Wednesday, September 12, 2012

The Imperial March - aka the drive to work

I have a long commute. In fact some people say insanely long. The 68 miles each way still only takes 75-90 minutes which many people who live closer to where they work spend just as much time on the road. It used to be that the commute was my opportunity to get the cobwebs cleared out of my brain in the morning and let the days events sink in at the end of the day. That is not so much the case anymore.

My mornings are now usually spent dreading the day ahead and the afternoons a time to stress over what didn't get done and what messes I would have to cleanup the next day. What changed? My management, their expectations and my amount of responsibility all changed. What hasn't changed in a couple years? My pay.

I used to work in relative autonomy without management interference because I got things done. The things I got done were also the technical things I was hired to do. This lead to a Mike that looked forward to going into work and solving problems. Contrast that with management expecting me to do management type work taking away from the time doing the work I am good at. At the same time they now need to approve every schedule change, so they are micromanaging me while expecting me to manage.  The most frustrating part of the micromanagement is they don't fully understand what I do. It's like I jumped from an awesome job into a Dilbert comic strip. This is also adding onto my imposter syndrome to boot (since it makes it feel more like there is a problem with my work since they are putting me under the microscope).

A combination of imposter syndrome and dedication to my users makes it unlikely I will actually go anywhere soon, but the scales are getting close to tipping in the other direction. Instead I will just sit here and bitch about it when I know nothing will come of it (other than maybe a few more quasi job offers on top of the two I have received).

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