Tom's Diary

From audio journal episode: 2002-01-03-21-40.

Good evening once again, it’s 9:40 PM on January 3^rd, 2002.

Welcome to cassette #9 of the audio journal.

We’re going to continue the entry from the last tape here.

We were talking about trying to restore some motivation for doing job-related things at work.  I must work with these people.  It is in my plan to work with them and in fact, I’ve got to work with them for the next two years.  So I need to figure out how to fit in, or at least, get along with them.  Dr. Mirkin today, handle a fellow who was either genuinely stupid, or faking it and playing obstinate.  The fellow said, “Oh, I have a rash on the side of my leg.”

Then, Dr. Mirkin responded, “Is the rash on the top or bottom?” 

The guy responded, “Well, it’s on the side.” 

So Doc asked again, “I need to know if it’s on the top or the bottom.”

The fellow started sounding irritated at this point.  “Oh, no no no.  It’s on the side!”

Finally, Dr. Mirkin just went along with the fellow and said, “Oh, okay.  It’s on the side,” even though he didn’t get the answer from the fellow that he wanted.  He ducked out of that line of questioning, apparently realizing that he wasn’t going to get anywhere with it, with that particular caller.  Then, he worked with the caller based on the information that he’d gotten already. 

Eventually the caller walked away cleanly.  Dr Mirkin didn’t get upset at all, apparently.  So, I might try to incorporate this ducking out technique.  Whenever somebody’s not answering the question, stop pursuing that question and look for another way to get it answered.  Try and accomplish the objective without the answer to that particular question if possible. 

One of my difficulties in working with people is that I do want things my way.  Eventually I hope to have that, by running my own business.  I’ll probably never get that degree of control while working for a corporation.  I’ll definitely have more of it in my own business / company.  In the corporation, my role there is not (in fact, cannot) be that of a dictator, and I get this, since I’ve been through it intellectually many times, with numerous thought experiments. 

I’d truly like to understand why working closely with others has been so irritating for me.  I worked with my immediate technical supervisor today, and that wasn’t so bad.  Indeed, it was actually rather enjoyable.  I felt like I’d contributed meaningful direction to the project, and I felt secure.  Why do I feel insecure typically when working with others?  I can speculate.  My loner tendencies likely started when I was very young.  While playing with my childhood friends, others (bullies) came along and made fun of me; demeaning my ideas.  When I’d talk or draw diagrams on the board, some of those nasty people would make comments about my glasses; calling me four-eyes, pop-bottle lenses, et al.  So I did develop this “people phobia,” in which I wanted to work by myself, and achieve greatness all on my own. 

I didn’t want people to observe me in the process of completing something, because I’ve found that once the job at hand is done, and I can show off the finished product, it speaks for itself and of me with high regard; especially if I’ve done quality work.  In that circumstance, the hecklers and cynics can’t say anything disrespectful; they can’t meaningfully demean my work if the finished product does as promised, and that is obvious to bosses, directors, and other higher-ups. It’s harder to discredit someone at work, or tease a child, who has accomplished an obviously great thing, than when they’re in the process of creating that thing.  Why?  Because, for example, while Edison was in the process of inventing the light bulb, how many people do you think told him in ridiculing tones that his electric light would never work and that he was really crazy for wasting his life on this thing.  But then, once he made it work, the skeptics went silent. He shut them up with achievement. 

I’ve taken this lesson to heart in that I don’t want people to see my work, in progress, because keeping under wraps until finished allows me to avoid the ridicule, the put-downs, and the predictions of gloom and doom. 

However, this approach has problems when applied in a corporate environment.  First of all, I’m an adult now, and this means that my peers will not likely tease me or overtly humiliate me in public; not like the bullies used to in elementary school, should I make mistakes.  So perhaps some of my phobia is an obsolete artifact of my childhood. 

