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people talk about their workplaces, and it seems they have been doing so forever (or so i’d like to believe)… the dawn of the internet has allowed people to be vocal to a broader audience, but it has also made it easier for word to get back to the office about what is being said. thanks to google, people have had to become more discreet about their rantings… it seems that freedom of speech isn’t all that free sometimes… as is the case with me, i know better than to put specific people, places, and things in my blog… granted, i doubt anyone ever took the time to check out my AIM profile to catch a link to my blog, but you can never quite tell. plus, i’ve learned that lesson already, so i tend to speak in general terms and keep things as broad as possible.

one of the things i’ve come to see over the years is that leaders are pretty easy to spot… their charisma, their attitudes, their swagger just projects leadership. the way they got there often is quite different. when i was marching TBK back in high school, often times you could tell who would be picked as one of the captains because those people were the natural leaders. but there were the other officers who came quite unexpectedly… these people often learned from their “natural” counterparts how to lead, taking bits and pieces from each until they built their image of a leader. and of course, there were those who were never able to take charge. but for the most part, if you became an officer in TBK, you became a leader.

when it comes to the working world, it doesn’t quite seem to work out that way… not all leaders are really leaders, nor do they ever learn how to get people to follow them. i suppose that since high school i’ve carried this notion of people being able to become leaders… it seems like a lot of it ends up this because of office politics.

when i was in TBK, there was little room for politics. if you didn’t do what was in the best interest of the band, there was still the director and the staff who would put you in line. they didn’t give a shit about your feelings, you were a leader and you had to face up to your responsibilities. but you also had to know your place, so anyone stepping out of bounds was put back into place. this is often not the case at work.

i think all too often people who are chosen to lead forget their place in the grand scheme of things… i know in my office for sure there are people who don’t accept their place in the chain, and people are not put in their place by those who are at the top. there are leaders who maybe shouldn’t be leading, and there are others who should be leaders but are not… and this all seems to be due to politics.

i don’t really know my place in it all, but i know where i want to be, and i think i’m doing what i need to do to get there. i want to be a leader… not now, but someday. i don’t think i’m ready to make the hard decisions just yet, but hopefully in time i will. hopefully by then i’ll know how to play the game and use what i can to give myself and advantage.

office politics suck.

-m

these days around the office i wonder what people think of me… i’ve been passing off people’s requests to everyone else - a lot of time it’s because i didn’t code that part, or i have no idea of what is going on… i’ve been quite vocal in the need for software development practices and i wonder how many people see me as young and idealistic and how many see me as experienced (or not) to recognize the need.

the past few months have been taxing on me: long workdays and many 2 or 3 hour sleep nites, followed by coding and calls on the weekends with little time for myself, let alone to spend with iris. it’s been tough. and yet, through it all i’ve seen our work go to shit and back and still it stands… i’ve also seen a good portion of my code go by the wayside as code gets stepped on and patched over… i’ve seen a good set of my hardwork go to waste really. yep, it’s been a really fucking frustrating last few months.

in it all i never expected to really see what i wanted my role in the company to be all along: system adminstrator. when i first dabbled into it i never expected that i wanted to be in it… mike warned me that system administrators don’t make as much as developers, and at first that took me back, mainly because i was very comfortable with my current salary and, as with many people, i worried about my future work and future salary. really tho’, at this point in my life salary shouldn’t mean all that much, i should be finding my career passion.

all of a sudden i realized: being in systems is where i wanted to be. maybe not forever, but it felt right that this should be my position on the technical team for my company.

yet here i am: in the middle of developing what is essentially 3 websites by november, trying not to leave the dev guys out to dry without someone to replace me… and yet, systems only has 1 person, and my help would be certainly needed. so here i stand halfway, feeling like both sides want me because of my experience in the other: a dev guy who knows his systems makes a better developer, but a sysad who is a programmer knows exactly what systems are needed for the applications.

so, mix all that up, throw in the constant office politics, and you end up with quite the sticky situation.

in all of this i’ve come to realize that the path to growth often requires one to lay down his pride and admit his ignorance. without this, how do you level with others on your need for knowledge and experience? you can’t force it out of people, you have to show them somehow that you want them to teach you. and while i may not be the best at doing this, i see people in my company who need to do this more than other.

so for the time being i’ll take what i get here and continue playing the game… maybe now really is the time to put that idea in my pocket and work on it for me and do it in a way that is not so… unplanned.

head down now, ready to trudge thru some more.

-m