10:05 a.m. - 2005-01-12
Entry #2 for today
i'm amused in a rather sickening, guilty kind of way right now. i've just realized that the entire ebzone project is pretty much hinging on falling over the edge (i.e. our Corporate CIO, who I sit right next to, is ready to pull the plug on the company that is failing miserably at this project) and somehow or another i've become the key "go to" person and my opinion on the things they're doing and they want is nearly absolute word with them... they "have to" listen to me... so says B (corporate CIO). that's a pretty interesting factoid to me right now... somehow, i've become the utmost authority on what makes sense and doesn't make sense about what they're doing right now.
thankfully i have a capable supporting cast of webservices folks and unix people and such to answer the questions that make no sense to me whatsoever but still... B wants me to say no where we should be saying no and to make sure that they're not doing anything stupid with this code.
admittedly, B's made me feel important lately... it's the one project that i've managed to keep completely close and away from A (my manager) who has just about screwed every relationship i've built over the past three years by not giving me information and allowing other people to work on the DB2 stuff without even asking about standards and such... yeah, i'm pissed about it.
then i was in a meeting the other day for a conversion (access to DB2) and he insisted on being there and kept butting in when the project manager was trying to talk saying that we hadn'tlooked at the docs and yaddah yaddah and i interrupted him to inform him that I had indeed looked at the stuff she was trying to review. I thought about it after and he should have remembered that I had looked at it because I sat down to talk to him about it and that's the whole reason we were even HAVING that meeting.
I've decided that I have needed to split my "relationships" with him up into three categories in order to get through the days... I have my relationship with him on a personal/friend level. At this level he's an alright guy, picks on people far too much but he's usually funny and caring enough. I have a relationship with him on a technical level. In this area I believe he's brilliant. To me, this is where he belongs, doing the technical things that he's an absolute whiz at. Hands down he's got my respect in this category. And then there's my relationship with him as my manager. I have fairly close to zero respect for him in this category because, albeit I probably have high standards, he's failed to do even the tiniest things that I believe a manager should do. I won't get into it though I could probably laundry list about four dozen things/examples of things that he's done to just about drive me out of here but... why? So I can hear myself type? I maintain that employee-boss respect and let it go at that. I just think that this is not his calling and he's killing himself trying to make it work, and he's also killing our team.
my job is my biggest source of misery lately. i'm miserable just being here some days because it's like the shit has piled to the ceiling and you're just left wondering which wall of it you're going to be left looking at.
just to cover my own arse here... please don't think that i'm sitting idlely by complaining about it without doing something about it. i've talked to most everyone here i can think to talk to about trying to remedy the issue but that's gone no where so instead, i've started looking outside of this place for another opportunity. i have a second interview at one place this week and it actually looks pretty good.
this is where the whole guilt part at the beginning fits in. there is an inherent part of me that is undyingly loyal to my job and i feel somewhat like an ass for being responsible for all of these things but knowing that at some point I may find myself putting in my notice and then rushing through all of the things i know with someone who doesn't really have the time or bandwidth to absorb it all in the limited amount of time that we have left together... we're grossly understaffed here with only promises of off-shore resources (yeah because that's working REALLY good for us right now.... NOT!) and those aren't happening fast enough to prevent the major burnout that's beginning to happen even to the best DBAs we've got here.
i don't think I'll ever understand how management doesn't see that happening and can't justify the expense of having people on-site to help out. I am not opposed to outsouring off-shore, I am opposed to outsourcing when there is a definate need for full-time permanent employees in the most demanding location of the company. These off-shore folks are going to be bored to HELL in their day (middle of our night) meanwhile we'll be here every day scrambling to make ends meet and make everyone happy before our end of business day. it's just crap. it doesn't make sense to me in any way, not even financially because if we all burn out and just leave, there's no one left with knowledge of the systems to transfer on to the new people and that will put the company in a precarious position financially and on the business level.
Aren't I on my high horse right now?
This is something that I think I've needed to rant about. Something that I need to get off of my chest but just don't feel that I have the outlet to do so anymore here at CitiStreet. Once upon a time I could talk to my old boss, D, and let him know how I felt about how things were going but lately I find him deflecting my questions and changing the subject a lot. I don't find that a very comforting sign because, quite frankly, he's a straight forward kind of guy and this behavior is atypical. It makes me paranoid about the future of CS or at least the future of the employees located here in Quincy for the company.
I've become a conspiracy theorist while working here. At some points I'm nearly convinced that they're trying to push us out because now we essentially have four people doing the work of eight and that just doesn't work so well. We were once a team, shared info about all of the databases and their associated objects and applications, helped each other out on things daily in the best way we could, and actually spent a fair amount of time laughing and having a good time. Now, no one has time to even finish their work, let alone time to cross-train, share info or, hell, even laugh once in a while. It's just become so barren and it's incredibly sad to me.
Our team is slowly becoming a group of Indian contractors and outsourced resources (and two permanent employees as well) (and I'm not saying anything is particularly wrong with that, it's just a trend I've noticed throughout the entire company) and we are just not relating as well as we used to. We have gone from "DBA team" to "DBAs". I don't know that I'm afraid for my job because of outsourcing in particular. There are plenty of folks who reside in this country that come from india and are equally as brilliant (sometimes very much more so).
I guess there is a part of the arrogant American in me that says "what the hell!? I'm here busting my ass to be at the top of my career too and why is it that someone else is being paid my salary and they're not even from my country?!". I understand the benefits of globalization. I understand the economic benefits of companys outsourcing instead of hiring domestically (in most cases they are paying less for the help on paper statements, but no one seems to look at the reality of the bottom line... at least around here) but at the same time I know that we lose time, we lose accuracy and opportunity to debug faster and more efficiently. We have no way of knowing who's working on what and for how long each day. I know that our code has gotten increasingly buggy since we outsourced the first application. I know that the standards are being bent to accomodate our off-shore counterparts.
I'm a standards czaress... if it's not standard, I'm going to point it out VERY loudly. Standards keep our asses clean, both with all of our people and with the auditors... not to mention the clients and participants that use our products. My goal is to deliver the best product I can to our customers and I don't believe that this can be done by cutting corners.
I'm just pissed. I feel shafted. I feel like I'm being babysat and having things that I've dumped my heart and soul into for three years simply taken away from me because my "manager" doesn't take the time to ask me what my schedule is like and what I think about how certain things should be allocated. No one asks me about standards and thusly I'm left cleaning up everyone else's messes they make when they don't follow the tried and true.
I'm tired of being crapped on. I'm tired of being ignored and I'm incredibly sad that this place has been reduced to this. I believe that this company can be very successful. I don't believe that right now that is being realized because there's just too much going on and not enough people to manage it all... and also, not enough people with time to step back and see what's happening.
I suppose that I need to do some work now. I'm still workign like a dog even though I don't really see myself here for an extended period of time if I can help it.
I miss the DBA team I met when I interviewed here. They were a lot more fun to work with and be around.
I miss the company that I came to work for. Though we've progressed a lot, we've left behind many of the values we so strongly pressed for when I first started.
I miss being a name and not just a number on a timesheet.
Who's to say it will be different anywhere else?
I guess I'll have to wait and see.
