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Good Job Experiences?
alexkj asks: "Do you remember a situation that made you feel good about your job? There's a lot of moaning and complaining going on about peoples jobs these days. It's probably no wonder with all the downsizing going on, but it still gets me down. So lets turn it around, and find all the good stories. Tell everybody else about a good experience on the job. Try to be specific, and relate an actual story of a situation that made you happy on the job."
Looking through /. I found Kuro5hin life was much better after that...
Let the modding down begin...
My first real tech job was to build a LAN for my former High School, which naturally involved lots of running and capping of wires, etc... I was a youngin at the time, and not especially experienced, and along comes Net Day, in 1997 or 1998.
We had about 25 volounteers come to the school on a weekend, to help string wires all over the place, most of them not having the slightest idea what they were doing.
It was a bit of a pain, but it was nice to see some of these older cats looking to me for guidance as to what to do. The few experienced people I simply deputized, and let them handle a crew of about 4. They still came back to me for advice or a say-so.
In all, it was a very long day, but I got a nice fuzzy feeling that maybe I knew what I was doing, moreso then I originally thought.
The other great thing about that job was I got to smoke on the roof while I was measuring ye olde cat 5 cable. Good times...
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
...around Christmas, the vendors brought in a massive plate of cheddar and crackers, and an equally massive plate of fresh jumbo shrimp cocktail.
;-)
;-)
That's what you get for being loyal to your vendors.
Also there was the time I figured out that rollerblade wheels were a good replacement for something we were having custom manufactured.
...
As a programmer though, the things where I've felt the best have been where we've pulled together as a team and delivered on something tough, where I've been in a more competitive environment and charged ahead of the other guys enough that it was clear who was top dog a while, and where I've had a tough problem thrown at me and been left with enough time to do some research and lay out a clean and elegant solution.
it's really tough to find an environment where you're working with good people who are all already dedicated. It's tough to enjoy competition in an environment where management aren't very clueful about measuring accomplishments, or are so touchy-feely that they won't vocalize that this guy's leagues ahead of that guy. And there's not much joy in constant-pressure environments where managment won't let you invest time in creating quality, reusable systems.
The team dedication and energy you can create yourself, if you spend some time on building relationships with the people around you and learning their skills. A good programmer knows who shares interest in what kind of problem, and can leverage that to get buy-in and support. I'm sure that's true in other kinds of work as well.
The second and the third, competition and deep work, are tough to create, unless you're willing to take charge yourself and rally coworkers around while still pushing credit for most things off on your manager so he doesn't stand in your way.
The folks who complain about their work the most tend to be the passive kind who are idly waiting for things to get interesting. That doesn't happen most places. You've got to create that if you want to be part of something big and interesting, or if it's really not possible to do that where you are, start figuring out how to get out.
Make it happen, dudes.
</ramble>
She was the new girl and had all the right curves. I was a little embarrassed when she caught me checking out her ass, but relaxed when she smiled over her shoulder and gave a little wiggle.
Well, what do you know but we were both working late one night. Nobody else was in the building....
Oh wait, that never happened. And my job sucks.
That was pretty nice for a change.
I can't say it made me happy, though.
I have been pwned because my
Boss: "You know times are hard for us now..."'
Me: "Oh, definetly"
Boss: "I hate to do it, but we gotta let you go.."
Me:
Boss: "I'm sorry. but we've got unenployment all set up for you, and ready to go. as well as small severence package"
Me:
Overall, it turned out very well....
Cloud City Digital: DVD Production at its cheapest/finest
However, as my first (or second, depends on how you count) job out of uni, it's a great experience. For all the wrong reasons, sure, but a great experience nonetheless.
So sure, I don't feel good about my job or happy on the job, but I do feel good knowing that I have all this experience on What Not To Do(tm) in the future. I do feel good knowing I can take very real experience in a large software project into the future.
Call me a masochist. I don't care.
I have a great manager.
We work in a field (Information Security) that not many people 'get'. He truly grasps the technology, understands the issues we face, and tries to improve the situation in the company.
