Category: Job Jollies

For the record, things went much better than expected each step of the way on this trip, which was quite the relief. Folks I feared would resist were accepting of the changes. Folks I thought were going to be pushy were instead cooperative, even a bit nervous at times …

The folks I’m going to have working for me seem to be talented, willing, and — if I can pull them together as a group — a good team to start to my department.

Whew.

Now, of course, the real work begins.

In the course of being presented information on all the keen stuff the folks here in Oak Ridge are doing, I was handed back a disturbingly familiar document …

… one which, with the serial numbers filed off (and some local mods), looks like something I must have written back nine-odd years ago. I don’t remember having done it, but it’s in a format only I would have used, and the phrasing in much of it is as I would have written it.

I’m amused, in a spooky Twilight Zone way. Sort of like getting a message from beyond the grave …

I don’t think I’ve ever been to bed as early as 10:45p on a business trip.

Hope I’m not coming down with something.

When setting forth alone into uncharted waters on a business trip, anticipating strange and stressful situations, concerned your career may be in danger, and uncertain of your ability to rise to the challenge …

… bringing along a bunch of Horatio Hornblower novels is probably not all that clever.

Unless you’re going to be the heroic and dashing Gregory Peck Hornblower, that is.

Maybe I should work on my throat-clearing.

I think I’m feeling a little stressed.

Job’s probably the reason. Same employer, same department, different group/boss/domain, as previously discussed.

But it’s not that simple. (Is it ever?)

When the announcement came out last week, there were four names listed under mine.

For Person J, I was told to contact her current boss, who’d been previously contacted by another IT senior manager (one of my New New Boss’ peers) regarding the change. I did so, only to be told that, well, J hadn’t worked for him since November, and I should contact one of a couple of people who know more about what she’s doing right now.

Who, despite attempts to contact, I’ve been unable to do so. New New Boss has said that he’ll try to sort that out, since it’s a High Level kind of thing.

For Person I, I was told to contact her boss. Fine. Hear the crickets chirping in the background? That’s the result of my attempts to contact her current boss. New New Boss says he’ll tackle that one, too.

In either case, that means I won’t be traveling to the UK next week. Which is, all things considered, probably for the best.

Regarding Person K, I was also told to contact her boss, who, in fact, is someone I know, and who is in IT. I did so, and was welcomed with all the enthusiasm of a magazine salesman — and with a question as to whether I was going to be taking over the Project that K is working on, as well as K. Uh, I guess so. K is supposed to turn in her weekly report, today, after which, I’ll discuss with K’s current boss how to transition her over to me.

Person T was a special case, belonging to a different group of folks led by person E, who was not listed on my org chart, but who, supposedly, was now going to be working for me, too. Lots of politics involved that I don’t even want to get into here, but we had a phonecon with New New Boss and E and some other bizops types, and decided that, yeah, all was well, as long as nothing changed. And that’s all I can say here about that.

So, instead of the UK, it looks like I’ll be going to California and Tennessee next week instead — though I still can’t make those flight plans yet, until I talk to K’s old boss, then K, then K’s bizops manager, so I can find out whether to go to California first, or Tennessee.

So, yes, a bit stressful, in a “waiting for the other anvil to drop” way. And, in the meantime, not a lot to do that’s useful, except swat the periodic spams that hit my in-box.

The resultant stress manifests itself in a dearth of creative energy. I’ve not been writing, save for here. I’ve not even been that interested in any number of timewasters I usually can find to occupy my time. I’ve been reading a lot at home, which, I suppose, is a good thing, but not feeling like I’m getting much accomplished. Nor that I really want to.

So … don’t know what that means, but there it is. Hopefully things will get moving and busy and so forth Real Soon Now.

How … depressing. In the time it takes me to earn a dollar, Jennifer Anniston has earned a lot more.

See how badly paid you are in comparison at the Monster Salary Timer. Start it up in the morning, and see if you can afford to spring for lunch at Noon!

(via BoingBoing)

No, really, this time. Per the e-mail from the CIO this a.m.:

Dave Hill will also be joining Enterprise Services [the applications development group] to lead the new Tactical Workgroup Solutions team which will be a focused group of developers providing high impact, workgroup development services to our corporate and engineering clients. [Four names I don’t recognize] will be joining Dave.

