Don't get me wrong, other than the lack of support for me wanting to transition I *really* do like my job for the most part. I'm definitely under-paid for my skill set and what I actually do and even worse under-appreciated, although I suspect that the same could probably said for the vast majority of people who may read this.
The under-paid part I can probably more readily accept than the other two things I mentioned as it is a (very) small company and as such resources tend to be more limited. Now that's not to say I'm happy about it as when I took the job a huge deal was made about "cost of living" where I live at and I accepted that point as it is simply cheaper here than where we are based out of; but the flip side to that is that I feel if you wanted to use that argument when negotiating a starting salary then you should at least ensure a cost of living raise each year which has not happened. In fact I think in seven plus years now I've had three raises. I will temper that by saying I have gotten a bonus in some years as well, which I am grateful for but none of those have equaled what a COL adjustment would have been and since they were bonuses and not raises there is no long term affect.
The two things that gnaw at me the most are the other two, and especially the fact that I do feel under-appreciated. In seven plus years I'm not sure that I've ever heard my boss flat out tell me that I do a good job - and if perhaps I've forgotten one or two then those would be the only one or two in that time. Now, I have heard from people we deal with that he does say I do a good job, but really would it be that hard to tell me himself? I spent a lot of years in hospitality and retail and the majority of that time I was in supervisory roles and this is one thing I prided myself in. When I had subordinates (or on occasion even superiors) do a good/great job I let them know they did and how much I appreciated it. For that matter even if the job wasn't good/great, but simply if the *effort* went "above and beyond" what the expectations were or even perhaps what the persons capabilities were I ensured I let them know just how much I appreciated that effort. It doesn't cost anything other than a few seconds of my time and I know *I* appreciate hearing those things so I have no reason to believe that the vast majority of people don't also appreciate it. Don't get me wrong, when I was in a position to give or even influence reviews/raises I made every effort to take care of those that deserved it (and a lot of times even those that may not deserve it, but simply needed it); but sometimes I wasn't in a position to do that so I at least wanted to express some appreciation/gratitude. I always thought that this kind of thing was important, although I suppose maybe I'm in the minority here - but even if I am shouldn't someone as a supervisor (and/or owner) be cognizant of what motivates their people and do what they can to encourage that? Yes I know some would say that my check should motivate me and it does - and as I've talked about before I give more than I'm compensated for by choice, but if you could do something that wouldn't cost anything but a few seconds of your time and get effort that you really weren't paying anything for why would you not do it? Just boggles my mind.
The other big issue is the transition issue and I think I've adequately covered that before so I won't delve into it very far. But for those that haven't read the early entries here let me simply say that when I broached it, well it did not go well. Instead of the first conversations being with me to see what could be worked out and/or how could this work - those conversations were calls to their lawyers to see their legal standing. This just crushed me to no end as I've bled for this company and to see things go down like that - well words cannot begin to express how I felt. I still bleed for the company and give them far more hours and effort than they pay me for, but these days it may only be 45 or 50 and not the 60, 70, or in some cases 80+ hours it was some weeks before this came up. Considering my interactions with anyone outside of our company are minimal at best (generally only via phone) I still fail to see why it had to be this way. I had even offered to present male for those rare occasions I was going to have to be face to face with somebody (generally once a year on average, although in the last 12 months it's been 4 or 5 times), but that didn't budge them. So I made some less than desirable choices and even had some spirited debate over those choices with my therapist Kelly when it came time to write my letter for my orchiectomy (which I didn't need based upon my choice of surgeons, but I still wanted it) and will probably do so again when it's time to get my SRS letter from not only her but a second one as well. But my families well being was more important to me than taking a stand with work and there is/was some selfishness involved as I do like working remotely; but eventually this will come to a head - hopefully "post SRS", but we'll see.
But none of that is really the reason for this rant, it's actually far simpler than any of those things. It's about "time" and "communication". When we did a "rewrite" of our apps a few years ago I got the installer routines pawned off on me. I knew nothing about how to do that and had to teach myself. I didn't ask to drop several thousand dollars in fees and expenses to go sit in a formal class, I simply asked to get a book and I'd figure it out myself; but even that got screwed up as instead of sending me to get what I thought I needed I got sent an outdated book on the product (InstallShield if it matters) and had to muddle my way through that. I spent lots and lots of hours figuring things out and was able to get installers built; but even then it became a fiasco as while we really have two products, one of them actually has multiple pieces and in the "olden days" a single installer installed all of those pieces. Well for reasons that I still don't know or understand to this day he wanted separate installers built so I went from two installs to four and actually double that as instead of utilizing the ability to have a unified installer to do a full install and/or update he had always done separate installers for updates so now I was at eight. Over time we've added some options to our software and as of now including maintenance packs and now some internal software (which is really what has me on a rant today) - I'm over 20 install routines to stay on top of.