He understands that people have families, and that work is not life (at least, not an ideal life). He seriously urges people to better themselves through education (I start back up in 3 weeks).
He is reasonable about people working from home on occasion, and supports us trying and doing things a step away from normal (My second desktop at work is a linux workstation).
On top of all of that, he is an MBA, and has a fantastic ability to handle the politics of a huge company.
He even quotes movies, and considers Ghostbusters "The greatest source of 1-liners ever".
I am one of the VERY lucky, and my family regularly lets him know how much we appreciate everything he does.
What can I say, he rocks, and thus, my job rocks. You couldn't pay me enough to leave.
He even knows (and accepts) that off-hours I work on a...
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
Just having a job makes me feel good and happy! I hear more stories everyday of people being laid off, tech workers can't find jobs, etc. and I wonder how stable my position is. I am however very fortunate to work at a great company with a lot of great people. We're small with only about 100 people total, so everyone knows everyone and we all seem to get along great. I really couldn't ask for more.
As far a specific story about happiness on the job? I'll relate a bit about my first assignment with my current employer.
I had just started with the company (March 2000) and was doing a lot of boning up on Frame Relay
(which I had never even heard of before starting this job) and one month into working here, I'm in a meeting and we are told about a project in Africa (Ghana to be exact) and my manager is asking for volunteers. Surprisingly to me, people weren't jumping at the chance. Well, I did and it turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life! Myself and a senior engineer were going to go to Ghana and setup a WAN (over fiber) between to cities about 100 miles apart and then within the two cities setup MANs using line-of-sight microwave. ATM for the backbone. Frame for the MAN and IP running over the entire thing. We got to set up video conferencing and VoIP equipment to demonstrate the full capabilitiy of the network. It was the most amazing learning experience for me.
As great as this sounds, things were a little shaky for a bit. It turns out that the senior engineer had to return back to the states twice during the three months we were supposed to be there, which would have meant that I was to be left alone for a couple of weeks and have to carry on by myself. I was still very green of course and I had my doubts.
The first week he was gone was no big deal. I was basically to learn about the routers were going to use and get a frame relay circuit and IP connectivity over a T1 link during that week. I made that happen by mid-way through the week he was gone.
He returned and we spent the next month building this network. Just the two of us. I did most of the grunt work like making cables, etc. I also handled the routers I had just learned about which was cool, because he new nothing about them.
Well, we got the entire thing up and running in time for the demo that the company was putting on for local banks, govt. officials and other important people. The senior engineer then has to leave for his second trip back to the states. The only thing is, he doesn't return. No big deal right? Everything was setup and running well, right? Well, wrong of course.
The day after the demo, the customer tells me that they would like the network re-designed/installed/etc. for another demo. Well, this was Thrusday evening and I was to leave on Saturday afternoon. This meant that I had to travel once more to the other remote city, change shit all around on Friday and come back late Fri. night. Get a bit of sleep and then change everything around there in the local city and of course get it all running again.
Well, needless to say, I now had serious doubts. I called my manager and she was too fucking cool! She said, "Well, do your best, but whether it's working or not, you're coming home." (Remember, I had been there for 3 months by this time.) She also said, "It's on them for making changes last minute." (Too cool! A boss that's actually sticking up for me instead of "Whatever the customer wants." or "Well, you stay there until you get it done."
Well, Friday came and went. I got the remote city (three MAN sites there) setup and headed back to the capitol city. I woke up Saturday, got everything done by about 11:00 am. Now it all just had to work. Everything was pretty easy to get up except the damn video conf. system! It was what I had had the least amount of time and experience with too. Damn!
Well, as it turned out, I got it to working at the last minute with just enough time to get back to the hotel, grab my shit and get the hell outta there!!
Needless to say I was (and still am) very happy with my job. Things haven't been quite as exciting since and the travel hasn't been as exotic, but I love what I do and that's the most important part.
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
As I was leaving I heard my boss say to the marketing guy, "I've seen the full demo...this is gonna be alot cooler than we thought it could." That made me all proud.
