Coming to Terms With One’s Place in the Organization
I was trying to get some sleep last night, and I got a call from the Shop about a problem with one of my systems. It wasn't my fault, but that doesn't matter, does it? There is a problem, and it needs to be fixed, and trying to assign blame is just not going to do anyone any good. I walked the second-shift guy though the initial debugging steps, and it appeared that I had to get out of bed, get online and see what was happening.
Turns out, there's a mistake in the generation of a back-up position file, and the simplest thing was to get the primary working and base things off that. I did it, and was back in bed in about an hour or so. Not a huge deal. But then it got me to thinking about the last few weeks.
I've been asked to get "emergency" updates out for projects that aren't mine, and did them literally in less than half the time the manager of the product expected - less than 24 hrs. in all cases. I've been asked to do several things that under 'normal' circumstances I'd never have been asked to do - all because it's an emergency for one business user or another, and they needed it done right away and had no time to get one of the eight people on the project to actually do it.
Then the calls about the problems that aren't really mine, but I'll fix because that's the kind of person I am. I don't pass the buck, I don't find the problem, assign blame, and hang up. I find the problem, fix it, and then we try to make sure it doesn't happen again.
I'm the classic go-to guy here. I've been here for so long that I know how a lot of things fit together, I know what's supposed to happen, what might happen, and how to deal with it. I'm a walking compendium of environmental knowledge, and that's become what my real job is. I'm trying to come to terms with it, because I took this job to be a coder, and there are a lot of people here that have far more time with these systems than I do, but they aren't the kind that will function as I do in the middle of the night. Many will yell and hang-up, or simply not answer the phone. So I've become the person I am.
It's security, that's for sure. But it's also a little boring. I want to create not answer the same questions 53 times a week from 13 different people trying to track down what happened on this day at this time because the business wants yet another post-mortem on the problem. I understand the need for the analysis... I just don't see the need for everyone to bug me about it.
I'm going to have to grow into this role, that's for sure.