[Phoenix-pm] job opening

[Bill Nash]

On Tue, 5 Oct 2004, Scott Walters wrote:

> Hey billn. Always good to see your text. I take it as a compliment that
> you consider my banter worthy of a reply.

You're in a great minority. Most people see me post and go 'dear god, what
now?!' =)

> But that's moot. My real complaint was something I'd rather hint at than say:
> my jobs were banal. Of the dozens of "ecomm" websites I slaved away to
> create under deadline, only one is still online. The other companies folded.

But these aren't *your* fault, as much as they are the property of poor
management of a product fielded by people obviously incapable of wielding
the tools you provided. It's not just you, it happens in more than just
the tech industry.

> However, it all has a happy end: I work on things I consider interesting anyway,
> and I consider a diet rich in ramen a small price to pay for the privilege.

Again, this is as much the product of finding decent managers who can take
what you provide and make things Suck Less(tm). I like the work I do, and
while sometimes things Suck More(tm), it's always entertaining trying to
push them in the other direction. I've been largely lucky, with only a
few past exceptions, in finding managers with the technical ability
to effectively manage technical workers.

There will always be bad managers and crappy executives, and people in
decision making roles who clearly don't belong there. This is a basic
truth of any industry run by humans. Call it Tao, Zen, whatever, once you
accept that it's as inevitable as death, the rest is simply routing around
the fault.

> It's nice to be able to boo the demons of the 8-5 job with my fellow
> Perl Mongers. Re: Darwin, it's true I probably won't have any kids smelling
> bad and not having money, so you're right. I can't argue with that.

I can't say, "Don't let this defeat you," since I've been there. I've been
the burnout victim, broken by bad management and bullshit political
wrangling. While I can't offer a solution, I can say, it gets better. Even
statistically, you can't stay down forever.

- billn