:) All people in this story have long ago left the company.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Thursday was my first day on the job. I had been out of work for 30 months. This was a Good Workplace Experience.
The first work term I ever had in my Computer Engineering degree gave me one of my most memorable experiences. I worked for two sumemrs at a chicken plant which was assembly line labour consisting of 8 hour shifts. If anyone has ever done this before they will know it's very hard on the body to do any repetative motion for 8 hours. Then I entered engineering and lined up a great job with Nortel Networks (God rest their soul) for the summer. Let's just say I was amazed that I didn't have to tell anyone I was going for a break or that I was able to take off early and work flex hours. Hey I was young and it's a big step from a chicken plant to the Tech Industry.
:) So many other good stories but that one stands out in my mind.
Anyway I did a lot of cool stuff that term and I still use it on my resume. But the best feeling I found was at the end of the term when they offered me a job in either Ottawa or Toronto for my next work term. Now it doesn't seem that big of a deal but to me at the time I was pretty freakin happy
"I believe in everything in moderation. Including moderation." -Dean DeLeo, Stone Temple Pilots
I work for a small company currently and for the first time I can say everyday is a good day. There are pressures are like any job, but I can honestly say I have the utmost respect for everyone I work with, morally, and intellectually. I have never been able to say either one about the people I've worked with in the past let alone both. That alone makes my job the best situation I've been in in years.
:)
Even when things don't go quite right, I know that everyone is invested in improving the situation. I have friends in the field and I do not know a single one that can say the same thing about their work environment. That, all by itself makes coming to work everyday a pleasure.
BTW: I work at McDonalds
Seriously, the biggest complaint is the communication barrier between the client and ourselves. The solution: stop bitching and find a better way to communicate with the client. Dissenters be damned. That sure beats the hell out of bemoaining a bad situation.
Hamburgers and [fill in the blank] to all my men.
Last Time I actually had fun at work for extended periods of time.
...now ...I program in VB
....all I can Say is meh.....
...but rather the calling of a higher power....to learn cool shit that nobody else knows.
I was doing research in BioPhysics....
now that was cool, that was fun, I leared shit every day....
My shame...:(...
don't get me wrong its kinda cool some times but honestly
The best times are had doing fundimental research in acadamia...with no profit driven objective
--meh--
At my job i feel good becuase i know i am contributing to a large project that is seriously understaffed but still moving forward and always making deadlines. Also since i know others jobs rely on these projects staying afloat i feel good as being a part that continually makes the project successfull. That and it is a project with really good intentions.
Dan Mayer: my blog, essays, art, etc
One of the best jobs I've had was working for a small consultancy company (in Melbourne). Because it was such a small company they were very few boundaries of "this is your job... do this and nothing else" and plenty of opportunities existed to get involved in liaising with customers, installing and supporting systems ... all the "other" activities that surround just "developing" a system - some people considering them boring activities, but I've had some pure development roles, and the lack of variety in the day to day work does grind you down a bit.
But, from a job satisfaction point of view, what really made this job a rewarding experience was working on real systems where you could see the immediate benefits they provided the customer. A case in point was the airport logistic systems we developed for one of the airlines ... it always gave me a buzz to walk into the airport terminal, look up at the flight information screens and know that the system that is putting all that together is one you have worked on.
On the other hand, no matter how much "latest and greatest" technology you are getting your hands dirty with or the amount of TLAs piling up on your resume, if the system/program/application you are working on never actually sees the light of day, the buzz just ain't there.
Ironically I've just resigned from a job at a telco, working on "cutting edge technology" that is becoming less and less likely to see the light of day to go back to work for this previous small company - because for me the payoff is in the variety of experiences on offer and the sense of professional and self-worth that comes from actually seeing somebody make use of your hard work.
I went to work at 5pm. I left work at 7:30 pm.
:)
This counted as a full day of work.
Did I mention I get 5 weeks paid vacation?
+ holidays...
We partied the night away and then each of us was given the keys to a suite at the best hotel in town, where we spent the next four days fornicating like rabbits and watching reruns of the best Superbowl games of all times.
