The Wall Street Journal - USA (2020-11-16)

A12| Monday, November 16, 2020 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

For more travel advice from

Scott McCartney, sign up for The

Middle Seat newsletter at wsj.com/

newsletters.

Scott McCartney answers a reader

question on his October column on

Covid-19 testing for travelers to

avoid quarantines:

Q

Are there similar protocols

when traveling to countries

like China or Singapore? I am

a businessman who needs to travel

to these countries to visit factories

and business partners.

—Adam Bedwell, Richmond, Va.

A

Adam, this is all changing

quite a bit. When you first

asked, there really weren’t

options for U.S. citizens to travel to

LETTERS

Advice for

Work Trips

To China,

Singapore

and Prevention guidelines urge trav-

elers to consider getting tested,

stay away from high-risk people,

wear a mask and social distance.

A Singapore Airlines aircraft at Singapore’s Changi Airport.

THEN CHIH WEY/XINHUA/ZUMA PRESS

quest for the powerful stone. Judy

wanted to know all about the game.

“I hadn’t played in probably

well over a decade at the time, and

I was never a good player, really,”

Mr. DiBiase says, but after his talk

with Judy, he spent nine months

studying chess books, including

those by American International

Master Jeremy Silman, playing

against computers on Chess.com. It

took months for Mr. DiBiase to

brave playing against real people,

working his way up “from being a

garbage chess player to a statisti-

cally average chess player”—and

winning a few tournaments.

Meanwhile, his daughter joined

her school’s Chess Club in

second grade and was in several

tournaments.

Chess led Mr. DiBiase to reflect

on what had gone wrong with his

career choices. “I was not a great

math student, and so I was laboring

pretty much for my whole life un-

der the misapprehension that in or-

der to do things like natural sci-

ences or software programming,

you needed to have great facility

with mathematics,” he said. “My

relative success in becoming an au-

todidact in chess gave me the confi-

dence to say...‘If I can become profi-

cient to my desired level at this

skill that I was bad at before and

requires a lot of analytical ability,

maybe I can do something else.’”

N

icholas DiBiase recalls be-

ing stuck in an “unre-

warding” career as an op-

erations and personnel

manager when his 6-year-

old daughter, intrigued by

a “Harry Potter” movie, asked him

about chess. The chance inquiry led

him to study the game, which he

credits with giving him the confi-

dence, in his mid-30s, to pursue a

more challenging career in software

development.

“I was like, ‘Maybe I do have

more capacity for left-brain think-

ing.’ Chess is highly analytical,” said

Mr. DiBiase, who is now 40 and

lives in Phoenix.

The scientific side of things had

long intrigued Mr. DiBiase. At Ari-

zona State University, he had a

strong interest in physics and

chemistry. But he had chosen to

major in political science and gov-

ernment, wanting to be a political

analyst. By the time he became a

senior, he realized, “the more I

learned about the way politics is ac-

tually conducted, particularly in the

United States, the more disillu-

sioned I became.” He didn’t feel

“like I had enough time” to switch

to any of the sciences. He felt

locked in.

So for the next decade and a

half, Mr. DiBiase tried to use what

he’d learned through his major, as

well as his interest in hard science

and computers, in a nonpolitical

career.

That meant a job at Phoenix-

based computer-hardware distributor

Express Technology. In 2005, after

about two years, he had become

managing director of quality assur-

ance. He says he directed “all the sta-

tistical analysis that impacted prod-

uct quality” and worked in human-

resources statistical operations as

well. While the company treated

him well, Mr. DiBiase says, “I guess

as the years went on, I kind of maxed

out what I could improve or achieve

at that company.”

One thing intrigued him: the

work the company’s in-house soft-

ware development department was

doing. “But I didn’t have the qualifi-

cations to do it,” he says.

Mr. DiBiase felt stuck. He was in

his mid-to-late 30s with a wife and

young daughter. “I didn’t really

have the resources to drop every-

thing and go back to school for an

entirely new field. I was not feeling

great about myself.”

In the middle of his funk, around

2016, Mr. DiBiase’s daughter, Judy,

saw “Harry Potter and the Sor-

cerer’s Stone,” in which Harry, Ron

and Hermione play Wizard Chess—

with giant, scary pieces—in their

Chess encourages an

operations manager

to dare a switch into

the software world

China and Singapore. Rules varied

throughout Asia, as they still do.

But China issued new rules begin-

ning Nov. 6.

Foreign nationals, including U.S.

citizens, are allowed in with valid

residence permits and visas under

certain conditions.

According to the notice posted

by China’s embassy in the

U.S., you must take a PCR

Covid-19 test within 48

hours of boarding and

submit it to Chinese

authorities. (There are

more specific require-

ments, too.)

Health inspections are

conducted upon arrival and you can

be subjected to quarantine. You

also have to install location-track-

ing software on your phone. The

U.S. State Department warns that

some private hospitals may not ad-

mit you if you have been in the

U.S. within the previous 14 days.