I guess that means I have to start working really hard again, doesn’t it.

Psych!

No new news.

UPDATE (11:07a): I got a copy of the org chart for the dept., with a request by my New New Boss to comment on it by tomorrow morning. Hopefully that’s indicative of some sort of timing for the announcement.

The good news is, I was invited to my New New Boss’s quarterly meeting with his directs. Which means, I guess, I’m going to be officially one of them, by and by.

The bad news is, he seems to have scheduled it smack-dab up in front of our KOA trip in June, which means:

• If they hold it in California, I’ll have to fly out there early, leaving Margie to pack for the camping trip and deal with Katherine. Or, alternately, Margie and Katherine might fly out early with me and lounge about the pool, eating bon-bons, while I slave in the office.
• If they hold it in Denver (which, remarkably, someone suggested independently of me), then I’ll be bailing out of the last meeting early to race home to race to the airport, Margie having had to do the bulk of the packing already. Which she usually does, but at least I’m usually there, hovering around, making useless suggestions, shouting at Katherine, and offering repeated references to our Packing Checklist on my Palm.

• If they hold it someplace else (least likely at the moment, but …), then I’ll be traveling independently of M&K, Margie will have to do the packing and care for the bambina for the week before the trip, and it’s going to be a not-very-relaxing weekend following.

In any case, I’ll be immediately squandering my initiative and momentum from the trip by taking a vacation, which is not good in and of itself, and also doesn’t look really good, even though the New New Boss already knew I had the trip coming up then.

On the bright side, after suffering from only mid-60s to -70s weather last week, this week we’re being rewarded with nice mid-80s-plus sun-sun-sun. And the sprinkler zone by the sidewalk still doesn’t work. Feh.

And, on a brighter side, after having Heroically and Remarkly Remembered to Bring Down the Laundry this morning, and patting myself on the back repeatedly for doing so, I just realized I forgot to go across the street and let the vacationing neighbor’s dog out like Margie asked me to.

It’s going to be a long day.

Well, sort of.

All the management it affects knows. All of my direct reports know. Short of some utter disaster in the final planning stages, it should all be officially announced sometime between this weekend and next.

When I started out here in Denver, it was a new professional leaf. I’d been a programmer and systems analyst and DBA for about five years, and had really burnt out on it (some turmoil in my private life at the time had taken its toll, too).

Coming to Denver, I was a manager of IT services for an office — PC and network maintenance. It was a very educational experience, both technically and administratively, as I got to learn the joys of jugging personnel around, doing hires (and, more rarely, fires), and the like. That operations experience eventually expanded from Denver to other offices in the Rocky Mountain region.

The new CIO turned things on their head in 2001, by creatnig a functional organization, rather than a solely regional one. That made some new job niches, and I got sucked into one of them, developing global standards, policies and procedures. With some change in management (both above me and below me, and to the sides as far as that goes), that’s largely what I’ve been doing since then.

And I’ve enjoyed it. I like writing. I like editing others’ writing. I like organizing stuff. I like being creative and pedantic at the same time. I’ve liked my boss and liked the folks I was working with. It’s been pretty close to ideal, and certainly comfortable.

And then I got a phone call from the CIO, and my boss, and a peer of my boss, and the CIO took me up on the mountaintop …

So, this is what I’m going to be doing: IT has, over the course of the CIO’s tenure, been consolidating various IT services, budgets, etc., under the corporate IT umbrella, which has been a real challenge in as decentralized a company as I work for. But because it’s been successful, providing demonstrably better service for demonstrably lower cost, it’s given him leverage to continue that process.

Scattered around the business organization are various lone wolf programmers. These folks are usually hired on by a local operation or project that wants a system developed in support of a single project, and they have a budget for it, or can hide the budget in their G&As, or whatever. They don’t want to go to IT for support in this because either they don’t know they can, or they want to have full control over the effort, or because (to be honest) IT’s apps development group can be a bit … ponderous in turning around development projects.

That’s going to change.

