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I figured I’d pick the title “Day Sixteen” because my life is about as interesting as this title.
Picking up from yesterday’s misspelling-riddled ramblings, I worked for a bunch of years doing computer stuff. Now I’m a manager.
The one thing that nobody tells you when you take a job as a manager is that you’ll rarely feel like you get anything done. Being a manager is having an infinitely long queue of annoying things to ‘handle’ so that your team can get things done.
Sure, sometimes you might have time to ’set direction’ or to ‘lead’…but that’s rare compared to the number of times you get voicemail from some faceless bureaucrat, asking you to update a ‘tracking system’ or ‘forecast’ or ‘weekly reader’ that nobody really reads or takes seriously.
I got an MBA a few years ago, thinking that this would help me be a better manager. In the end, it helped me diagnose all the ways each organization I encounter is dysfunctional, mismanaged, or just plain crazy. That was not my intent. Sure, the craziness is usually minor stuff but seeing it faster than before graduate school isn’t comforting. Whoever said that ignorance is bliss was right.
Of course, there is always the temptation to go back to a technical role. Unfortunately, this isn’t a real possibility any more. Each year that passes by makes that harder to consider as a serious option. There’s also the hierarchy problem: if you were a manager and now you aren’t, there is an implication that you are damaged goods. This is another reason why I hate bureaucracy. Bureaucracy values people using measurements that are meaningless indicators of a person’s true worth, ability or personality.
Yep, I know that two things are happening right now with this site. First, the quality of writing has dipped a bit as this work-a-thon has continued. I might have even let speeling erorrs get past. Sloppy stuff, on my part. Second, it’s not as thinky as usual.
Thus I say: Thanks for reading, I’m getting back to a normal schedule. After I have a weekend off, I’ll be an unstoppable superman of interesting blogging!
One Comment
Not thinky? I like this subject - the great getting things done struggle. Even as a technical comupter geek, I find similar problems with over-analyzing my worth. I have a never ending to-do list for making stupid computers do interesting, or useful things. The greatest satisfactions seem to be the little victories when I got some problem solved or a long standing task completed. There is usually very little fanfare or celebration for these moments and they are usually followed by another littany of tasks. I sometimes struggle with the question of whether or not my work means anything. Not just to those around me, but in a larger context of the company or community. When I make a computer send it’s statistics to another computer so that a report can be generated that might be looked at for a month, then forgotten about, what have I done for the world? Is the purpose of my employment to keep checking things off a list to show progress, so that my manager can check off something on a larger list, so that his manager can ckeck off… you get the picture.
The best I can do is try to periodically evaluate if the things I do are at least of value to someone. Sometimes that someone might only be me, and I have to feel good with that.