*poof*
Oh. Where was I? Oh, yeah. I once won a "Yo Quiero Taco Bell" t-shirt in an office raffle. That was nice.
I found that a poor schmuck had been harnessed
;-)
;-\
with the uninteresting job of FAXing end-of-day
activity reports to all of a company's [active]
clients, five days a week.
Before:
1. Run UNIX-based custom application to print
the wide reports onto continuous-paper
2. Reduce photocopy the reports for FAXing
3. Manually feed the FAX-machine the copies
for each Client
4. Go home about 6:30 or 7:00 pm each night
- after up to 2 hours of tedium...
At least the FAX no's were in its phonebook
memory & didn't need to be dialed manually.
(There was no overtime for his salaried job)
There was a FAX-option for the UNIX-based
custom application, but a costly UNIX FAX
system wasn't considered cost-effective by mgt!
(How costly to the company it might have been
to find & train a replacement for this guy,
they just didn't consider...
After:
Although it was a fairly simple change that
we 'sold' to the company & installed there:
1. Run UNIX-based custom application to print
the wide reports to text files (1 / Client)
2. Transfer the files to a Windows box across
a newly installed TCP/IP network
3. Use Word to -slightly- reformat the reports
4. Use Win 95's FAX software to FAX to Clients
5. Go home about 5:30 pm most nights
- after 'just' 30 minutes of tedium...
(We might have automated it all further,
but the company thought we'd done enough)
Not exactly rocket science, by any measure,
but it really saved human time... in a land
where human time is NOT always valued: South
Australia.
Today, we would say we'd contributed to
the Triple Bottom Line (maybe saving the
guy's marriage & reducing his chance of
leaving the job before his time, eg due
to boredom or burnout).
PS I think they -still- printed out the
wide Client reports - for archiving -
after declining to have us work up a
simple electronic archive / viewing
system.
I guess trees aren't valued in S Aust
either (and they had plenty of space
in their archive storage room...
The last time I had a good time at my job was realizing that they were going to pay me to learn how to change a whole bunch of their programs to run over a beawulf style cluster. I actually put in over 12hour days (which i must say, professional unions kick ass, paid over-time). This is basically my way of saying anything that i do at work where i can add to my resume to either get a better job, or to hint to management that i am doing a good job (i sometimes do this blatantly) and get bonuses and raises makes me happy. Plus everyone knows that repetitive stress sucks, who wants to just program from requirements all day long , ick!
i feel bad that there are only 20 or so comments so far, and a bunch of them are modded "funny"...
that being said, here's my contribution to the positive experiences:
twice now, i've been able to take a portion of code i've written for one of our products and turn it into a utility that the rest of the group can benefit from. everybody wins; the code was already written, i get to feel important, and everyone else's work gets a little easier. as long as you dont take more than an afternoon to work on something like this, your superiors should be ok with it.
Somewhere on this page I have hidden my signature.
I am an 'in-house' developer for an academic institution.
Despite all the talk about 'lusers' that is so popular in nerd circles, I find that being in close contact with the people I am developing stuff for, seeing my work actually in use and being able to refine it to fit people's needs can be a very rewarding experience.
JP
Quite frankly, no... None whatsoever...
Probably why I'm trying to start my own company now...
There's so little difference between politics and jihad lately...
Recently I was fired (well actually my contract had expired and I was not hired again). That made me feel very good about my former job. I had a great time and I want it back!
-- Cheers!
Many moons ago, I used to work as a BOFH^H^H^H^H tech for a technical college. A PC had died in one of the labs, and being pressed for time, I started work on the machine while a lecture was in progress.
The lecuture finished without incident, but unfortunately I was left with a crowd of interested 17 year olds watching what I was doing, and one lad who was desperately trying to prove to his peers that he was a guru.
"It's a virus" - no it's not - "Check the BIOS" - why??? - "Do a FDISK /MBR" - Sod off and die...