Another problem with the go-it-alone approach that I’ve come to enjoy so much is that when you’re working in a team environment, it can be counter-productive to go off by yourself for very long, because the team makes decisions that invalidate my work so far.  What happened to me recently to illustrate this was that I wrote a bunch of code and got very far ahead of the rest of the team, hoping to set the tone for the subsequent software development.  I wanted to define the coding standards, the protocols of the objects used to build the package, and so on.  But then, once I had several weeks of work finished, the team decided to do things differently and this meant throwing away much of my work.  That felt very bad, as I had to go back and significantly change nearly everything I wrote basically.  In other words, once you’ve built the house, as I had, it’s much more painful to redo the foundation than it would have been while the house was still in the design stages, on paper only.  So I learned not to code too far ahead.  If you go too far in front of the rest of the team, you may very well dazzle.  But as I found, this approach can backfire on me because I did put a lot of extra time into coding ahead of the rest of the team.  Then, when they changed their minds on how they were going to implement the feature / function that I’d already coded, and that I’d have spend lots of time changing what was already done, that made me mad, and it’s likely that this anger showed some.  So in my experience, one key to working cohesively as part of a team is NOT to work ahead too far; particularly when it’s clear to them that you’re trying to get ahead and be the first one to establish the trends and practices of those following.   Sometimes, this works.  But it’s quite stressful.

I don’t want to do that anymore. In fact, given my long-term plan to leave this company, there’s no longer any reason for me to be a trend-setter, and sink all those extra hours and weekends into pulling five weeks or more ahead of everyone else.  While I’m clearly capable of spearheading the way as I’ve done repeatedly in the past, that’s  not always  the right thing to do, nor do I wish it anymore with this company.  I’m not going to get the promotion based on what I’m doing on this particular project.  Indeed, now that I’m an aspiring writer who ultimately hopes to work productively by himself, I should focus my energies into achieving  that  goal, rather than becoming a super software engineer. 

So I plan to avoid the sense of injustice I feel when I get an average performance rating, when I know in my heart that I’ve performed way above average.  That’s where the injustice originates, and since I can’t convince my manager to give me the exceeds most rating that I fully believe I deserve, I’ll try another approach: I’ll actually perform average.  Why not?  If they’re gong to throttle back my raises, then I’m going to throttle back my performance accordingly.  Though normally I give my job my all, it’s time to stop that.  Don’t get me wrong.  I like excelling when such excellence is rewarded commensurately.  But in a team environment, I incur much wrath it seems, when I do so; particularly if they want a different future for the software than me.  Thus, no more pulling ahead and going beyond the call of duty for me anymore. 

Now there’s a delicate balance between pulling too far ahead and allowing myself to get too far behind.  Being consistently slow in getting done what’s expected angers teammates as well.  In fact, to know how much to do, or how little I can get away with doing, I need to constantly be aware of what the team is moving and how fast.  You can tug that direction a little here and there.  But I don’t want to try to rule it anymore or demand that it go a certain way.  If I’m going to get rid of this demanding tendency that I have, I must get much better at just going with the flow, like a project leader I struggled with in my first year of work used to tell me.  Go with the flow.  It’s good to help aid the flow.  But don’t buck the flow too often or too severely.  Certainly, I’ve determined the direction of the flow quite a few times in the current project.  I’ve been a star, and continue to be at times.  But that does not mean that I should attempt to lead in every decision.  The other team members won’t stand for consistent domination by me. 

Now there’s nothing wrong with me, even though I pushed hard to be the leader, when in fact it turned out I could not.  As discovered, people aren’t going to let me lead too much, because they want to rule the nest a little too. People want to feel free to contribute as they will, just as I want to be free.  So this is a very delicate line that I’m walking; satisfying my need to be free but at the same time, granting that same freedom to others on the team.  There’s obviously a difference between being an effective leader and a brute-force ruler. 

I want to make a go of this for as long as I remain working for [the company].  I want to understand my insecurities better when It comes to working with other people.  They’re not going to tease or belittle me.  Even if they would, I could handle it well. 

So since I’ll not be working as hard as I have the past few years, I will make less money than had I stayed totally in the favored-opinion status of my bosses and technical leaders, working my fingers and eyes excessively.  But if I can figure out how to function with the team more effectively by just going with the flow more often, I might experience less stress and greater cohesion during my remaining time in corporate America. Now that I no longer have a long and successful future at stake with this company, I hope I’ll feel less need to lead, and be better able to just shrug off decisions with which I disagree.   Since I’ll be leaving soon anyway, what difference does it really make?

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