Sleep Interrupted

Last week I got promoted — I now have the lofty title of Development Manager. Previously my job title included Team Lead but now I no longer lead, I manage. I have stepped over the line from doing into getting other people to do.

In practice, as our company has a “managers who can also do / lead from the front” ethos in R&D, this is more a change of rank than anything but I can’t deny one fact: For the first time there are people who report to me on the organisation chart. Wish me luck!

Back before Christmas I had a conversation with Richard about job titles. I released during that conversation that the grammatical form of jobs titles indicates a lot about their relative position within an organisation.

Let’s say you work at Balloon Corp (who changed their name to Xeloflex in 1999 but changed it back again in 2002 when they realised nobody knew what they did any more). You start at the bottom where there are lots of people doing things, so there are lots of agent noun job descriptions like Balloon Engineer, Balloon Analyst and Balloon Administrator. Of course there are lots of people who’ve been with the company a long time, so you also have Senior Balloon Whatever so that you promote them and get away with smaller pay rises.

Going up a level, the managers naturally adopt the title Balloon Manager but what about their managers? Here, for the first time, we see the principle I call Job Title Reversal: Manager of Balloons. That little “of” makes all the difference. In addition, the pluralisation makes you sound busier.

Now, if you have many layers of management there are several independent means of increasing the job title pool. Firstly, for those who do less doing and more managing you can swap Manager for Director. See how strategic Balloon Director sounds? US companies will generally have a “VP” level too: Vice President, Balloons.

Secondly, you can add geographical adjectives, such as European Balloon Manager or Global Balloon Manager. This really expresses the scale of the job.

Thirdly, you can cover more than one area of the organisation, for instance Balloon and Pump Manager. The person with this job must be really busy!

All of the above can be combined, as in European Balloon and Pump Director. Furthermore, our old friend JRT can still be employed, even at this heady level: Global Director of Balloons and Pumps.

There is a subtle twist on JRT. You can replace “of” with “for”, which leaves you with a more strategic, caring title such as Director for Balloons.

Finally, as you approach the very top of the organisation, job titles collapse back on themselves in the same way that Queen outranks First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff. In our example, we are left with Chief Balloon Officer.

I was halfway through this conversation and we were commenting what a load of bollocks it all was when Richard remembered he had an “of” in his job title. D’oh!

And so, with the arrival of autumn I catch a cold. I’ve spent most of the day with my head wrapped in cotton wool while I attempt to navigate the usual comedy of errors at work. I’m having a wee dram o’ the ol’ 12 year Highland Park for medicinal purposes.

Despite operating with a mental handicap of about 17 today I managed to save the day at least once with a reasonably high level of hackery. I like to think I’ve just about attained the level of tech “hero” at work now, although I’m a little way short of my boss, who is a most persistent and cunning individual.

I think I’ve been fortunate with my bosses over the years because I feel I’ve learned things from each one. Perhaps the most valuable lesson I’ve learned — and continue to learn — is to judge what is worth spending time on and what is not. Tonight, through the mental fog, this finally tuned capability is telling me I should spend more time enjoying my whisky and less time sitting in front of a damn computer. Good night!

I have to agree with James: Travelling for work sucks. Not that Louise believes me but it loses its appeal very quickly. Every hotel room is the same, it can be lonely, you miss your family, you get tired and it plays havoc with your carbon emissions.

Ever feel you’re losing the battle against entropy and chaos? Well, it’s certainly feeling that way around here at the moment. My boss is on leave at work, right when an important client is making a tricky hardware transition, leaving me to do the tidying up. Then I get roped into a sales meeting in the US, so I’m going to be away from home for two days, which will no doubt mess up my body clock nicely.

And at home? Well, the hard drive finally broke so I had to rebuild the PC, which was actually quite painless — thanks Ubuntu! Then the kids managed to break our bed this week by jumping on it too enthusiastically, meaning the mattress is on the floor until the replacement arrives next Tuesday, when, of course, I’m in the US and unable to put it together for Louise.