Introducing the Tactical Workgroup Solutions group, part of corporate IT (under a different boss), managed by Yours Truly. I get various and sundry apps programmers that have been ferreted out. There are twenty or so in the US, based on job function codes that look like IT developers but which belong to folks who don’t work for IT. There are still more overseas.

I get to pull these folks together, get their systems in shape to be usable beyond just their particular office or project (and do so before, as so often happens, some sales guy gets wind of it, and sells a project in a different office to another client based on the system, only to have to approach corporate IT to get the damn thing made portable and flexible and usable outside of its previous niche), get them tied into the IT support network, using common tools and best practices, provide them a career path, make the local operations folks happy as well, and end up with a group of folks who can turn-around these sorts of small, local systems in a week or two, rather than a month or six.

Lots of challenges. Lots of opportunities. Lots of visibility. Lots of risk. Lots of chance to use my people skills and my organizational skills and my standards skills.

But when the CIO asks you personally to do it, whatcha gonna do?

Those aren’t the only org changes going on, but the only ones that directly affect me (or that I can say anything about, or that, for that matter, you’d be interested in).

I do think it’s ironic that I’m getting back into the app development side of things again. And there are some particular ironies if a certain group of programmers end up getting brought into my group. What goes around, comes around, and all that. Heh.

And now you know an alarmingly large proportion of what I do, given that I’m gonig to have to actually do it.

Heard back from a senior IT manager I’ve been corresponding with. He actually called me before I could call him (I figured since he’d been out over two weeks on travel, and it was a Monday, I’d cut him some slack), which is a good thing.

There are some continued discussions going on as to various organizational items that impact me and others, but they sound fairly positive. Some questions I’d raised about some cross-functional ambiguity (serving multiple masters sort of thing) seem to have taken on additional relevance, so he’s got that on his radar.

He did note that some write-ups I’d done as to how things seemed to be developing were “spot-on,” which means that when I’m talking a good talk about matters, I’m at least talking in the right direction. And it was a nice, gratuitous complement, which is always nice.

More official word (and fewer circumlocutions) probably this coming Friday. Or, since it’s a company holiday, Thursday.

Whew. This has been a long, hard business trip.

Long, long meetings, exacerbated by various organizational actions to come. Not knowing what’s coming has been … stressful.

And, because we’re staying with the Ks, it’s a 70-90 minute commute, both ways (I don’t know how Margie did it for the months she did). And, between dinner out with friends or business dinners, I have not had minute one to do any of my normal business trip decompression activities — surfing, playing games, blogging. Those things, on these sorts of trips, keep me up way too late — but also let me blow off the stresses of the day.

And all of us at the meeting have our computers set up in the same room, which limits what sort of stuff I can do during the day, of course.

Last night we went to Shelly and Bill, and got back around 9 and crashed. (And since Margie and I were in separate cars, we couldn’t even chitchat on the way back.) It was, though, the first night not saturated with lots of revelry. And it was also, perhaps not coincidentally, the first night since we got out here that I’ve slept decently.

Major announcements due on Friday. Stay tuned.

Well, how disappointing. I came up with what I thought were a couple of smashing logos for our global IT group, and submitted them as part of a company-wide contest.

I certainly wasn’t expecting to win (though I was hopeful), but I expected that the logo that was chosen would be at least as good if not better — I know I have talent, but I know there are plenty of other, more talented folk.

Absolute. Dreck.

The selected logo is (a) way too busy, (b) way too dull, (c) way too detailed to be shrunk, (d) way too blah. Muddled, muted colors, multiple blocks of text, and it all combines into something that looks like the front page of a PowerPoint presentation. It looks like something designed and/or approved by a committee.

Feh.

I don’t mind not winning. I mind losing undeservedly.

But I’m not bitter …

(And, no, I’m not going to post the winner, nor my entries. Just take my word for it.)

Off to a seminar all day. I’ll be back to blogging this evening.

That’s all. Go outside and play or something.

UPDATE: Learned many things about how to deal with difficult employees, none of which are terribly helpful at the present moment. Alas.

Innnnnnteresting …

So, do I want to be a Will Ryker? Or an Elizabeth Shelby?

(And, yes, that’s about all I can say about that here at the moment, but I felt obliged to blog something about it …)