Thus far I haven’t really indulged myself on this new blog. Tonight that changes. The content that I have already posted has basically been a slightly less PC version of content I once posted on my actual blog (now redacted so that I can appear sane and employable) back when that was a semi-functional entity of concern. Tonight I’m going to say a whole mess of shit that would basically amount to career suicide if I posted it on a medium that could be easily traced back to my actual identity.
There won’t be any headers or sections here. This is an essay. The purpose of which for me to give you my dear reader, assuming any of you actually exist, which you probably don’t, a feel for the pain that preoccupies my soul and a taste of the venom that runs through my veins. My therapist says that although there is no technical definition in the DSM regarding burnout, that’s basically what her diagnosis amounts to.
I’m seeing her because of my anger. As she has told me and I now understand, that anger basically spawns from some deep seated depression. This diagnosis is apt because I am a very angry person and I have a lot of good reasons catalogued which give me the leeway I need to keep being angry.
Everyday when I watch the news I find a new reason to get angry. Either the United States (my country) has taken another tepid step down the road towards autocratic fascism or my employer has created another insane set of circumstances that compel me to work against myself much like a so-called Chinese Finger Trap would, only in this particular situation the stakes are quite a bit higher. If I don’t comply, I can’t feed my family. My sense of logic and reason begs me everyday to stop complying.
Today was one of those days. Each week the insanity at my job escalates to some new previously unknown level. They are attempting to build their own MRP system despite the fact nobody there has a single fucking clue how to execute much less competently manage a manufacturing operation. We make money in spite of this mostly because we’ve carved out a niche among luxury buyers who have been gifted with more money than brains.
Oh I can practically hear your heart palpitations from here dear reader. Hang on, cause that’s just the opening act in this tragedy of a post. Long story short: My current employer is the least of my problems. I am a problem and I don’t know how to solve it.
Well that’s some shit, because I’m a software developer (fuck engineer, nobody in this field actually engineers shit except a few scientists and mathematicians) and its my job to solve problems. Only problem is that I’m running out of gas for doing that. After 25 years of slinging code professionally my hottest take is that most clients are the source of their own problems. This is mostly a result of their inflexibility. Funnily enough, I have the same problem.
Yes I’m inflexible. Every day I wake up I become just a tiny bit more inflexible. I’ve been doing this long enough that I know what it takes to build successful custom software for a client. The only way to do it is for the client to adopt a stance that both the process and the software you build for it have to be customized to best accommodate one another. It can be no other way. If you want to do it another way, you will surely fail.
Whereas that once used to be an idea I had, it’s now become a core tenet and every time I’m asked to do something that flies in the face of it puts me one day closer to saying “fuck this shit”. My current job has been asking me to do that over a year now and it’s gotten worse and worse each time. Today was almost too much.
The worst part is that they are nice people. The fact that they are so horribly misguided so as to spend hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars building a custom software solution that will end up addressing none of the core issues that need to be resolved doesn’t change that. They leave me out and give me as little information as possible to work with, but even now I don’t believe that they do this out of malice. No I believe they do it because they are hopelessly clueless and insanely overwhelmed.
As a knowledge worker, knowledge is the only asset I have. Understanding is the lever that I attach to the fulcrum of knowledge which enables me to produce the wondrous results that keep me employed. If you deny me one or both, my ability to do my job is highly curtailed.
So where am I failing? I am inflexible. I can’t learn to work another way. Like a touchy Orchid I need a specific set of environmental conditions to thrive and the current ones don’t make the grade. But this means that I am not adaptable. And the less adaptable I become, the less useful I am. The less useful I am, the less I am worth.
And so it goes.
No matter how this story ends, it is clear to me that the end of my career is within sight. I don’t want to become the thing the market is begging me to be. I don’t want to be a believer in bullshit. I don’t want to be a believer in magic. I want to wield the power of technology while being fully in control of it. One of my famous adages that I cling to is, “If you don’t understand a thing, you can’t control a thing.”
That has never been more true than today. Yet my refusal to simply give in and produce sub-standard shit while receiving a healthy dose of compensation basically makes me a cunt. I long for some sort of mythological unicorn position in which my expertise is utilized effectively and the resounding change produced by the impact of that work will be felt and appreciated far and wide.
This is a lie. I have been lying to myself in the worst sort of way. That position almost certainly doesn’t exist and my instinct to make every position into that ideal basically poisons the pool no matter where I land. I need to find a way to channel that urge in some productive manner without poisoning my ability to tolerate imperfection, regardless of how much.
I don’t honestly know if I am capable of doing that. With each passing day I’m getting a bit older and a bit more tired of the bullshit. I’m worn out. I’m tired of pulling doves out of the proverbial hat. I’m tired of people doing shitty work and then tossing me the mess after they work themselves into a dead end and expecting me to magically rescue them.
I’m also tired of feeling this way, but most of all I’m tired of being me. I think I’m probably toxic on some level and that makes me incredibly sad. The work is all that has ever mattered to me on a professional level. Everything else takes a back seat to that. Mentoring, collaboration and ultimately even my own sanity.
So what’s the solution? I gotta start dancing to a different tune. My previous vicious cycle has involved packing up the wagon and moving along to a different town once the existential crisis of this conflict at any given job has escalated to a sufficient level. I hit that point a year ago at this current job and I still haven’t been able to architect an escape.
On some level that has been for the best, despite all of the pain I’m feeling now. Because if not for this particular set of circumstances I might never have had to face the truth: I’m an inflexible cunt who puts the work above everything else while at work. This is no longer in vogue. In order to maintain my lifestyle and my ability to put food on my family’s table, I’m going to have to change.
I don’t know if I can. But it’s either that or figure out something else that I can do for a living. In my mid-forties I don’t know if that’s something I can pull off or not. Either way, something is going to change real soon now.
Stay tuned and I’ll let you all know how it goes.