Well, I get back from lunch just now and almost instinctively have to compulsively check my server stats. This has really become way too big of an obsession. If it weren’t for the horrid coffee addiction that pales everything else in comparison, I’d really be worried…
So anyway, I notice that several new hits have come in on my blog since I checked yesterday evening, and I dive into referrer hunt mode. I quickly find that the new source of hits comes from a blog entry posted by my neighbor, whom we’ll call “Bill”, over at his House O Insomnia. I start reading, and the first line kinda catches me off guard:
By now, virtually every blog reader has heard about someone who’s gotten fired for blogging. Well, one of my Feedmap neighbors just just posted this. I don’t think anyone will ever accuse him of not having b4lls ;-).
This caught me off guard for two reasons. First, even though I mentioned getting fired, it never actually occurred to me that I might really. I’ve been careful to keep a very specific division of “church and state”, if you will. There’s always been work, and then everything else in my life. Sometimes work spilled over into the rest (as it is apt to do from time to time), but I was always very careful to guarantee that the rest never spilled over into work (aside from taking time off to do something here and there, of course). Bill’s comment made me realize that yeah, it is very possible that I could get fired for so harshly criticizing our Marketing Department, should someone from work (god forbid someone actually in the Marketing Department) stumble upon my blog post.
Secondly, his comment hit very close to home, since I just today started re-examining my career path. There have been some things going on at this company since I started working here 5 years ago that I haven’t liked, and which have yet to change. Their priorities are definitely not in the right order. They spend money on useless things, generally because the Marketing Department thinks the existing solution isn’t “pretty” or “fluffy” enough (and Marketing supposedly makes money, so they get whatever they want), and in the process they ignore the growing needs of the Systems department to effectively do their jobs and develop the infrastructure that is going to maintain the company in the coming years (how many corporations do you know that run intranet servers off IT workstations?). In addition, while I like the majority of the people I work with overall on a personal level, having to deal with them in a work environment is sometimes much more trouble than it should be. It’s common for them to refuse otherwise simple changes simply because they’re in a bad mood, and code-hoarding is a definite problem. Oftentimes, you will ask a very simple question, but rather than having the simple answer spit back at you, you’re told a round-about method to find it, doubling if not tripling your work load.
Additionally, there is absolutely zero communication. The entire Systems department reports directly to the President of the company, and since he’s rarely around, and never tells us anything when he is, we never have a clue what’s going on. Anyone and everyone is free to come over and disturb us with anything and everything they want whenever they want, because we don’t actually need to get any development done, and nothing is done when a user is browsing “those sites” and gets loaded up with spyware and virii (like today for example). We won’t even get in to how I make 1/3 less a year than what even the average *starting* salary is for an entry-level computer technician (a lack of degree only counts for so much. I know my stuff.).
Now, I won’t deny that there are some incredible benefits to working for this company. Not only am I free to come and go virtually whenever I please (with the understanding that everything gets done in a timely manner, of course), but I also get 40 days of PTO (Paid Time Off) every year (you know where you can stick your typical 2 weeks buddy?). Let’s be honest though, if you’re miserable the rest of the year, is it really worth it?
Why did I suddenly start thinking today that I might not be where I belong? Well, on top of everything I’ve listed, I dealt with an old woman who got THE biggest spyware infestation I’ve ever seen. I spent 3 hours cleaning her computer, and I’m still not 100% sure it’s all gone. During all this, we’re hiring a new DBA (big mistake, we don’t need one, despite what our current DBA says). Well, I hear 3rd hand that I’m being moved down the aisle to be shoved into the cube on the end, because she needs to be closer to our current DBA, and while we’re at it, we might as well move our web guy down closer to him too (I’m going in his cube).
Nevermind that I still haven’t heard it from our boss, and that I don’t want to move down there, they’re always talking about minimizing the amount of work. Just look at all the shit stacked up in my desk and tell me it’s logical for me to move… Until now, I had no intention (and really don’t have any intention yet) of moving my stuff until it was time for me to clean out my desk and move on.
I guess the part I really don’t like about this is that no one seems to want to tell me directly. I’ve heard it 3rd hand, and it feels like I’m quietly being slid out of the picture. Not to mention I’d be sitting down on the end, across from our printer cube, alone.
Ah well, I guess if I’m out of the picture, it won’t be a problem when I just stop showing up every day… Perhaps it’s time to take another week off so everyone appreciates me again. Who am I kidding? No one appreciates me around there…
So remind me… why do I work here, again?
