唐纳德·苏尔及其合著者在2021年进行的一项研究发现，横向职业机会的可获得性对员工留任有显著影响。
Their research found that chances to move sideways were two and a half times more important than pay as a predictor of workers’ willingness to stay at a firm.
他们的研究发现，作为预测员工是否愿意留在公司的指标，横向跳槽机会的重要性是薪酬的2.5倍。
Another paper, by Xin Jin of the University of South Florida and Michael Waldman of Cornell University, concluded that lateral moves did not just benefit organisations: employees who experienced them were more likely to be promoted and to enjoy higher wage growth later in their careers than employees who did not.
南佛罗里达大学的金欣（音译）和康奈尔大学的迈克尔·沃尔德曼的另一篇论文得出结论，横向跳槽不仅有利于组织：经历过横向跳槽的员工比没有经历过的员工更有可能在职业生涯后期获得晋升，并享受更高的工资增长。
You can move up by first moving sideways.
要想往上走，可以先横着走。
Lateral moves and good management seem to go hand in hand.
横向跳槽和良好的管理似乎是齐头并进的。
A recent paper by Virginia Minni of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a British think-tank, looked at job moves within a big multinational over a period of ten years.
英国智库“财政研究”的弗吉尼亚·明尼最近发表的一篇论文研究了一家大型跨国公司内部在十年内的工作变动情况。
She found that the arrival of a high-flying boss (who had got the job early in their career) was associated with a jump in intra-company transfers, both horizontal and vertical, among employees.
她发现，一位事业成功的老板(即在职业生涯早期就成了老板)的到来与员工在公司内部工作变动的猛增有关，既包括横向变动，也包括纵向变动。
Better bosses seem to be good at sorting people into roles that suit them.
更好的老板似乎擅长为员工分配适合他们的角色。
This process again results in higher pay over time for employees who move sideways; it is also associated with higher profits.
随着时间的推移，这一过程再次使得横向跳槽的员工获得更高的薪酬，这也与更高的利润相关。
The crab-like career has other things going for it beyond better matches between people and jobs.
除了人与工作更好的匹配之外，螃蟹型职业路线还有其他好处。
One is that it is a good way to learn new things.
其中一个好处是能够很好地学到新东西。
As hiring processes increasingly emphasise skills, recruiters are likely to put comparatively less emphasis on CVs and comparatively more weight on what you know.
随着招聘流程越来越注重技能，招聘人员可能会相对不那么重视简历，而相对更看重你懂些什么。
Messrs Jin and Waldman reason that the higher echelons of companies tend to be populated by people whose capabilities are broad, not deep; that may explain why lateral moves are good for promotion prospects.
金和沃尔德曼推论称，公司高层往往由能力广而博而非专而精的人组成，这可能解释了为什么横向跳槽有利于晋升前景。
Along with skills come contacts: transferring between teams usually means building a bigger internal network.
伴随着技能而来的是人脉：团队之间的调动通常意味着能建立一个更大的内部网络。
Lateral moves can also be a wonderful cure for boredom.
横向跳槽也是无聊的绝佳解药。
There is nothing to fear in a bit of tedium, but people will do almost anything to avoid it in large doses.
少量的无聊没什么好害怕的，但为了避免大量的无聊，人们什么都愿意做。
In an experiment by Chantal Nederkoorn of Maastricht University and her co-authors, participants were asked to watch dull, sad and neutral film clips and given the ability to self-administer electric shocks as they did so.
在马斯特里赫特大学的香特尔·奈德库恩及其合著者进行的一项实验中，参与者被要求观看枯燥的、悲伤的和中性的电影片段，并可以在观看过程中对自己实施电击。
Those watching monotonous films shocked themselves more often and at greater intensity.
那些观看枯燥电影的人更频繁、更强烈地电击了自己。
(Films by Wes Anderson were presumably too dangerous to be shown for this reason.)
(出于这个原因，韦斯·安德森的电影大概太危险了，不能上映。)
This need for stimulation pervades the workplace.
这种对刺激的需求广泛存在于职场中。
Surveys consistently show that great chunks of the workforce find their jobs tedious.
各种调查一直表明，很大一部分工作者觉得自己的工作枯燥乏味。
Stephan Meier of Columbia Business School, who is writing a book on employee-centric organisations, reckons that one big source of motivation for workers is having “just right tasks” that are within their capabilities but stretch them in new ways.
哥伦比亚大学商学院的斯蒂芬·梅尔正在撰写一本关于以员工为中心的组织的书，他认为，员工的一大动力来源是有“恰到好处的任务”，这些任务在他们的能力范围内，但又以新的方式拓展了能力。
Promotions offer fresh challenges but you can also easily get stuck waiting for a vacancy to open up above you.
升职能带来新的挑战，但你也很容易被困在原地，等待更高的职位出现空缺。
Looking to the side affords more options.
往横向看提供了更多的选择。
Opening the door to more lateral moves is partly a practical matter.
打开更多横向跳槽的大门，在一定程度上是一个实际问题。
Some bigger employers have “internal talent marketplaces” in which employees can find and apply for jobs elsewhere in the company; smaller firms have fewer such opportunities to offer.
一些较大的雇主有“内部人才市场”，员工可以在其中找到并申请公司其他地方的工作，在较小的公司中，这样的机会比较少。
But participating in a side-project is another way for workers to shake things up and learn new skills.
但参加横向项目是工作者们重构自我和学习新技能的另一种方式。
In a poll of American workers for Colorado State University Global, almost half said that they would feel more motivated if they were part of a new process or project.
在科罗拉多州立大学全球分校对美国员工进行的一项民意调查中，近一半的人表示，如果他们参与一个新的流程或项目，他们会感到更有动力。
Embracing sideways movement also requires the right attitude.
拥抱横向跳槽也需要正确的态度。
Lots of managers like to hoard talent, at the expense of workers and firms.
许多经理喜欢囤积人才，而牺牲了员工和公司的利益。
And moving horizontally still has less cachet than moving upwards.
而且，横向跳槽仍然没有向上晋升那么让人有面子。
It would help if career success had a different vocabulary: across or out, say, or the meteoric scuttle.
如果用来描述职业成功的语言有不同的词语，那将会有所帮助：比如横向或外向，再或者流星雨般地四处乱窜。
