Having just switched jobs, I’ve been spending a fair amount of time reflecting on my 39 year career which is pushing the 23 mile mark of this marathon, aka “the wall.” I’ve been thinking about the highs and the lows, jobs I liked best, the ones I thrived in, the ones I didn’t. More importantly, why?
I’ve been fortunate to work in the so called “high tech” industry at several companies that had decent pay, benefits, advancement opportunities, awesome co-workers and challenging assignments. I don’t have too many complaints. But after this much time and having been around the block on this bicycle more than a few times, I know very well what works for me and what doesn’t.
Just to give you the basic history, it’s been:
- 12 years at Boeing, mostly as an engineer specializing in Flight Controls software
- 1.5 years at a Dutch Company (Oce´ Oregon) developing printer software
- 18 years at Tektronix/Xerox, 3 as a Tools Engineer and 15 as a Manager of a Tools group (Printer division)
- 7 years at Cambia Healthcare doing Build/Release work, then AWS Cloud DevOps work (Healthcare websites / middleware)
- 2 weeks at ComScore, a media measurement company doing AWS Cloud DevOps
So the industry exposure has encompassed aerospace, printers, healthcare and now media measurement. Definitely some interesting assignments along the way.
It’s fairly standard – and I’ve always had – exempt” status at every place I’ve worked. What that really means is that you can be required to work 60 hours and they only have to pay you for 40. But it also comes with some flexibility that non exempt employees don’t normally get like flex time and (occasionally) comp time.
The thing about exempt status is that you have to be mindful about work-life balance or else the next thing you know, you’re living the job. It can take over your life and not in a healthy way. Having said that it’s fairly standard for people in the business I’m in to work 44+ hours just to show you’re putting in a little extra and not a slacker.
Dr. Katz and Uncertainty
One of the best classes I ever took as an employee of Tektronix was an all day off-site taught by Dr. Ralph Katz based on a book he had just written: The Human Side of Managing Technological Innovation.
A couple of the main points from the class had to do with managing uncertainty with your direct reports, and additionally how positive feedback can be a strong motivator. Even the little things that amount to positive feedback. This is backed by data from survey after survey.
Since taking the class I’ve been pretty mindful of management’s ratio of carrot vs. stick. Dr. Katz went into great detail about successful projects where the leadership had great motivators. That seems to happen when they can get the employees to buy in to mission and get everyone rowing in the same direction. When I was in management I tried to keep these points in mind.
Regarding Katz’s emphasis on managing uncertainty, his main point was that uncertainty was bad. People perform at peak levels when they know what’s ahead. When you’re in an environment where the company is downsizing and you don’t know if you’re going to be getting a pink slip in the next round of layoffs, it’s hard to be at your highest productivity level.
The thing is, without exception, every company I’ve worked for had downsizing. Boeing went from 80,000 employees in 1980 to 56,000 employees in 1986. There had to have been at least 2 rounds of layoffs per year there. Oce’ shut down after a year and a half and the whole team took severance packages. Tektronix and Xerox had some strong runs of hiring in the 1990’s, but also several years of painful downsizing. From 2000-2012 it seemed like a slow, steady leak until the dam finally burst. Cambia has had a few rounds of RIFs over the years. Normally pretty small in size, but still, it’s not like the old days when Ward Cleaver used to grab his briefcase, go off to work and pretty much work at the same job for 40 years and never worry about it.
The biggest failing I see in companies right now is that they spend exorbitant amounts of energy explaining “The Company Strategy” because they think that’s a path to get employees’ buy-in to the plan and be productive. In most cases it’s a huge waste of time. The reason is because once a company goes beyond about 3 layers of management, I have a harder time relating to the top level strategy issues. Those aren’t my day to day problems. The issues in my sphere of influence are very different. The honest truth is, I really don’t care about the company strategy. Maybe I should, but I don’t. When there’s a company meeting at the VP level or beyond, and the Sr. Management Team is talking strategy, people aren’t thinking about questioning it. What they are thinking is, this all sounds great, but… will there be more layoffs? Do I get to keep my house? That’s the uncertainty that’s not managed.
I realize they cannot call out a guarantee to everyone that they will have a job next month. Very likely they don’t even know that. But when the layoff cloud is hanging over the campus, 75% of the people who are fretting about getting pink slipped don’t need to be fretting. And management could address this but they choose not to.
What works
Empowerment
I don’t care if the job is in high tech or not, people normally don’t like to be micromanaged. I especially don’t. I’ve had some great managers who got this and I feel like I’ve done some of my best work when left alone for week(s) at a time to go develop something and then deliver it by whatever the deadline is. I don’t mind intermediate check ins every week or couple of weeks, but basically give me a task and the get out of my way and let me go do it. Don’t treat me like if left alone, the project for sure will get screwed up.