It’s worth noting that United,

Delta and American have resumed

flying to Shanghai. It’s also worth

noting that airlines are flying long

international routes mostly for the

cargo revenue, not the passenger

revenue.

For Singapore, U.S. citizens who

are permanent residents there can

enter and are subject to quaran-

tine. U.S. citizens who are long-

term pass holders need permission

from Singapore’s government.

U.S. citizens traveling as

short-term visitors are not

permitted unless they

clear Singapore’s pre-de-

parture health screening,

which can include submit-

ting Covid-19 testing and is

called SafeTravel Pass, or have

a letter of entry from a Singapore

government agency. All U.S. citi-

zens approved for entry will be

subject to quarantine with elec-

tronic monitoring, according to the

U.S. Embassy in Singapore.

Singapore Airlines flies to Los

Angeles and, as of Nov. 9, New

York.

If you do go, the U.S. will let you

return. Centers for Disease Control

her children on track during

spring lockdowns. The

boards—which featured Post-

it Notes detailing the kids’

school subjects, including a

drawing of a bike for Ms.

Elk’s preschooler who can’t

yet read—are meant to orga-

nize work and make progress

clear to the team.

That’s only half the battle

when it comes to kids. Ms.

Elk came to realize you have

to want to finish everything

in your to-do column. “If

you’re willing to just com-

pletely disregard it, it

doesn’t matter if you’re mak-

ing it transparent,” she says.

The family abandoned the

approach after three weeks.

Mr. Herring, the Yarmouth,

Mass., consultant, has relaxed

a bit as the pandemic has

worn on, his partner Mr.

Holmes notes. The meetings

often happen on the fly now,

like while the couple is walk-

ing their Havanese mix, Louie.

Calendar invites still arrive

reminding Mr. Holmes to do

things like make a trip to the

dump, but they’ve grown on

him. Once irritated by the

constant feedback and re-

minders, the 41-year-old real-

tor now finds some of it help-

ful—and the rest at least

tolerable.

“I kind of laugh at it now,”

Mr. Holmes says. “Sometimes

I just roll my eyes.”

Some say they’ve learned

their lesson. Steve Goodrich,

who admits to judging how

efficiently, or not, bartenders

prepare drinks, nevertheless

hasn’t offered up feedback to

family or friends in years. The

Rockville, Md., resident still

recalls his son’s response

when he tried to give tips on

his high school football per-

formance: “I already have a

coach, thank you very much.”

“I’ve learned in my old age

to hold my breath,” says the

65-year-old president and

CEO of the Center for Orga-

nizational Excellence. “You

gotta know when to just, you

know, back off.”

“My kids couldn’t afford

my billing rate anyway,” he

adds.

Continued from page A

Time to

Consult

At Home

‘Sometimes I just

roll my eyes,’ says

the partner of one

consultant.

Name:Nicholas DiBiase

Age: 40

Location:Phoenix

Education:B.A. in political sci-

ence and government, Arizona

State University

Former job:Managing director

of quality assurance for a

computer-hardware distributor

New job:Software developer

at TheraSpecs

Aha moment:Prompting by

his daughter to get serious

about chess at a time when

he was feeling stalled in his

career.Thatgavehimthecon-

fidence to think he could look

foracareerthatrequired“a

lot of analytical ability.”

Most important piece of

advice for changing jobs:

“Perseverance is the key.” Take

relevant classes. Seek help and

advice from friends and/or

people in the field, to learn

their daily routine and needed

qualifications and skills. And

don’t quit your day job until

you’ve found something else.

UPDATE

CAITLIN O’HARA FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (2)

Mr. DiBiase spent 2018 taking

online courses in such subjects as

back-end programming (including

databases and the basic architec-

ture of websites). Throughout, he

kept his day job.

“I was studying after the kid

went to bed at around 7 until mid-

night every night for about a year,”

he says. He still had doubts about

a career change, fearing he would

fail and jeopardize his family’s sta-

bility. Again, Mr. DiBiase turned to

his tech friends, asking: “Is this re-

alistic? Because obviously tech be-

ing a fairly youth-oriented indus-

try, starting a tech career in your

mid-to-late 30s is not generally

looked upon very favorably.” The

answer: What he sought to do was

in high demand and he should give

it a shot.

An entrepreneur friend ended up

having an opening for a junior-tech

person. Mr. DiBiase got the job, at

TheraSpecs, a producer of therapeu-

tic eyewear for light-sensitive indi-

viduals, starting in early 2019.

Mr. DiBiase says he has been

able to apply skills from his man-

ager career to his new field. “At this

point I’m a mediocre engineer, but I

work great with people because

that’s what I learned to do as a

manager,” he adds.

Meanwhile, he and his daughter,

now almost 11, still play chess.

PERSONAL JOURNAL. | CAREERS & LEADERSHIP

Nicholas DiBiase, above, playing

chess with his daughter, Judy, and,

left, with Judy and puppy Anubis.

REBOOT|CAREER REINVENTION

NY