:wall::wall::wall::wall:
I am sharing some techno-geeky-work related issue, which can best be dissected here only.
I am expecting more of a discussion,as serious as when two guys sharing experience over smoke and beer.
The thing is, till now i have been only a student, so never cared about how office would be different from lab.
To test the water, i took an internship 6 months back... and i should have learnt a lot, but with the response from my seniors it looks like i still SUCK!!
I am sort of having communication gap (both intentional and unintentional) with my senior caused by EXCELLENT quality of work done by me.
I will not go in details as i may bore the thread visitors. I just need your feedback if you had ever been in such situation, where you failed not because you were dumb, but because you didn't understood the project requirement very well. How did you handle it?
if you feel you need more details about my situation, please feel free to ask for it. o:o:o:o
This unfortunately is your opinion only, and probably not your supervisor's.
If your coding is so terse/cryptic that only you understand it, no matter how elegant you think it is, how is someone else to maintain it 5 years from now...what are we drinking?
Oh yeah I do know this situation. Most likely a matter of politics. You as the new guy potentially doing work better / faster / different .... or at all. In return this makes the more established people look bad.
I lost a job a log time back for this kind of reason... CAx consulting company charging the customer BIG hourly money. In the beginning when I was learning the stuff, everything was fine ... because I was slow and the clients payed for the 'training on the job'. After a couple of weeks when I started knowing what I am doing, I did the same job in a day, my colleagues needed 3 weeks for - and even worse - the customers did not have the bunch of issues they usually had (and had been charged for).
The result is easy to guess - I did not make as much money for the company and was fired - because I was too good ...
There is no real take on this - go search for another place where people maybe value your work more.
Ask feedback from other people, not just on this assignment, but from work you have done previously. It may be so that the supervisor is trying to tell you something that he did not express so explicitly. See where there are common threads and work on those areas.
I feel you mate, after three years of my previous job I was getting bored with my work because I got too comfortable & good with my job. I wasn't going to get anymore promotions, whatever ladder there was to climb I had climbed on. There was a guy in the team who still wasn't fired although he had sexually harassed a female colleague, I reported him few times and gave my manager bad review and still nothing! There was a rotten apple in the team who constantly gave me a hard time because he preferred men to women. I wasn't close to my manager to begin with, I didn't socialize with my colleagues very well and hung out with few close friends whom eventually left the place. To give you a hint on where I used to work- they invented LaserJet printers. Anyways, I wasn't getting any pay raise, I was correcting newcomers mistakes, my supervisor's emails and (even chat sometimes) and sneaking out of work to go for drinks, torrent movies at night and sleep in any empty meeting rooms during night shifts. I'm glad I left, I love this new place, people are friendlier, my manager listens to my opinion and I feel important. Back then I felt that I was a generic speck of dust among 3000 others. I'm never going back there again :o
I have also been in a number of jobs (many years ago) where I was criticized for doing a better job than my colleagues. I think it is pretty standard, unfortunately, for "the tallest peg to be beaten down" .... and there are often cultural factors at play as well.
In my experience in the US, this problem often arises when a company is billing for services and they lose money when a job is performed better or faster; or when the work performed is out of billable scope.
In Asia, my experience has been that individual achievement is less important than the group harmony; so anything perceived to be outstanding by an individual which is not the norm for the group as a whole can have seriously negative repercussions.
Either way, the issues are political and social; and many highly skilled technical people are not really "tuned in" to political and social issues at work; this is often because politics and culture are not "logical" nor "intelligent" and neither are taught in technical classes and course work.
For the individual, what is important is to be "adaptive" and to either quickly adjust to the political, business and social aspects of an environment; or move to where there is a better fit and higher comfort level.
What Neo said is very true and I have had that issue in several jobs. But there is always hope for us.
When I joined my current company 8 years ago, 'the team' did not logically exist. There were a few AIX boxes to take care of that nobody else wanted to bother with, in a company with a huge footprint in HP and Solaris and strict segregation of duties - so the role of an AIX SA had been created - and I was lucky enough to take it.
Since I was doing the alien work, nobody even wanted to bother trying to tell me what to do or even worse, manage me, so I had pretty much free hands in my duties and there was nobody to really compare me to
All I wanted was to deliver the best possible service to my clients - and I did not have to follow the standards, I actually made them
Over the years, the AIX footprint grew from 15 to several thousand systems, so the team grew, was splitted, grew again and was splitted again.
There were times where due to bad management we lost all teammembers except me, and there were times where everyone tried to join our team. I changed internally twice, countries and even the continent until I found the management I could and wanted to work for without repercussions for doing my job the way I think it should be done.
I cannot say that I am doing my job these days without struggles - I am fighting a lot with other teams and managers for doing 'the right thing' for the clients - but for me it is all worth it. I largely ignore politics and culture - I try to get them with common sense and reason - and many times I bend the rules to get things done despite all the red tape.
I try to educate rather than to argue. I convince with facts and largely ignore sentiments. I try to lead by example. I assist peer teams in solving issues. And after all these years I am naturally the person to go to for advice, or if things need to get done really fast. But most of all - and I think that is what makes the difference - I care about my systems and clients.
Most of the time, I get a lot of positive feedback from both peers and clients and occasionally even from management - and sometimes I am beaten up. I guess that is just how corporate life is. But I know from this experience, even in a big company, it is well possible to make a difference if you are determined enough and really want to drive a positive change.
animesharma,
A lot of us who may be strong in terms of the quality or speed of technical work that we do are better at handling that than understanding the nuances of office culture. As someone with Tourette Syndrome (fairly mild, but I often am a little bit "twitchy", I have been misunderstood on many occasions, but since getting into IT/Telecom, my experience and interest have often left me handling more "difficult" work than my peers. Still, it is not uncommon for standouts to find themselves at the business end of disdain and eventual disrespect from people who are different from them. It's unfortunately cost me some great jobs, and I have found myself getting to know folks in positions i start who ask me what I'm doing in the positions because I have a broader deeper experience and understanding of certain things, and I know that sometimes folks just don't like me, despite acting as though they do. However, I have gotten much better at interacting with people, and always find folks who are genuine and even pleasant to work with. While I'd love to find myself in a position where I am understood and appreciated by everyone, the truth is that it doesn't always work out that way. Still, I've had some great experiences, and learned a lot by trying to branch out when possible (and some of those folks I've worked for are willing to give me great references, which always helps). If you feel like this situation is getting more uncomfortable, and like you are less appreciated/understood as time goes on, figure out who you can get a reliable reference from, spruce your resume up, and get your name out there, because it's not worth relying on the goodwill of people that you are not clicking with. More experience will probably help when it comes to making allies and positive business relationships, but if you really do good work and don't look down on people who aren't as technically inclined (and open to learning new skills) you will be able to find better matches for you, whether under different management, in a different location or department, or for another employer.
I have worked with a highly intellegent colleague who had Tourette Syndrome (not mild) and other problems with interacting with people. Because he could solve problems which nobody on the team could solve, we protected him from management to our best ability. Some team meetings took place while power-walking round the car park. Unfortunately he got into a high-stress situation with a manager and got dismissed. The manager concerned made a full recovery.
o:o:o:o