Chirs - we gotta get togehter some time b/c I’m definitely interested in learning PHP. As far as my post regarding yours…. A while ago, my girlfriend had some political disagreements with one of her co-workers. At the time I considered him a friend although I thought that when it came to politics, he was typically a real a33hole. Since I don’t say things about people bhheind their backs that I wouldn’t say to their face, I hold myself to the same rule for blogging. However I had made some comments about him that no one but he would have recognized. I was intentionally vague, but based on the specifics of a conversation we had, he identified the conversation. but it came about 3 months after I posted it. He was pretty rude to my girflriend at work about the fact she didn’t agree with him politically and she snapped at him. So 3 months later he send her an email saying essentially that he couldn’t trust either of us because of my comments. I’m quit to admit when I’m wrong, but this particular time, did nothing. The post was so vague and non specific that when he showed it to some of our mutual acquaintences, they all told him he was being paranoid. To make a long story short, having someone get really pissed off at me 3 months after I posted something, was a splash of cold water in the face. Worse, let’s say that I did actually post something a little more specific. It definitely would have caused some problems for my girlfriend at work.
Then there’s the issue of Google Indexing and the fact that it only takes one or two popular blogs to get yours popular. I have some pretty serious traffic these days but it took about 3 months before I had anything at all. So I posted away thinking that no one read my stuff anyway and found out the hard way that wasn’t the case. Right when I left my last job, at my going away party, I found out 6 of my coworkers reguarly read my blog. I had NO clue. The hits I saw in my IP logs, I just thought were my own. So it put a little scare in me just in case I wanted to say something crappy.
So you have 2 DBA’s? That’s impressive. What RDBMS do you guys run?
When you have some time, we’ll definitely have to do lunch or something
You made a very good point Bill. I actually considered removing this entry after I wrote it. A couple people have read it now and had the same type of reaction (”wow, hope your boss doesn’t read that!”, etc.). After reading your comment, I sat down and re-read what I’d written to see if I’d gotten it out of my system and was ready to stop bashing my gracious employer yet.
Now that I’ve cooled off and I’m a little more level-headed, I realize that at some points I do go a little far, but overall I think this would provide nothing more than a bit of a “verbal” splash of cold water for any of my co-workers who read it. You can ask anyone in my department what they think about it, and I know for a fact that they would agree with every single point 100%. It’s nothing that hasn’t been said before, inspiring a promise of change, and then “forgotten” about shortly thereafter. Sure it could cause some temporary tensions at work, but all-in-all I don’t think it’d be that big of a deal, given the general casual attitude and environment around here (which has its ups and downs as I’ve said). All I’ve really said thus far was that I wouldn’t inflict our Marketing Department on anyone (which was in a different blog entry), not even my worst enemy. While this might cause some hot water for me, I’d be willing to take the heat just to get the topic everyone knows but won’t talk about out in the open (eventually it’d be good for everyone to wake up and smell the used car salesman).
But enough about covering my own ass. You asked some questions…
PHP is great. I’d be more than happy to try and impart all my knowledge into you… And 20 minutes later, you can buy my lunch. No, seriously, it’s a great language that has been incredibly fun to learn and use thus far. If I had any good tutorials, I’d give you some links, but I’ve never really found any over the top all around good ones. I learn by doing, and so I’ve always set out to do something and just Googled for help on any specific parts I couldn’t get on my own. If you don’t know the command for something, PHP.net has incredible documentation for everything, and generally each command has a list of comments, including source code, from the community solving common problems. Also, the end-all be-all of PHP development is the Zend Studio. It’s a bit pricey (unless you can weasel your way into an academic discount like I did), but it’s well worth it. They also offer a free trial, and as with everything, there are of course “unlimited trials” available on the ‘net (not that I condone such a thing by any means… Oh wow, the FBI reads my blog? How cool!).
Back to work now… Currently our Systems Department consists of:
1 Delphi Programmer
Develops and maintains our Windows-based Call Tracking systems, as well as claims-payment systems.
1 Delphi Programmer / Oracle DBA / Network Administrator
Develops and maintains Windows-based Billing and Accounting systems. Also maintains our Oracle database and our Firewall.
1 PHP Web Developer
Develops and maintains Web-based Enrollment sites, claims-tracking site, and company websites.
1 Systems Administrator (Me, duh)
Maintains: Exchange 2000 EMail Server, Windows 2000 Domain Controller, File Server, FTP Server, Antivirus and Windows Update Patch-Management server, Phone server and related systems, all Desktop systems.
1 “Legacy” Programmer
Develops and maintains our old-school DOS-based claims-payment system.
New Oracle DBA
Will perform daily tasks as yet unknown… Go figure.
I work over near Haywood Mall, in the middle of restaurant central. Drop me a line and we’ll try and work out lunch sometime in the next couple of weeks.
Chris, which is Haywood mall? Is that the one near Furman or the one with the 20 Cinema theatre?
Funny you mention the FBI, I’ll have to tell you about how I was accused of writing Klez by a former employer of mine and had to go through a friggin anal probe for almost a year