The product matters
Aerospace had its downside at times but for sure the systems I worked on were interesting. Flight Controls especially. I can’t get on an airplane anymore without thinking about what all is going on with the black boxes that control the wing surfaces, the hydraulics, the fail-over systems which are dual and triple redundant, the fault reporting. All of it. I found it fascinating. I also found printers and printer interpreters to be fairly interesting. The architecture isn’t rocket science, but it’s very complex in many ways to get those dots of ink to find the right spot on a piece of moving paper. Conversely I have to say, I did not find healthcare the least bit interesting. I never completely understood why we had scores of development teams and the only website I was keenly aware of was regence.com. Come to find out there’s a ton of big data processing and you have to have sites for providers and customers, etc. It’s extremely complex for sure. I never took the time to really understand the business because I found it boring. Like, really boring. I think the product does matter.
Once the engineering work was completed on the 767, Boeing held a “first flight” event at Paine Field in Everett. When you get to watch your product take off on a flight for the first time, there’s a lot of pride in that. (As a side note, the landing gear never retracted on first flight — oops. Other than that, it went well).
Work life balance
I’ve always been willing to put in extra hours .. to a point. This is just Health 101. I’ve never worked at one of the really cutthroat places where it’s so competitive that practically every is putting in 60+ hours per week (Amazon, Microsoft, Google come to mind), but my sense of humor about extra hours goes south if it becomes expected behavior. Sure, give me a project and a deadline. I’ll get you there. But if it’s a short stroke deadline don’t expect that I’m going to pull a rabbit out of my ass every time to meet your unrealistic deadline. Stuff happens in business, sure. Sometimes you gotta do it. But not every time.
A Collaborative Work Environment
I’ve never been tempted to work at these startups where they put ping-pong tables everywhere and it’s hard to tell the difference between work and a country club. Most of those places were short-lived. I’m not there to play games, I’m there to work. But I do really think it’s important to have a highly collaborative work environment. Come to think of it, all of the companies I’ve worked have had this. Some better than others, but overall I’ve worked with some exceptional engineers and learned a ton, and in most cases people have been very agreeable about mentoring new starts and helping others outside of their normal area of responsibility.
Positive Strokes
I’ve had a few situations where the sign that says “The beatings will continue until morale improves” rang a little too true. I understand about accountability, but you have to balance that with positive strokes too or else it gets to be an emotional drain.
What doesn’t work
Micromanagement
The opposite of empowerment, the micromanager feels like he/she needs to be in on all the details of what I’m working on and wants a daily status. I’ve even had multiple status checks within the same day. The problem is, there’s a psychological aspect to this. Micromanagement has the opposite effect on my productivity that they are after. When I’m empowered, I work extra because I take pride in delivering. They get extra hours from my exempt status. If the manager is checking in on me every 15 minutes then at 5 o’clock I go log off. I’m done!
Meetings and Interruptions
Most jobs I’ve had I found myself splitting time between helping users and doing development work. I enjoy both but the latter requires blocks of uninterrupted time. Don’t talk to me out of one side of your mouth and tell me how important the project is and then schedule me for an endless list of bullshit meetings that I’m not needed in. Your job is to make sure I get those blocks of uninterrupted time and if you screw that up, chances are your deadline is in jeopardy. Project work takes concentration. Many times it requires deep thought. It’s frustrating to get started on your project and get your mind settled into deep thought only to be pinged unnecessarily for that TPS report. Okay, here’s your TPS report, but now it’s going to take me 20 minutes to get back to where I was. I’ve lost all my shells. Some have timed out and had aliases defined. I have to encounter all the overhead it took me to get to where I was before I was so rudely interrupted. Not cool.
Extreme Multi Tasking
Every job I’ve had has required some level of multi tasking. It’s pretty much a given. It’d be great to be on a project and work only on that project, but it’s rarely the case. But here’s the bottom line. I can either do 3 things for you and do them pretty well, or I can take on 10 things and do them all poorly. That is just a fact. You decide. So think carefully about putting me on that extra project for “political reasons — to take their excuses away” and consequently add 4 extra meetings a week to my calendar.
The Leash is too Short
Another way of describing the dreaded “on-call” assignment. I hate on-call. Hate it. I understand why a business can sometimes require it, but that doesn’t make me deal with it any better. Having to always worry about where your phone is 24/7 in case someone might call with an urgent issue really blows chips. If you accidentally leave your phone in the kitchen and go outside and mow the lawn and then realize you’ve been away from it for a 1/2 hour — that’s a little concerning because they keep track if you’ve responded in the 15 minute required time frame. There’s additional stress about keeping the phone charged at all times and the ring volume high enough for fear of missing a call. There are potential career consequences for missing a call. What if I’m grocery shopping, have a cart half full and the phone rings from work? Plan on leaving the cart where it is and heading home. When planning your social calendar, figured on keeping all meaningful events off of it for that week.
I found it nerve racking, annoying, and no way to live if there are choices out there.
The Bottom Line
Life is short. I have some friends I play Fantasy Baseball with and a few of them work in sports related jobs. One of them is a ticket coordinator for Oregon State and gets to travel with the sports teams. I remember when he came back after 14 days in Omaha. OSU’s baseball team had just won its third College World Series, which was a real nail biter as I recall from watching it on TV. His quote was “I’ll take life experiences over money EVERY TIME!” He’s right.
