Years of Slogging and Promotion

This is dedicated to my current...

You become head to come late to office every day.
You become head to make a manager do menial tasks.
You become head to brag about your achievements.
You become head to undermine other people's achievements.
You become head to show favoritism.
You become head to make sure you never appreciate the good qualities of someone hired to replace you.
You become head to degrade a manager in the sweetest possible way.
You become head to feel insecure.
You become head to encourage greasing.
You become head to never include a newly joined manager in important meetings.
You become head to never show any reverence to a newly joined manager in any way.
You become head to make the new manager feel that he/she is nothing inspite of his/her experience or degrees.
You become head to make sure that no interesting tasks are assigned to the new manager.
You become head to make sure the new manager does nothing that can distinguish him/her.
You become head to make sure you never ask for advice from the new manager.
You become head to become an arrogant, hypocritic, insecure, cunning, and incompetent person.

A job or a marriage?

My job was just like a marriage. I was in a different city. We met each other for the first time, liked each other and putting faith entirely on that special person, I left my place, my life, my friends behind and came to a new city, to a new family.

A lot of questions had come up on my choice of the alliance. Since I had ‘better choices’. I was not too confident on my choice either but anyways I tried to carry on well. I have always been passionate about work and relationships and there was no exception this time. On the other hand I could feel deterioration striking me and something was eating me inside. Health issues cropped up soon and also critical issues at workplace.

I was promoted to a higher band but unfortunately there was no one to guide me at my new workplace. KRAs of work, organization expectation, who to please, nothing was clear. I thought that was part of the work culture here since I had come from the metro cities. To worsen the situation I got emotionally attached to one of my seniors. The one I had met on the first meeting. She seemed to like me over the time. I liked her too, adored her beyond normal limits.

Who did I know here? What else could this sensitive heart of mine have done? On the other hand I was extremely analytical and saw things as they were, not as I wanted to see them. I got along pretty well with a young team which had a lot of potential and willingness to learn. I was happy and I made up my mind to share all the treasure of my professional experience with the team. I was also preparing for the last paper of my MBA. I succeeded in my ventures soon. I had my team with me, I had my MBA degree and yes I had my seniors with me.

In my happiness I forgot the critical factors. The KRAs of work, organization expectation, who to please, these were still unclear. I also hardly received any serious professional feedback from the object of my admiration. I have a bit of lawyer in me so I love arguing. I am young hot blooded and so can’t help it. All these were building up and the death blow came in the form of a new joinee in the team. My new reporting manager. My marriage or my job which was like a marriage ended with his feedback which came in the form of the six monthly review. It was full of loop holes, it was biased. I had no strengths according to the document. It was an occurrence unprecedented in my career. Mis-communication, misconception, misunderstanding stood there all united to ruin my career and kill me.

On top of that was the severe heart breaking pain of enduring the bureaucratic behavior of the person, I have actually loved over the time. They say that when you love someone you accept that person as they are inspite of what they are. You try to groom and mentor the person not chastise or denigrate her because even bitter honesty is demotivating. I persevered, learnt from my mistakes, admitted them, tried to correct them inspite of that I failed.

Everything will go on as it is, my silent tears will dry up, my bruised heart will perhaps heal, but this episode I want to shift delete forever from my memory and life.

When Projects Stretch

A few days back we were working in a project which came via one of our pre existing clients. This project had a game based assessment at the end. I had never worked on games before and the turn around time of this project had to be less than usual. The project stretched and I feel that happened because of a number of reasons. What can be the reasons for a project to stretch beyond the estimated time:

1) An unrealistic deadline established by someone, perhaps out of the development group and then imposed on the managers and group members.
2) Changing customer requirements not reflected in schedule changes.
3) Erroneous calculation of the amount of effort and/or the number of resources required to complete the work
4) Predictable and/or unpredictable risks that were not considered during project commencement
5)Technical difficulties that were not foreseen
6)Human difficulties that were not foreseen
7)Miscommunication or lack of communication between team members
8)Failure of the project managers to see that the project is falling behind schedule and lack of action to correct it.

Deadlines can be legitimate but this legitimacy needs to be perceived by the team members. The manager who handles the schedule need to talk with the lead of the developers who in turn need to talk with the developers. A schedule and a deadline cannot be set just like that. As far as I can see these things never took place in the project I worked.

Life On The Bench

Boss: How do you spend your Free Time?
Me: I do not have any Free time (Aside: Free time is when I come to office)

I had left my last company because there was no work for me there. I loved being in that company even though it was located in a place so challenging as Chennai. I was into so many activities apart from regular work. There are traces of regret in my heart. As soon as I joined my current company, I had my hands full. Now the situation is the same. As for projects, I am unstaffed, that is to say, not currently aligned to a project with chargeable client work.

I gave hints to my boss that I wanted to help her out in the project management like scoping and proposals but then managers do it. They discuss among themselves with inputs from the instructional designers. I have a MBA degree apart from an MA. But huh!!! can my boss understand my frustration? I hate going around and telling people that I am idle. I am writing a lot nowadays but what will it do to advance my career?





Is it time for me to quit again?