Shouting Into Space

In the little over seven years that I've been employed at my present job, I've had a total of 14 managers. That's nearly one every six months. Each time I got a review from a manager, I was told how exceptionally well I performed and how it would be impossible to do what we do without me (or something to that effect). Typically, this was true.

During my tenure, some managers gave me good bonuses or a raise here and there. Other managers didn't. Some managers were complete assholes or total bitches and others were great people just trying to do right and not lose a limb (or their head) in the process (though a few still did).

Usually, it took about a month or two to train a new manager on where I was, where I'd been, where I was going, and how fast I'd get there. Generally, most managers were only able to deal with one or two of those variables. The more important thing, in their minds, was making sure they looked good to their managers. Somehow they forgot (or never knew) that well cared for, productive employees can make any manager look good to their boss!

In the next month or two, my manager would learn how many little, behind the scenes things I was doing to keep the automated orchestra playing flawlessly. Slowly, they'd understand the necessity of a good SCM engineer and start to put well placed trust in me. Anytime I thought it might be nice to venture out into something different (like development, or project management, or marketing), I'd bring it up with my manager and usually be give "20%" of my time to work on new tasks.

Inevitably, releases come, then patches, coupled with constant tech support to my group of developers, and of course, myriad regular SCM duties. The "20%" of my time dwindles down to an effective 0%!

So, after all this time. I've left my company for another. As I embark on solving a new set of challenges, I'll try to remember the lesson learned from my last seven years of work:

Don't be irreplaceable, if you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.

I'd always thought it would assure the consistent availability of my position were I to make myself irreplacable. Indeed, I spent a considerable amount of energy to ensure it took me to deliver our prodcts. Well, there is no doubt my efforts certainly ensured my position, but the side-effects were so restrictive as to be stunting. I've glad I've broken free of that suffocating situation.

I'll apply what I've learned to my future endeavors.

I don't know how to best use the gifts I've been given...

I know alot of people want to know how to do this. The solution is usually creating a shell script and naming it with the '.command' extension so it'll launch the Terminal.

The cleaner way is through a simple launchd plist placed in your ~/Library/LaunchAgents folder.

Here's my example:

I just picked up some new Oakley M-Frames for use as shooting glasses.

I guess this means I need to start shooting again.

Ammo prices are skyrocketing though since we're in a bad economy and folks on the conservative right are afraid Obama's gonna take their guns away. Libertarians know that people only take your guns away if you let them.

A new horror fiction magazine is out. It's published biannually and contains fiction, poetry, art, and photos of the horror genre.

It's currently available for sale and has gotten some nice comments from readers. Looks pretty good.

The main web site is at necrography.com and there's a blog at blog.necrography.com.

Check it out and buy a couple copies, I think I will - always good to support independent markets...