So, I may be losing the war at the moment but there’s one battle I can win: With some help from the Google Reader Widget for WordPress I’ve added the contents of my news feed to the right-hand side of the blog. Sweet. Hope you find the links interesting.

Also making an attempt for the most categories for a single post here.

My new job requires me to attend a ten-day training course in New Jersey, so that’s where I’m at right now. I’m slightly bemused that a meeting, a phone call and a dozen emails can see me in a new job and on a different continent. Jet-lag is preventing me from being more… wordful… at this point but I thought I should at least check in.

Back when I wrote that I wanted to get a new job this year, I was guilty of using a little dramatic license — I had already accepted a job offer, I just didn’t want to make it public until the contracts were signed. Certainly I was planning on getting a new job before this particular opportunity came up, so the goal was real enough.

This means my five-and-a-half year tenure at Anite comes to an end in three weeks and a week later I start something new and interesting at Medidata. The job at Anite represented stability during the time our little family was growing, so from that perspective it was good. I can’t help feeling a little institutionalised, though, but now also relieved; such a long time on a single project was starting to weigh heavy on my shoulders.

I start my new position with a week long training course in US, New Jersey, certainly more glamorous sounding than anything I’ve done to date for work. This, of course, means that Louise will be caring for Ben and Jessica on her own for this time. This might not sound like something to be concerned about if you’ve not looked after two small children on your own but I can tell you that having some backup is worth a lot.

Anyway… interesting times!

On the principle that it’s who you know not what you know, I’ve decided to get all connected up with people on LinkedIn. If you know me, work in IT and are already signed up at the aforementioned site, you can expect a nagging invitation from yours truly. Some of you non-signed-up people might get unlucky too.

The whole family went to Tim & Kathy’s engagement party this weekend and we all had a great time. The kids were well behaved and there were quite a few folks there who we hadn’t seen in some time. In the evening Louise held the fort and I went back. I was then party to an impromptu whiskey tasting lesson. Mmmm! Must get me one of those whiskey guide books.

Every time I meet up with old friends I end up reflecting on my current situation, due to the standard “so what are you up to?” questions that crop up. I had to laugh (somewhat explosively, sorry) when Dave put a twist on it saying, “so I suppose you’re in a management position now…?”. Yeah, right… err… no.

Compared to some other friends, in many visible ways, the progress of my professional life has turned to molasses. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a challenging job that’s paid relatively well and I have learnt, well, everything I know about (stupidly) large scale software development while there. But… I’m still doing much the same job with the same responsibilities I was doing 5 years ago when I started at the company. Worse, my raw technical skills have not moved on at all.

Of course, having a steady job with good hours has suited me very well since Ben and Jess turned up. I don’t think I want to commit to doing more work, so perhaps I should just shut up and get on with my comfortable suburban family life. But… again with the but… it doesn’t stop me from feeling a bit left behind. Like being the last one to be picked for the football team at school (but that’s a whole other post).

Now, this is not some revelation I’ve had over the weekend. Much of the past year I’ve been broadening my knowledge and I’ve just started re-tooling my brain with a 1000 page book on C# and .NET. I’m not having a whinge here; I’m more the “so how do we fix this?” kind of guy. So, what am I saying? I don’t know, this is a blog goddamit! I don’t need to know anything!

Okay, I do know. Oh Magic Internet, please conjure up a job that pays more with lower hours. There, I said it, come mock me, arseholes.

Navel gazing aside, the party was great. I got to catch up with folks and started to have an interesting coversation with Tim on environmentalism. I was getting tired, though, and sort of petered out and couldn’t argue my (slightly confused) side, especially when posited with hard questions like “why does it matter if species die out due to climate change?”. Species aside, I would direct people to a post by Gervase Markam on carbon offsetting. Or not, the link is down at the time of writing. Interesting are his rebuttals to the comments; some of the links I will have to follow. (Whoops, almost slipped into Yodaspeak there.)