So anyway, there's this gimp annoying the hell out of me, and I need a way of getting him away from me, so put a pound coin on the table beside me and said:
"You know the shop just down the road, opposite the pub?"
"Yep"
"Do me a favour; nip down there and buy me half a dozen eggs." Wait for blank look to take over luser's face; "And when you come back, you can teach me to suck them..."
Exit one deflated ego; cruel possibly, but it made me smile
Life is like a sewer; what you get out of it depends on what you put into it...
Yeah, you're right. We dwell on the negative too much around here, and there were some good anecdotes that came up. Thanks!
May we never see th
Working on a IT helpdesk can bring its own comedy moments, of course you get the usual annoyed customer but still you get the classics...
:)
Heres one i had this morning:
User: "I can't get into Word, its stuck on the gray bar"
Me: "Have you tried clicking on the button in the gray bar?" (i assumed she ment explorer)
User: "Oh, Yup, thats worked...bye"
As long as theres people like that i've got a job
"What do you mean you have no ice? Do you expect me to drink this coffee hot?" - Random Customer, Clerks
1. Walking into a distressed customer's site and in 17 minutes (including loading up content and bringing it on-line) turning one of their workstations into a secured, up-to-date DNS (BIND9), mail (PostFix), webserver (Apache), file (Samba) and proxy (Squid) server to replace their smoked rackmount multiprocessor w2k box. It had been running half a day before either their insurer or their hardware supplier got back to them about replacing the deader. It never quit; the company's parent went bust (and took them with it) before it had any reboots. Very happy campers, they were, although I did connect again the next day because they'd forgotten to tell me to switch on a DHCP server. (-:
2. Watching the look on two people's faces (the boss and a resident incompetent) as I explained that PostgreSQL was free and wouldn't even require a separate server; RI had proposed about $45k of MS SQL Server licences and had a $14k monster box all lined up to run it on. I don't know what kind of kickbacks he was getting from the suppliers, but he just about exploded when I reduced that to zero in about three minutes; meanwhile, the boss looked like sunrise; maybe he could afford that little fishing boat after all...
3. Another RI (he had, for example, installed a time-clock program on his Windows 98 workstation and come in three days running to find that it had crashed overnight, went wobbly when I suggested plugging the (RS-232 no-brainer interface) time-clock into the Linux server to produce a comma-delimited file for him, and eventually settled for scheduling a shutdown at 18:00 in case he forgot to do it by hand, having the machine's RTC power up the '98 box at 04:30 - it still died before the workers got in about once a month) had after giving me much grief for a number of weeks, finally weaselled his way into the owner's confidences enough to get me `fired'. They had a power failure the next day, but their Linux everything-server was on a UPS... but some dolt heard the UPS screaming, figured it was distressed (correct) and that the solution was to power it off (oh... dear). This was back in the days of ext2, when a 13GB drive was huge (the machine had two, RAID-1'ed) and they called me back in, panicking and promising to pay their outstandings ($3500 including a lot of work on their mongrel Windows workstations, which they never did pay) when their server didn't come back on with the power 15 minutes later. I looked, and the machine was still fsck'ing, and would be finished in a few minutes, which I told the owner. I turned around from having done this to find RI behind me, livid with rage - get this - that his company's data was going to be OK! I met his eye, and he knew that I knew he was being a complete asshole and a loser, and knew that he knew that too. I don't normally get pleasure out of the holier-than-thou experience, but this day I most certainly did. He gritted his teeth, turned around and stormed off, but unfortunately the owner missed the entire tableau and I didn't get paid.
