The Moore’s

WOW, I have been an IT professional for almost 20 years now. And Although I find this thought alternately depressing, scary, unbelievable and exciting, I have somehow managed to avoid the future for all this time. My definition of the future is that horrid 7 letter word “Manager”. Somehow I have managed to eshew project plans, budgets, deliverables, production support and everything associated with “ultimate” responsibility for much of this past 20 years. I’m not saying I haven’t spend my share of weeks working over 120 hours. I think anyone in IT this long has had their share of those. I’ve also had time where I had to support the clients from hell. But overall I have managed to shift responsibilities often enough that I never had to settle down and get upset about what I was doing or where my future lay. The last 3 years at my previous employer were closest to driving me insane and out of IT, but not because of anything bad that happened but rather because of being lost in the soup, so to speak.

Now I have a new job and I really rather like it, and the company. It is definitely different than anything I have done before, but some of what this job entails really distresses me. Not a frightened scare out of your mind way, but rather because it seems I am on the trail I have feared traveling more than anything else in my career. The management trail. However, at this exeact moment it really seems unavoidable. As an industry observation I believe that their is now an inevitable downward spiral that has been created by IT offshoring and that this is going to continue to force many people (not just me) to make the management decision. Now, and for the foreseeable future, the other option is to find some entirely new vocation. I see evidence of this everyday with friends and past co-workers switching out of IT.

Since I still enjoy this field enough I am not going to give up on it quite yet. It isn’t whether or not I have given real thought to getting out of IT altogether, as I have, but the jury is still out on this one and only time will tell. In the meantime I have options.

Anyway, my real point is that I am not sure I really want to do all this responsible management stuff. Somehow watching the people that work for me or planning and evaluating their careers doesn’t have the same allure that working with new and exciting technology has had. Developing Project plans that rely on the strengths and foibles of others scares me. A future of constant politicing in order to make sure everyone (or most people) stay happy is a daunting challenge. One that requires a certain dexterity and savoir faire that I am not sure I possess. Its a grand game, one that I am naive at, and in fact I’ve been rather blissful in my ignorance for it for all of this time.

Why would I want to change? That is the question, and I am still contemplating the answer.

This morning I am meeting with our CIO. I have found a few articles that were interesting this one and an older one. From what I’ve heard he is quite a guy and I’m looking forward to the meeting. The project I am leading was mentioned here , so…, its probably important to leave a good impression this morning.

On an entirely different topic, this has to be the funniest and most poignant politcal animation I have seen to date. Sadly, this pretty much says it all about the current state of the US presidential campaign. Personally it doesn’t matter which candidate I’m in favor of, or which you support. You’ll probably agree with everything in this satire.

So I was really really looking forward to collecting at least one unemployment check in between jobs. All these years of paying in and I get severed from Altria and a I have almost a week in between jobs. So I went online to collect NJ unemployment and then today filled in the form for weekly benefits. I guess people make too much money nowadays because working 2 days my last week and three my first at the new job I got disqualified for a check. I’m sorry but that just really pissed me off. F*&^g government :mad:.

So I’m not sure what is going on but my work email communications could become a pia. Some of my friends may have already become targets of their spam filtering although I have not had this confirmed, and at least one source has denied this happens. From one source I was told that they do not want personal correspondence taking place from the workplace. Since I draw such a nebulous line between work and personal this is going to be interesting. I send questions and get valuable feedback from non-office people on technical questions all the time. Isn’t knowledge sharing and its effects part of the what has made our professional spheres of influence and our cumulative knowledge so valuable and our relationships so beneficial. If I can’t find a way around this I am going to shoot myself.

So today I had employee orientation at my new job. So many times its just the same old thing, but Tiffany & Co.’s orientation had a new twist at the end. Everyone had to learn how to tie a Tiffany bow. I kid you not… So in case you ever want to tie one, here is how:

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Hold box so that Tiffany & Co. appears vertically.
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I was unemployed for a total of 4 days. I started at Tiffany & Co today. They have been really great to deal with through the past 7 weeks since I initially interviewed. I am going to be a project leader for them on some key initiatives over the next 2 years.

Proving that IT is the smallest community I have ever known, one of the people I used to work with at my last job now sits right behind me

Today is my last day working at 7 Campus Drive. While there I have worked for:

• Nabisco
• Kraft
• Phillip Morris Management Corp
• Altria Corporate Services
• TEC Works LLC

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