What I have been doing, in case you wondered

Hello again

I have not written anything for a while, not really interested discussions about current affairs. Point of fact, I have gotten tired of being in discussions where no matter how rational the discussion is to start, emotions usually flare up. This is usually where the name calling starts.  this is where I am usually accused of either being too soft on the liberal commie bastards, or I am a racist capitalist (these words seem now to be part of the left language as a pejorative conjunction, as in racist capitalist elitist)

So other than a missive about bin Laden’s demise, I have not been here for a while.

Finally, something good to talk about  - My work

Finding myself hired as a manager, I knew I would have people actually reporting to me. What I had forgotten these last 15 years is when I said for them to do something, unlike being a project manager (which was more akin to being a lead worker) my words actually cause things to happen.

What I really am surprised by are a couple of things.

First, I had no idea the management benefits differed so much from the employees. My last job I was a Project Manager, which really was more a consultant/analyst job, and as such was not considered management. And the managers there got treated pretty poorly, so who wants to be one, right?

My new job, a national firm, apparently is one of the companies you never hear about, and won’t from me either. Our disclosure policies are pretty tight, due to the amount of proprietary knowledge our people are given access to. Sufficed to say, aside from a nice office high up near the top of the building, there are other things they do for management…no bonuses, but other things that help. Like 401 matching, or taking out the health insurance cost before taxes…stuff I was unaware they did. Which last payday made me smile for the first pay day in about 3 years…seriously

The other thing is my actual work. My staff is all pretty self-directed, only come to me when they have issues. So I get to go to a lot of meetings. A LOT.

All these meetings are about a big project to update the database system….

I was discussing w my boss the amount of discussion and explaining I was doing in these meetings with others in the group. About my utter disbelief at how either unaware or not current some of the people are with current technologies. He smiled, and said “That’s why we hired you”

Suddenly it clicked…how I had apparently been selected over dozens of other applicants. …all my work experience had fit together in a mosaic they thought gave a good background to someone who could voice concerns about development of a new project that otherwise would be obsolete before it was built. 

Not like I am some IT guru. But I know the technologies are out there to do a lot of what many of these people are terming impossible…simply because they don’t know. And so its my job to educate them, to get them to see beyond what they know to what they would rather have, and let the vendors see if it can be done...

My boss told me some of the big shots have heard of this impertinent woman stirring up things…he seemed to think it was a good