4. Two similar experiences with StarOffice/OpenOffice.org. A mate had a 14MB MS-Word-2000 file that a customer in the USA (we're in Oz) needed but couldn't read on his MS-Word-97. I had mate email me the file, sucked it into StarOffice 5.2 and blew it out as MS-Word-6, instant hero 'coz it all worked. Another customer had an MS-Word document known to harbour a macro virus which at the time had no known cure; read into OpenOffice.org 6.0, delete macros, write back out again, instant hero take 2.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
One of my best moments was when, in 48 hours, I flew to two customer sites and fixed their stuff. Was scheduled to go to one and test our new software on their systems overnight. 3 hours before I left we had a panic call from a guy on site at another customer. They had problems and were going to halt their rollout. In 3 hours I pretty much figured out what the problem was and had made the fix. I sent them the fix and hopped on the plane. After testing until 4am at customer A, I went to the hotel, took a shower, and went to the airport. On the plane (4 legs in 24 hours) I wrote a simulator/load tester for customer B's system and verified my fix and came up with some other changes they should make. I spent most of the day in meetings at customer B trying to explain why they were having problems. By 9pm that night, with me falling asleep in the corner, they were finally able to run serious loads. Their rollout continued and I got to go to sleep.
I just found out that with the new company that I will start at you are able to write off lap dances!
g
After rolling out a new product/feature when my users email me with "I like it. I really like it."
I did a stint helping with basic IT classes for a project working with adults recovering from mental illness. I hadn't done anything teaching-like before and I expected it to be horrendously frustrating. Instead I really enjoyed it. Best moment - when on my birthday one of the students gave me a card they made on the computer. Three weeks ago she didn't know how to switch the thing on and there was a wonderful sense of 'I did that'.
[Of course, getting a larger raise than the other times was nice for a fleeting moment.]
Honestly, though, the best experience I had at work was coming in on a weekend about 10 years ago to finish working on a special (programming) project with a coworker that also thought it was special, worth coming in on the weekend to do.
Did I mention that the idea and definition of the project germinated with us, at the worker bee level? This was no project handed down from on high - they merely reviewed and approved it to go ahead and get funded.
On that particular Saturday, I was debugging and, finally, around early afternoon, found The One Last Bug that let the application do what we thought it could do.
It was just in time for a conference presentation the next week.
I felt more happiness about my work at that point than at any point since then.
So the lesson here is that happiness resulted from:
My experience is that most people in most jobs get sufficient risk, some or only a little success in the face of a deadline, few co-workers that are both intelligent and enthusiastic, and get management that does not trust them to have a large say in defining their own work.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Even though my first job out of college didn't pay much, it was great experience and I traveled all the time. For two years of my life, I traveled all over the US and to three other continents. Though business travel isn't always glamourous (The airlines lost my luggage twice in one trip) and the works wasn't all that wonderful all the time, either (Milwaukee isn't all that great at 3am). I'm married now, and all that travel wouldn't sit with my wife very well. I'm with that company still ("again", actually, after brief time with a dot-bomb). I'm a QA guy now, and making more money. But I will remember my travel-days as a lot of fun.
My former boss knew how to motivate us. It would start off like you'd expect...
"Listen. This needs to get done by Friday. I'll need you to put in as much time as possible to do so."
At which point you're thinking, "Well, that's just like every other clueless manager out there." But, he would redeem himself with:
"If it gets done by Friday, I'll pay you $1000 right there."
Which he would, of course, do. Not some intangible "It'll look good come review time" or "It'll be remembered when bonuses are handed out", but $1000 you could take home that night. That was a good job experience.
Right after high school I went out to California in the dot-com boom and got working right away. (Making $60K a year with benefits right out of high school was a pretty good feeling) I did some contract work for a publishing company in Palo Alto, and then did contract system administration work at Netscape for a while. Netscape was nice. But I honestly felt a little out of place, because I was 19 then, and everyone else was in the 30's and such. I think I spent a total of 3 or 4 months there before I got sucked into a startup.
But that startup never really went anywhere. So I left with my room mate and moved to Salt Lake City and worked for another startup, and 6 months later that one fizzled. I moved back home and got a job with a real company right before the dot-bomb.
So, the first 2 years of my professional career were spent working on jobs where there really was no substance to my work. It never affected anyone.
The company I work for now has an actual product (and it works!), which I've put about two years of coding and design into, and we've got happy customers that love it. It makes me feel good to have had a hand in something that actually has a positive effect on peoples' lives and makes their work easier. I make less than I did in California, but I'm living in the town I grew up in again, and I'm near my family and friends, and that's well worth it. Also, the job security of working for a real company (not a startup) that has actual revenue is nice to have. Being appreciated is a great feeling.
