Sunday, February 13, 2011

On being sacked but employed

Firstly, don't worry - I'm not demoted, or in any way in danger of losing my job. It's not like that. So now that you aren't worried, here's a little something about what's going on in my work life.

For the last 10 months, I've been working on a major project for the company. I could see that it needed to be done, it was on the periphery of one of my areas of responsibility, and it looked challenging. So I started asking questions and doing things to move it along, and soon found that it was "my project". I worked with a lot of people on 3 continents to get the project going. Some had expertise, some had logistical responsibilities, some had oversight of one aspect or another and had to buy off on technical decisions. I was genuinely busy and doing something important for the company.

During most of these 10 months, I was doing my "day job" for a couple hours a day, and spending the rest of my time on this project. Since September, I've been on the project 40-70 hrs per week, averaging about 60 hrs per week for that period. It's been busy. I haven't been able to help out at home like I like to, volunteer at the kids' school like I like to, or have any hobbies at all, actually. Even the men's group I sing with fell down the priority list. And forget about going on a date with my wife.

So in January, the time came to execute on the things I'd been preparing for since last April. We had answered the technical questions, prepared the documentation, completed training, identified and acquired the tools needed for the job, and now it was simply a matter of manpower. How quickly could we get the job done? We thought we had a good schedule, but it turned out to be inaccurate. 2 weeks ago, it become apparent that the job took a lot more manpower than I had planned. So the schedule slipped. Badly.

And my boss came to town, pulled me into a conference room, and told me I was no longer the project manager. My review would suffer, but that's all. I still had a place at the company, I just would get to focus on my day job more. Somebody new would be the project manager.

So - I lose the prestige and visibility of running the project, but I no longer have to work 70 hrs a week. And there's no change in pay. Hmm. Not so bad. On the one hand, the thing I want most in my workplace is to feel like I'm making a positive difference. And I was doing that. I made a mistake, sure, but I had made a lot of good decisions beforehand. And I was not going to be able to walk away from the project. I was too invested in it, and knew too much about it to simply hand it over. So I'm now a major support person for the project - I monitor what's going on, take care of a small subset of tasks as my specific responsibility, ask questions if they need to be asked, and answer questions when I am asked. It's still a full time job for me, and it's not all sunshine and roses for the new project manager, but I'm no longer nauseous with worry. It's no longer my problem.

It's an odd place - I'm very disappointed in how it worked out. I think that given what I knew at the time, I made a reasonable set of assumptions. I did due diligence to check those assumptions, but no one who could have improved them gave me any feedback in time to affect the outcome. At the same time, despite the disappointment, I got to go hiking with Liberty instead of working on Saturday. And I can sleep well. All in all, I'd have rather had both worlds, but given my new set of realities, it's certainly not all bad. Lemonade from lemons.

I learned some very important things about myself and my work world from the experience. Not appropriate for this forum, but important for me and my future.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Book Review: Son of a Witch

The sequel to Wicked is not its equal. Neither as imaginative nor as gripping, it is nevertheless an excellent reading experience.

Either Mr Maguire had a singularly lonely existence, or he chooses to make his protagonists exceedingly lonely. Liir, the protagonist in this book, is monumentally a loner. More so than his mother ever was. Part of this is his personal feeling of separation - never knowing who his mother was, growing up without any real friends in a mountain castle. Who wouldn't feel out of place in the Emerald City if they grew up in such a solitary situation? But part of it (and this is the best part about the book) is Liir's very conscious self dialog about his own nature. Is he a success? A failure? An obedient servant of the Empire and thus not accountable for what the Empire requires of him? A murderer of children? A magician? Is he even whole?

In a very opposite way to most of the mass-market fiction I read, Liir is very humanly messy. He does not come forth out of the author's head fully formed, a la Zeus or Harry Potter. He's a mess. And it takes him the entire book to get a handle on where to even start with defining who he is.

The book moves along pretty well. Maguire is not bound to put a certain amount of chronological time into a certain amount of pages. There are minutes that take a page, and 9 months that take 20 pages. He slows the book down when the action requires it. Takes some getting used to, but it's very pleasant. And Liir, overall, is a likable character. I wish the best for him, and feel for his background that leaves him so poorly prepared for life among other humans.

The book has 2 major flaws in my mind. One is my puritanism coming through: sex in these books is casual in every sense of the word. Commitment and sex do not go together, fidelity is not something any character strives for. If a spouse is faithful, it's simply by chance. This is not the way the world really works, is it? I don't think it is. But why Maguire chooses to separate commitment from sex is beyond me. I think it's an affectation of this type of fiction, and it saddens me. The other major flaw is that key plot elements just seem contrived. Princess Nastoya knows that Liir can help her, but how he ends up doing it is flagrantly contrived and completely unnatural. "It's the end of the book, and I have to have Liir help her, how can I do that in 5 pages?" Frankly, the whole Nastoya subplot was poorly executed. But this idea of fate pulling the strings and characters unknowingly doing what fate has decreed for them robs the characters of some of their nobility.

A good book, one which makes one think. And that's good, because you then have to sift out the moral issues from the writing issues, and come to a better understanding of the piece as a whole.
Now I need to check out the 3rd installment and complete the series. Time to see what the Thropp 5th Descending will do.