Tall Brad read the article about me on the company e-newsletter today and scoffed at the bit that noted that I always wear a smile so that I'm approachable. If the article had been written by someone else, his scoffing might have been unremarkable. But the article was a bit of personal pimping on my part, so I actually wrote the part about the smile. Brad felt sure that this was then intended as an inside joke for myself, because the only reason I would possibly write about always smiling was because I knew that I was smiling because I had a smart ass comment primed for the recipient of the smile. Hence, always smiling is a joke that references the fact that I'm ready with a joke... Very Shakespearian, and half correct. I do always try to make sure people feel I'm approachable. But I also added the smile bit as the very last line I wrote, even though it was the very first line in the article, because it sounded corny and because people who didn't know me should know that I try to be cheerful, and because people who do know me would know that I was being a bit of smart ass and that there was a bit of me in an article that was primarily about the work I do. Best of all worlds.
Speaking of work, my ex-co-project developer (he moved up, not out) has been stuck in five days of interproject limbo because he was retasked to finish a web service project for my group. I thought it was particularly funny today when he was complaining that the web service wrapper for the SAP functionality he was addressing was problematic because they wrapped bits of the product that were in German, so functions in the WSDL were still in German. It's hard enough working with the code in English.
And finally I think I'd like to apologize for being a bit spotty in my blogging, I'm going sort of 3, 0, 0, or 3, 0,3,0 when I post. Work's been a bit hectic lately, and although it's nothing like the 80-100 hour weeks I was putting in when I had a year with another project not so long ago, those hours were heads down coding - piles of paper in front of me, piles of XML behind me, XSL and Biztalk and Virtual PCs. This time it involves interacting with people, so those extra 10-12 hours are more painful. I like people, but they get in the way of code. Not in the way of creating something useful - you can't do that without user requirements and user needs - but in the way of actually physically sitting down and coding it. I find it difficult to go head down and slip into my own little world of logic only to be rousted out of zone by a cubeside question regarding whether the testing plan has been considered yet. My ex-lead has seen me come to from a few hours of coding when I had to spend a few minutes readjusting to English. To me that's proof positive that flipping back and forth every few minutes is just forcing efficient thought out of the way for both purposes.
2 comments:
"This time it involves interacting with people, so those extra 10-12 hours are more painful. I like people, but they get in the way of code."
This just proves your, greet them with a smile attitude, is phony. You really have some biting commmentary you would like to lay on them, but you would prefer to keep your job.
Being in a lead/mgmt position can really suck sometimes. You'll know it's really bad when you get interrupted 4 TIMES when trying to write a 2 sentence email. Try to keep a thought going with interruptions like that!
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