I am now a 50 year old manager of a small piece of a very large company that purchased us about 1 year ago. Been into computers since grade school in the late 70's, having spent years working in the field, building, fixing, installing, selling, teaching, gaming, programming and now consulting on all the aforementioned topics. Computing life is good.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Revelations

Have had a very very busy couple of months. The pressure of impossible schedules and deadlines that seem to come faster than they go have kept me away from this small dusty corner of the inter web for some time. The 80 hour 7 day weeks all bleeding one into the other leading to the sudden awareness of the holidays come and gone, a new year now well underway. This current road trip started on this past Sunday with a one way rental and drive through Allentown Pa. To pick up a co-worker and continue on to Erie Pa. That was to be two days then hoof it to Pittsburg and fly to Tampa. The main source of my last few months labors.

Here in Tampa, our client had been struggling with what every client struggles with in a new development. What is wanted, what is needed, what can be afforded, what order to implement in. As they say same shit different day. Also common in every one of these endeavors I have been involved in we find communications lacking amongst the constituents. In this I felt a major communication bottleneck occurred in a particular department headed, as they all are by a single person. Now there are many times when I have encountered this situation, finding the barriers being the result of a general impedance mismatch between parties. Not to blow my horn but generally that finding has been that the party with which the difficulties arise seemed to alway be out of touch with the reality of the situation.

Now in this case I found out something very interesting and quite eye opening. You see this individual had a former life as a very high ranking researcher in cancer treatments at the genetic level PHD level stuff, lab coats and security badges an all that stuff. After many years of research this person decided that they were tired of that and instead wanted to take on different challenges and decided to enter into information technology management. This person has been at that new and radically different profession now for longer than the former profession. Along the way having engaged into many systems development efforts and designs. This unique person has had what is effectively two lifetimes of profession in the span of time that I have only managed to struggle out a single such achievement ( rather badly I have come to realize ). Oh and this person has a family as well. In my case I can barely keep my spouse able to tolerate my presence, this person not only has been happily married this whole time but managed to have children as well.

I can truly say I am humbled by this revelation. In fact I realize that the communication barriers that seem to be there are not the result of any sort of superior grasp of intellect that I posses, no rather the other way around. You see from an intellectual understanding level I am simply not even worthy to carry this persons sandals. Very Eye opening indeed and further evidence of the distance I have yet to travel in all this entropy.....