Gabriel Ricard
It became a central point of the network.
Everytime I talk to the guys I left there, they keep saying "And we're almost rid of your OS/2 machine." That's fine, they don't know OS/2, but they fact that it's still there shows how well it's worked.
I like that.
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
I was at a small daily newspaper near Kings Canyon-Sequoia National parks when I heard a rumor that Clinton was coming to town and declaring most the Sierra around us the Giant Sequoia National Monument.
I hunted people down and asked them, and eventually someone cracked and told me.
I broke the story....beating my competition and even the LA Times. I covered the president at the monument even though my boss was trying to give it to his golden boy, but I managed to make him give it to me. I was happier then than I have been in a while.
Except maybe when the Colorado River Aqueduct blew a hole and flooded last week.
The story that made me pissed off and depressed is probably my best work, though. Where I wrote about a 13-year-old girl killed by a stray bullet. I felt that if I didn't make people care that a great little girl died there was no point in writing it.
I covered her life and family and then cried until I fell asleep.
c.
As if this wasn't enough, he insisted that, if I ever started a competing company, he would gladly stop buying from my current employer and take his business my way, even going as far as offering to fund my startup, since he already knows that I can deliver the goods, while our CEO never gave him satisfaction even though his company is our main customer.
This was VERY obvious ass-kissing with hopes of seeing me agree to undercut my current employer by starting a competing company, but still... On a day like this, I cannot help but wanna go into town, grab a few whores and party all night! =)
PS: Other key customers have also repeatedly expressed their satisfaction in dealing with me as their Account Manager, all while venting their frustration at how clueless our CEO appears to be.
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
- helped move the corporate library from 3 scattered offices to one really nice facility; my job was moving the computers, hooking up the CD Readers and dopeing out general system problems. The boss man gave everyone involved a nice $100 bill in a pretty envelope, hand written thanks with mention of specific tasks done. Classy.
- The Man wanted to spend a ton of money on Adobe Acrobat to write PDF files. Spent 60 minutes installing GhostScript on the server and crafting the script/printer/samba share to create PDF docs. 30 minutes reading, 10 installing, 20 explaining the new setup to The Man and the Office Administrator. That was a sweet afternoon.
Display some adaptability.
I've spent many many (far too many) years working as the sole techie in non-technical environments. The non-techies, of course, included all my managers. This sucked: I found that when I did great work, they assumed that what I'd achieved was easy. Even worse was when things didn't go right. The following scenario (with minor variations) occurred over and over and over again:
Me: We've got a major problem here and it's going to take me 40 hours to fix it.
Manager: I don't want you to spend that much time. Do XYZ instead.
(later, after major disaster had occurred)
Manager: You fucked up! Why wasn't this problem taken care of?!?
Me: Hey dude--that was YOUR decision.
Fortunately I was able to document each of these instances, but it still majorly sucks to be put in that position over & over again. (And yes, I'm trying to change that now, but that's another story.)
Anyway, out of all the managers I worked for, only one of them was worth a damn. Immediately after taking over our department, she got rid of about 1/3 of the staff. And even though (truthfully) those were people who needed to go, it was many months before the rest of us stopped looking over our shoulders.
I especially felt vulnerable because I knew full well that she wasn't capable of understanding the difficulty and quality of the work that I was doing. So I went to her and said, "I'm going to keep notes for the next couple of weeks documenting everything I do around here." And for three weeks I did--sure, it was a PITA, but turned out to be one of the best investments of time I'd ever made. When I handed her the list, her jaw literally dropped.
Not only did I not get the shaft, I got a very nice promotion out of the deal.
There ARE some good managers out there--far too few of them to be perfectly honest, but they do exist. I could sure use another one of 'em right now .
Well... I was in the office and this chick, you know, came in smiling. I had a crush on her for quite a while and I think she has too. She was all over me and .... every one knows the rest. We had a great time though.
President Clinton.