Tag Archives: work

Work in progress…

Posted on by

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I was working on a real live book. Yes, I’m still working on it. So far I’ve managed to keep in from slipping onto the vast list of projects I’ve started and have every intention of getting back to some day. In case anyone is interested, here are the vital statistics to date: 21 pages (in MS Word format), 82 paragraphs, 11,690 words, and 53,999 non-space characters. Don’t think that’s a lot? Open a blank single spaced Word document and start writing about on any topic on which you consider yourself an authority. Then give me a call when you’ve reached your 21st page of block text… but no cheating. Make sure that’s with standard one inch margins and 12 pitch font. I won’t even make you account for the side notes, comments, or any of the extraneous reference information you end up putting together in the process. After a couple of months living with this work in progress, I’m starting to understand why Hemingway drank.

So far, I’m finding that what works best for me is to just sit down and throw up as many words on the page as possible. Even then, if I can manage a couple of hundred words a day, I’m doing pretty well. I’m trying to write blog posts, comments, and other stuff too, so I’m hoping that it’s more about quality than quantity. If I can keep up this breakneck pace, I should be finished the first rough cut in another 233 days. Sigh. That means editing in the spring and then fine tuning and polishing the final draft in the summer. It all seems perfectly plausible as long as I don’t stop to think about it for too long. Mostly, though, the plan is to just keep writing until I run out of things to say and then decide what needs to come out or what needs beefed up. It’s not elegant, but it’s at least some kind of logic.

I started writing as a catharsis. It was a means of ejecting the poisoned thoughts that I could never openly blog about onto the page and not be particularly worried about how I said it or who I said it about. It’s evolved into a slightly better rounded discussion of my observation of good and bad leadership, the philosophy of management, and the experiences I’ve had with them during a particularly problematic point in my career. Since it’s proven to be largely impossible to untangle the events from the people involved I’ve mostly stopped trying. If it ever sees the light of day, I suppose I’ll just have to accept that some people are going to be pissed off. It doesn’t don’t know if any way to write other than based on my memories of the events as they happened. Lord knows I’ve got a mountain of supporting documentation for most of it… and even what isn’t well documented can be confirmed by eye witness accounts.

The real question, I suppose, is whether I’ll have the guts to actually let anyone see it once it has gotten something in the proximity of finished, which I’m thinking should be some time 60-70,000 words from now. On a personal level, seeing something like this go to print would be a validation of time spent and misspent. If I put on my rational professional hat, well, there’s a difference between burning your bridges and setting fire to the whole damned city. As usual, the parts that will tend to cause trouble are also the most interesting. Maybe I should change the names, call it fiction, and really let the dogs out to run. This is probably one of those times when I should wish I didn’t have a mile-wide malcontent streak.

Networking… or not…

Posted on by

The network is my single point of failure. When it goes down, basically I become an astronomically well paid paperweight. Sure, there is a way to do everything I do manually, but because I wasn’t raised in the horse and buggy era, I don’t know what that way is because it was never covered in training and I’m certainly not old enough to have ever had to do it that way myself. And since everyone around me is in the same boat when it happens, after the initial bout of consternation and annoyance, the whole place takes on a bit of a snow day atmosphere. Which is great… for a while.

As fun as officially sanctioned down time is, it does highlight an issue that I don’t think any of us have spent enough time thinking about: What, exactly, is an army of technology workers supposed to do in the event of something more than a temporary outage? If we can’t email, can’t access the cloud, and can’t call out over VOIP, we’re pretty much just a bunch of people hanging out. What if it lasts for a day? Or a week? What if a network outage became the new normal?

Ninety nine percent up time sounds great until you realize that means you’ll be down for at least 3 and a half days every year. That’s annoying if you’re a dedicated gamer. It’s potentially catastrophic if you’re managing the world’s financial markets, running a war, or trying to manage the nation’s air traffic. Our reliance on computers and networks isn’t going to decrease in the future, so if we’re going to be so dependent on the network, redundancy and failover should be the standard. If the powers that be can’t manage that, they should at least spring for a cell booster for the building so we can play Angry Birds while we’re just sitting around.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

Dedication…

Posted on by

One of the people I work with loves her job. I’m making that assumption anyway because most days she seems to always stick around until 6:00 or 7:00 when end-of-tour is closer to 4:30. According to her, there’s always something “hot” that comes up after the rest of us pull up stakes for the day that needs done and just can’t wait for the next morning. I suppose it’s theoretically possible that this is true, but based on my own observation of daily workload around here, I’m somewhat skeptical.

I guess someone might look at her and think the late hours were a sign of dedication. The fact is, though, we’re not a life-or-death operation. It’s probably not politic to say in a world of 9.2% unemployment and a collapsing stock market, but sometimes a job is just a job. As much as an escort sells her body for cold hard cash, I whore out my big beautiful brain for the same consideration. Maybe some people do it for the love, but me, I do it for money. I do it so I can afford to pay the bills, eat nice meals, and occasionally travel to new and interesting places. I don’t do it out of a misplaced sense of loyalty as I’m quite certain the powers that be would have no qualms about throwing me over the gunwale during a reduction in force.

Sure, there was a time when I was young and idealistic and my sense of self derived directly from my position title and placement on the org chart. I got a little older and a little more jaded and discovered that no matter how cushy, the job is pretty much just a set of handcuffs keeping you from doing the things you really want to do because you’ve got bills to pay. And we should have bills to pay. We should have to work for our supper. But we shouldn’t be working instead of eating our supper.