What makes it worse is part of the reason for some many installers is that the people installing our software - and these are NOT end-users, but rather re-sellers that have been trained - cannot follow documentation. The documentation is something that was an initial responsibility of mine and something I take great pride in. I came from a re-seller and one of the selling points when we elected to take on the product that I now document, support, and help develop was it's documentation. I feel I've made it even better than it was and when it comes to installation it is documented step-by-step with screen shots and specific instructions so that literally *anybody* reading this could do it without *any* prior knowledge of the product. I literally spent days and days recently delving into the depths of InstallShield and InstallScript to basically "idiot proof" things because these people simply refuse to read and follow directions. The part that really gets me was the rationale my boss gave for doing this - well the documentation is "x pages" and that's too long. Well hey it's that long because *you told me to do it that way* and if you remove all the screen shots and such it's not really that long; but whatever, I sucked it up, figured it out, and made it happen.
However, even that isn't the crux of what has me agitated, it's what has happened the last two days. We've went to an internal app for licensing purposes which I still foresee being a disaster, but that's neither here nor there. What is the issue is that I have spent two days creating separate installers for the server piece of this licensing app and the client piece (again why do we need separate ones???). We're talking about a *single* server and maybe 3-4 clients total. This app could have been put in place without an installer in perhaps 15 minutes on *all machines total*, but instead I was up until 3am last night finishing it up. To make it worse, despite multiple conversations beforehand, he went and did a couple of things that meant I had to write both pieces first and then start testing and as anybody that works in software development knows there is little worse than multiple things being changed at once when it comes to testing. Since he chose to do that despite what we talked about I had to do both installers first and then start testing which made it far more time consuming to debug the few issues that came up; but hey it was my time not his, so I guess it didn't matter.
Now today my focus was to me updating the other installers for a pending beta release which I started on, and for some pieces that's not a simple update, but recreating from scratch (and yes there is a reason for that, but it's really beyond the scope of this blog entry). So I'm in the middle of that and now he wants me to go back and write update routines for this internal app because he's chosen to make changes to the code 24 hours later. When we discussed this weeks/months ago the intention was that we would not only not have installers for the internal app, but that if we needed to update the code we'd simply manually deploy it. Had if I had known yesterday that he had changed his mind I could have either chosen to create installers that would do both the initial install and the updates; but now it's too late for that as he's installed it on the machines in question so I have no choice but to write two more separate installers to do what he wants. I guess I shouldn't care as I get paid the same regardless of what I work on; but what is going to happen is what always happens - I'll work on this and once it's done he'll start wondering why the other thing(s) aren't done. And I really don't get that as the things I do are all things he has done at one point or another so he should understand, but yet he doesn't seem to and it boggles my mind.
In years past I wouldn't have let things like this bother me and I would have simply turned this into one of those 60/70/80+ hour work weeks to get everything done as he wants. But considering the above mentioned "gripes" I have, I'm hard pressed to sacrifice my personal life (such as it is) anymore. Yes he'll get his 40 hours, and really more like 50+ this week, but why on earth should it be anymore than that? And before somebody says 40 should be enough, it probably should, but I make considerations that I have a *zero commute* and figure for that I can give a little bit of time "off the clock" (although being salary there is no clock per se). But a little bit of time is one thing, a "second work week" is another and I really don't feel that it's appreciated, so the motivation to do something like that any longer is really not there. Maybe I shouldn't have written all of this as I'm sure at some point it's going to come back and bite me in the backside, but I can't help it. I do a good - no great job - and I work long and hard; but at some point there has to be some reason to continue to go "above and beyond" and frankly I can no longer find one where I'm at today which is a real shame. I guess at some point I shall have to "seek life elsewhere", although perhaps that will be a good thing when/if it happens as hopefully I can land at a larger company as I've become disillusioned with small companies. I always had this idea that a small company (especially one this small) should be more like a "family" - and perhaps this is his idea of a "family", but it's not mine and that's a shame. I'd rather put up with large company issues than continue to make the sacrifices to work at a small company and be treated as I have been.
I guess I'll cut this off now, it's probably come off as a self-serving rant and for that I apologize, but I needed to vent a bit and since J is at work this was the best option for that. If anybody has stuck around this far, thanks for indulging my rant. :)
- M
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