Work rant (work)

[elainegrey]

The stress at work is in two parts: product and governance.

Tuesday the product piece stressed me because i felt the product partner in the project is throwing product *and* tech work at me. The analyst is at deer in the the headlights stage. I know i am valued etc etc but i don't want the whole bleeping weight of bleeping millions of dollars of work for i don't know bleeping at all whether there's a bleeping product there.

Yesterday i talked to my manager about this, and they were all about going up the chain and complaining about the product side being weak. I will instead confront my product colleague about it (woo, butterflies and pinwheels is how that makes me feel, she says sarcastically, with an overhead big dark cloud with lightning bolts headed everywhere), and maybe give my executive director a heads up.

Gah, "you are a senior leader in the company," my manager says. This is true, although, one, it feels simply like a matter of attrition and field promotions, and two, OMG the meeting last week where i was being treated like the delphic oracle "oh great wise one". Yeeechhh. Also, i got here by attrition, don't you recall all the exec architects being fired. Yes, we all remember the swift breeze as the ax chopped the staff right above us, yes we do.

On the other side of the coin i feel like a meddler as i poke people who are doing process and tell them they should (that's an RFC2119 SHOULD) be careful about [redacted]. That's too much work, so after talking to my exec director, i am talking to the new legal counsel and the head of compliance who has been promoted to head of security to say, look [redacted]. Note that my tendency is to list a gazillion details (which i now know is bleeping ADHD tendency that neurotypicals don't enjoy especially when they are C suite adjacent and need to keep things CRISP. Gah, "crisp."

I am going through a realization that i communicate as a firehose and, really, people don't retain in that context. I spent a month going over an architecture -- three months, actually, off and on -- and telling lead engineer of team A ,"[firehose + you will need to make a call to API B to get data Y]." Two weeks ago i was out one bleeping day, and i come back to find team B in an uproar because lead engineer of team A realized there was a missing requirement that team B needed to supply and panic and it turns out he needed to get data Y. He couldn't articulate to team B clearly "data Y" so i did that, they're "Like, that's the point of API B, WTF buttercup?!" and i'm "Like, i know, i said before, i will go explain again."

(See way too much detail.)

But the huge anvil of enlightenment has smashed my brain: i realize i need to really go slow and people are not retaining all the detail at all. In the compliance story, my self-appointed sidekick echoes back my explanations when presenting broader status, and i want to scream about all the little bits that Are Not Precisely Right, and i am learning to let my fingernails dig into my skin and agree. And then nudge.

The good news is the product meeting where i just knew it would happen so i was prepared -- yup, product owner says, "Well, this is Elaine's meeting," and the product analyst puts the slides up, and every man is in the room and i am a tiny image and disembodied voice so when discussion happens they all turn to each other. But i was prepared and was crisp-ish. Yay me. I made it all human understandable. (My manager says people, presumably our past director, but our little division of architects has been promoted, were impressed i spoke human). Look, i want the bleeping product person to understand what they are bleeping proposing so they own the million bleeping dollar thing.

ugh

Comments

[amaebi]

Wow, this all sounds so hard.

May there be space enough and time enough for you and for each member of the team-- a hard tsk when the team have such different strides and paces!

[sonia]

Sympathy! Yay for a communication realization and I hope the confrontation and various meetings go as smoothly as possible. Best outcome!!

RFC?

[dewline]

I didn't know this existed.

Re: RFC?

[elainegrey]

The particular RFC for the language? Or the deep trove of specifications that underlie how the internet works?

The RFCs are useful and some are humorous and some are both. RFC 2410 is both.

If you want to learn more I am happy to help. When I started reading them it was a struggle.

Re: RFC?

[dewline]

The specific acronym. Depending on what kind of job I end up doing next - if I ever work again! - this new bit of tech history is something I may have stumbled into learning at the right moment to survive with.

[weofodthignen]

Ugh indeed. You are clearly doing great work, including proactively adjusting to people's difficulties with understanding. I'm glad your boss appreciates that. I hope it goesmore smoothly from here on.