I’m too old to be naïve about how the world works. Maybe sticking to the ol’ eight-and-out is committing slow career suicide. Missing the next rung on the career ladder still sounds like a better option than missing out on everything that isn’t work. The only shame is it took me so long to figure that out.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date

The Big D…

Posted on by

Attention Colleagues:

Open bay cubicles are not the appropriate venue to discuss the ongoing drama of your divorce proceedings, the backbiting antagonism of your ex-husband, or details of the child support decree that you’ve decided to fight. As interested as the person you’re talking to might find this tragic tale of woe, the other 12 people sitting in the room aren’t nearly as interested. Well, technically, I suppose they are, but mostly because it’s grist for the lunchtime gossip mill.

I wouldn’t go so far as suggest that there is a firewall between your professional and personal life, but perhaps it would be wise to install some kind of filter on what you decide the entire office needs to know. Really, it’s as much for your own good as it is for ours.
Thanks for your kind attention in this matter.

Very respectfully yours,

Jeff

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date

He’s off the grid…

Posted on by

I actually met someone this afternoon that doesn’t own a cell phone. Or have a Facebook account. He’s never Tweeted, Skyped, or sent a text message. I didn’t know in 21st century America that such people existed. Apparently they do exist. And not just in Unibomber-style one room cabins in the wilds of Montana. In fact, they do tech support for Uncle Sam.

This also goes a long way towards explaining the problems I have with my office computer. Sigh.

Data call…

Posted on by

When I ask for some information and mention that it’s for the boss, the appropriate response is not to then get up, walk down the hall, get water for your plants, talk to your best girl friend on the phone for 20 minutes, eat a granola bar and then get around to sending me the info an hour later. Look, I know I’m new in town, but I didn’t get here on the turnip truck. Mkay? Thanks.

I seriously wonder sometimes if it’s my standards that are unrealistically high or if the rest of the world really is just that stupid, ignorant, or just gold fashioned oblivious to everything going on around them.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date

Nothing…

Posted on by

I’ve been in place now for just about a month. It’s fair to say that in that time, I’ve done nothing. In fairness, it took two weeks for the IT guys to get me set up on the network and then figure out that I needed access to a laundry list of systems. But after that, it’s been pretty much nothing. A few rounds of “hey check these numbers” or “go sit with so-and-so while he does something,” but as far as getting a sense of what I’m actually supposed to be doing in this new job? Yeah. Not so much. I know that sooner or later that’s going to change and they’ll want me to be at least marginally productive, but until then, have you ever tried to fill eight hours a day and 40 hours a week with nothing productive? Let’s just say that I’m reading a lot more news these days. If I can’t be productive, I should at least be well informed.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

Tweaked…

Posted on by

On the surface the range of issues I deal with in this new job is deceptively similar to the position I ejected from in Tennessee. To be sure, there’s plenty of org chart shuffling, PowerPoints to update, and a metric ton of reports of one stripe or another that need to be completed. The difference, though, is that even when it’s minute, you can still see progressing being made on these projects. There’s plenty of infighting and office politics, but on the whole, projects are handed off between offices more or less seamlessly. There’s even collaboration between different departments… and it’s actually encouraged. It’s like someone has taken reality and tweaked it just a bit. Or maybe more like they’ve smacked it in the side of the head with a 2×4.

My perception is obviously shaded a bit by the recent past, but I can legitimately say that this has been the first time in a long stretch when I didn’t wake up in the morning looking for a reason to take a sick day. That long stretch of early morning parking lot pep talks is, for now, a thing of the past. Does that mean things couldn’t turn into a poop sandwich tomorrow? Not so much. For now, I’ll just appreciate it for what it is.

Inner teenager…

Posted on by

It’s Friday. Before a three day weekend. I’m more than a little surprised that there are more than three people even in the office pretending to work today. Even with a mostly full staff pecking away at their keyboards, it’s painfully obvious that the biggest game in town today is watching the clock roll on towards 4:00… or 3:01 if the powers that be keep up with long-standing pre-holiday tradition. Either way, it’s safe to say we can mostly write today off as professionally useless.
 
On a related note, I’m usually accused of being a 60 year old man at heart, but long weekends have a tendency to bring out my inner teenager. The anticipation of being turned loose. The rush of heading out the door. Rolling down the windows. Turning the radio up. Forgetting about work for a few days. For me, at some basic level, that’s what freedom feels like. Maybe that’s not such a bad way to kick off the Independence Day weekend.

Schedule…

Posted on by

This is going to seem like a really minor detail, but for the last 7 years, my schedule as been 6:30-3:00. Start early, end early get back to the house with plenty of day left. Now we all know that I’m a creature of habit, but even I was surprised at how pushing things back just an hour would throw off my day. That’s not really a complaint per se, just an observation. Getting to the house after 5:00 is just downright strange at the moment. Once it settles in as part of the new normal, all will be well. After all, it is sort of nice not to necessarily want to go to bed at 9:00 most nights. With this new schedule, I push it back as far as 10:00 or even 10:30 if I’m feeling froggy. That’s right, we’re living on the edge here at the top of the Bay. Don’t ever let it be said that I’m not willing to broaden my horizons.