I’m Amazed I’m Surprised Anymore
I want to believe. I really do. I want to believe that people are basically good and honest and I want to believe that they will look out for each other - at least a bit, in a jam. I want to believe that people are honest and have honor, and work in a mode where they instill these characteristics in others.
I'm honestly shocked and hurt when this doesn't happen. More so when it doesn't happen around me with people I have known for years.
Some will say that I'm not learning from the historical evidence available to me. And I'd have to agree that they are right. If I look at the historical evidence, key members of the management team here have proven themselves to be somewhere between having selective memories and outright deception for their own ends. Yet I still want to believe that this time they are acting honorably and honestly.
Silly me.
So here's the story of the week... the shop has decided to buy this package without really technically diving into it's capabilities to see if it'll do all we need (not all we want, all we need), and so now, millions of dollars later, they need to ensure success. No surprise there... I've seen it happen time and again. Typically, this is where I come in. They come to me and say "It's got to work. Make it work." And I make it work - as best it possibly can. There are times that it hasn't been 100%, but it's always been good enough to declare success, and that's all the management wants.
So this time we're poised again to do the same thing. Then yesterday I get into a late meeting where it's now clear that the work I would be doing on the new version of the product has to be hamstrung by the fact that it's got to work with the old version that I had been told would never be deployed here. Hmmm... I see the selective memory popping up.
So now we have to deploy this old version that isn't even half of what we need but we have to do it because the guy really running the project says we have to. I can see his point of view - minimize the changes in the migration from old to new, but I disagree that the minimization of the changes should take precedence over the fulfillment of the potential of the new version. After all, we know the old version is not nearly what we can live with, why force us to live in it's limitations?
So it's now clear that I will not have the freedom I need to make sure this project succeeds. In a way, I've been given my freedom by that one simple meeting. Oh, I think the management team hasn't figured that out yet, but if not now, they'll see it soon when I say "Hey, I'm sorry, I can't do that, based on the schedule and work outlined by the project manager." Then it'll hit them that without power, responsibility is an impossibility.
As an aside, these interactions make me hold my management in contempt. If they don't want me to do a certain job, then just say so from the onset. If they do, then have the honor to do so, or tell me that things are changing and realize that they can't hold me to any sense of responsibility or a project that they themselves will not give me power to control.
Times like this I want another job. I know it happens everywhere, and when it happens where I've been, I've wanted to leave those jobs as well. I like to work. Period. Ask me to do a job, and I do it. Try to con me into some impossible situation and see if I'm dumb enough to take the bait and try to make this looming train wreck miss is not respectful nor honorable.