Business Tech: The Offensive

Scheduling delays have made me postpone the second part of my Glass article. When you do a piece on how you developed a new bit of software, it helps if you actually get the time to finish developing the software. Live and learn.

Rage feels good, in the moment. We've all been in that spot, right? Someone does something wildly offensive, or off-handedly creates a ton of work with a careless act, and we find ourselves gleefully wondering if a jury would forgive us for doing what we so much want to do. I think that IT work offers us more than our share of these situations.

Lately, I've been reaping the benefits of not giving in to the impulse. Anyone who knows me knows it isn't my Pollyanna nature making me restrain myself. My reasons come from real experiences in the business and technology sectors. Read along and see if you don't have some similar stories.

Unreasoning Anger

I had a boss, several years back, who left the company on little notice. His replacement — let's call him Sniper — just seemed to dislike me. It came out in small ways at first. My project list seemed to be growing a bit faster than usual. Some meetings suddenly didn't include me. Certain people were hired without my involvement, even though I traditionally did all of the department's tech interviews. Nothing big, at first, just unsettling.

It gradually grew into a job-threatening level of pain. I wasn't being heard on topics where I had years of experience. My actions were undergoing new scrutiny even though I'd given him no cause. I wracked my brain trying to figure out what I had done to set him off.

After I left the company — not for that reason — I got called by Sniper to do a quick consulting project. You could have knocked me over with a feather after I got that call.

As I'm finishing up, he waves me into his office and closes the door. Turns out, he liked me when we first met. However, there was a person who felt threatened by our getting along. So, Scaredy Cat started whispering lies to Sniper about me. Once I was gone, the Scaredy Cat dropped the act, and suddenly the light dawned. It was too late to spare me the pain I went through, but at least we cleared the air and parted as friends.

Years later, I had the same sort situation in a different company. Oddly, the new Sniper — not a boss, but a coworker this time — had the same real first name as the original. Having already experienced this once, I recognized the situation rather quickly. I finally managed to help the new Sniper steer clear of his Whisperer.

Result: I had someone watching my back on a recent project instead of having a Sniper behind me. Second bonus: When the new Whisperer saw us working together and realized nothing bad came of it, Whisperer stopped having an issue with me.

You Know What Your Problem Is…

I just finished a project with a very big team. One guy seemed to specialize in publicly complaining to me about me. Because I didn't take the bait, other people on the team found themselves defending me. It turned into a wonderful bonding exercise. The funny thing is, so long as it didn't hurt morale, I wasn't offended. His jabs made me examine my actions. I did things more consciously because he became my personal Jiminy Cricket. Like in the previous example, I got a learning opportunity, instead of the five minutes of pleasure that rage might have provided.

And, to be fair, some of his points were valid. I genuinely think I'm better for the experience. Best of all, now that it's over, I've caught him saying nice things about me in public. Besides, I got even with him — he's the only example who didn't rate a nickname in this article.

Hindenburg

To give you the other side of the coin, I recently had someone help me for the wrong reasons. I'm doing this project and I get a volunteer — let's call him Happy — who starts putting in time with us. Happy is just that: a guy who is always smiling. Easy to work with; just plain friendly. As we neared the deadline and it was clear we were going to finish on time and on budget, Happy tells me why he's been helping and why he's been smiling.

It seems, when he heard the scope and scale of the project, he decided that it was going to and, I quote, "blow up like the Hindenburg." Happy just wanted a front row seat for the fireworks. He started out smiling in anticipation of the train wreck. He finished up with a smile because he had accidentally attached himself to a successful project. I don't know how to break it to him, but his help was a small part of why it didn't fail.

I'll leave you to draw your own lessons from that.

Is That an Apple? No, a Lemon

I bought a bad PC. It has happened to many of us. We buy a lot of equipment and sometimes things that should not have passed QA end up on a store shelf . So far, I have spent over fifty hours on the phone with tech support.

Did I finally lose my cool when they asked me to do the same steps which crashed my computer the last time? Did I yell at the guy who started the call with, "I assure you I can help you," and ended it with, "You can speak to my supervisor but it won't do you any good?"

Let's just say… nobody's perfect.

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Nov/Dec 2013