Room at the top

While concern for personal opportunities will always be the dominant factor in job selection, references to a career ladder are surely misplaced. This further manifestation of the nanny philosophy ignores the fact that initiative, ability and business acumen provide the oxygen of professional life. In other words, having qualified as a member of a profession, the individual is ipso facto able to develop his own career structure unaided. One recalls Napoleon's dictum that every French soldier carried in his cartridge case the baton of a marshal of France. Similar things could surely be said about the career prospects of newly qualified surgeons, lawyers, accountants and the like, whose futures are dependent on personal initiative, unaided by career ladders and similar fanciful notions. Students do not normally enter dispensing or ophthalmic optics in search of fame or fortune, but rather a worthwhile and secure career. They are not usually disappointed. Ample financial rewards are there for the taking, requiring only initiative and business acumen. It would be invidious for me to name names, but I can think of a number of opticians in both branches who have done very nicely simply from backing their own judgment.