steve kwan user experience designer

Frustration

(April 7th, 2005 - 8:41PM)

ARGH! Work is stressing me out.

A bit of background: Eloquent has been around for about three decades, which is longer than I've been alive. Obviously, a software company with a track record like that definitely knows how to keep in business. So any young punk like me who decides to come into the company with grandiose visions of change is going to be looked at with a degree of skepticism. The point is, I'm aware that my relative lack of experience, especially compared with the longevity of the company, means that I can't walk in the door and expect my ideas to be accepted immediately.

That being said, I'm thoroughly convinced my boss thinks I won't be able to do my job unless he babysits me.

I'm a big believer in group programming. Before I implement something, I like to talk with the team to see if they have any opinions of my strategy. So this is what I do at work. However, my boss seems to be interpreting this as some sort of weakness. If I pose a question to the team, I'll get comments like, "You don't understand what's going on."

In general, whenever I have to get my boss involved in my work he'll start to micromanage and second-guess my decisions. Worst of all, however, are his snide little implications that I don't know what I'm doing and he is some sort of master.

I'd like to feel that this is far from the truth. The other day, for example, one of our consultants was proposing expansions on our software for generating XML to match a particular DTD. His expansions required massive changes to the structure of our archives software. There was a very problematic area of the proposed design that needed to be addressed. I brought this to my boss' attention, and spent around two days attempting to convince him of the problem. He essentially completely ignored me, and more or less told me that I didn't understand what was going on and how things were supposed to work. The general message was that the consultant was right and I was wrong.

Anyway, I verified with the outside consultant. Turns out I was right. There was a problem in the design. I received no acknowledgement or apology from my boss.

The fact of the matter is that this is the third project I've worked on that has involved this particular XML DTD. My boss, to my knowledge, has no first-hand experience with this DTD. He only knows what people like the outside consultant and myself have told him. So having him second-guess and attack my talent is extremely frustrating and disrespectful. I would expect better.

I graduated with honours from BCIT in one of the most challenging options of one of the most challenging programs they offer. I was then hand-picked out of 700 applicants for a job at MINISIS Inc. I was their number one pick out of the lot. The company experienced a great run while I was on the team. As soon as I joined Eloquent, their several-year decline was reversed and it appears the company may be ready to retrieve some of its former glory.

I am well aware that I'm no genius and there are many engineers out there with far more talent than me. However, I am also confident that I do a good job and contribute well to a team. My track record speaks for itself. As previously mentioned my company is recovering from a several-year decline in which my boss had a hard time keeping a permanent staff. I suppose I'm beginning to see why.

It may seem like a contradiction in terms to simultaneously seek advice from a boss and then complain he is micromanaging you, but the point is I'm just looking for a fresh opinion on my ideas. I'm not looking for directions. And were I looking for directions, that's not a sign of weakness either; it's a sign of understanding the shortcomings of your current strategy.

I know that my boss has been working in this business since before my birth, but all the same, my relatively short track record has been very good. I have no reason to believe that I don't know what is going on, and I certainly don't think that asking for the support of my team in decision-making implies some sort of personal weakness. All I ask is that my co-workers - especially my boss - show me the same respect I show them by allowing me to govern my own projects.

So in the event that some CEO from another company, or my actual boss, is reading this: give employees the freedom to govern their own work. This is a concept Dennis Bakke discusses in his book, Joy at Work - a book that was generally questionable but still raised a few good points.

When I got home, I found that I had misplaced a stack of play discs for Doom 3, Half-Life 2, Far Cry, and perhaps some other games. So in general my day hasn't been great. But I'm looking forward to watching the last episode of the second season of 24 - I have been renting the DVDs from Blockbuster. You're going to have to trust me.