A Different Kind of Politics
by ::G @ 2014-11-25 07:22
So I haven't posted on here for a while—no time. I happened to wake up at 06:00 and couldn't get back to sleep, and here I am.
At work, a lot of change has happened, and is happening. There's also the political aspect, made worse than average because of multiple sites with competing missions. Yesterday my manager called together the "leadership" (put in quotes because of me) in his department to discuss the revelations he had while at the site in Japan as well as the aftermath of one in our department transferring to another area. In general, I can see the problems and identify the shortfalls, but how to fix them is another matter entirely.
We had made use of a team in Japan as a liaison to the functional teams, which hasn't worked out very well. (It was my boss's idea, but it seemed to me to be the right answer at the time.) The two guys under that team lead haven't been groomed for drive work, and have been doing, as my manager described, "thought experiments" of their lead. Apparently the lead is acting independently of his manager in interacting with some of the staging teams and not reporting back to us like he's supposed to. Their manager is in a tough spot because he's the first non-Japanese line manager at the site and he can't speak the language to maintain awareness of all of what's happening, although he seems to be aware that something's afoot.
Another major source of consternation is one of the satellite sites in the U.S., who reports to a manager in San Jose. The manager is one of the senior ones in my area, and he has our director's ear. He has a somewhat adversarial relationship with my boss, but amusingly, he seems to be ok with me (probably because I have no reason to butt heads with him). The satellite site has three people at the nominal level of a band above me, all of whom worked for our sister company. One of them doesn't seem to give a care about anything, because he's independently wealthy. One guy seems to be ok skill-wise. The other guy is capable, but flighty; he'll run with something for a while, then drop it. He wants to work with technical stuff, but doesn't want to mess with the details of implementation once the trailblazing is done, or so it seems. The sticky point is because he gets involved with the integration details, which is another communications path.
Then there's our sister department, of whom the chief agitator is also the most capable and productive person at our whole site. He's the highest ranking engineer in the area, and for good reason. However, he often will deal with things and not tell anyone else, or push things with us that don't have priority in the program, etc. He does so many things that it's hard to stay sync'ed up. When talking about succession with my manager, we figured that when this guy retires, the company would need 5-10 people to replace him. Reason being, there's no one else that has the unique combination of skills and experience that gives him a high-level perspective better than everyone else, along with a personality to drive to get things done.
Lastly is the department I'm in. The other guy who's at my level is moving to another team. (Maybe he got sick of working with me, or he feels like he can really affect change better in this other team; or, thinking cynically, my management knows that they can't leapfrog him over me without having me leave, so they're giving him a different path. Perhaps all three.) That leaves a gap that I don't know that I want to fill. My manager, fishing for strategies to cope with the new situation, offered that I could take over integration lead for all products. However, in taking that role, I'd have very little time in the lab doing real work, and worst of all, I'd have one experienced guy, who I don't have a great working relationship with, and three noobs in order to make things happen on three product lines. Plus, we'd still have the issues with the other teams.
My boss seems inclined to push me in the direction of dealing with more people instead of being cooped up in the lab. That's outside my comfort zone as an introvert. On the other hand, I can see that I could leverage my relationships with the other teams—all of them seem to be ok with me. (Other folks in my department have non-existent or adversarial relationships with at least one of the leadership of the other teams.) My other perceived liabilities are that giving me too many details means I'm going to drop something inadvertently, and, related to that, I don't necessarily communicate in a timely fashion.
If I had to, I think I could handle all the products from a lead perspective, but that's basically all I'd be doing. That job would be the step prior to management, which isn't really the direction I wanted. The rest of the world seems to think that going into management is the right direction for one's career, but not for someone technical. Going into management essentially freezes one's personal technical skills, because to the extent one doesn't do the work, one doesn't grow one's skills. I don't really want to manage people, either. I think I'd be decent at it, because I take the time to assess the situation before taking action (unlike some managers who come in and, "ready, fire, aim!") and I'm fairly circumspect in dealing with my teammates (which could mean that I'm not pushing hard enough). The real crucible for a manager, though, is how they deal with adverse conditions: no-win situations and problematic employees, and perhaps that's the real thing I've been avoiding. Perhaps facing those tough situations head-on is what I need, regardless of what position I'm in.
Essentially, this whole situation is prompting a lot of navel-gazing on my part, trying to figure out my career in the middle of one of the most difficult times, where work, family, and other entanglements are already consuming most of my time. The question is, where to go from here?
At work, a lot of change has happened, and is happening. There's also the political aspect, made worse than average because of multiple sites with competing missions. Yesterday my manager called together the "leadership" (put in quotes because of me) in his department to discuss the revelations he had while at the site in Japan as well as the aftermath of one in our department transferring to another area. In general, I can see the problems and identify the shortfalls, but how to fix them is another matter entirely.
We had made use of a team in Japan as a liaison to the functional teams, which hasn't worked out very well. (It was my boss's idea, but it seemed to me to be the right answer at the time.) The two guys under that team lead haven't been groomed for drive work, and have been doing, as my manager described, "thought experiments" of their lead. Apparently the lead is acting independently of his manager in interacting with some of the staging teams and not reporting back to us like he's supposed to. Their manager is in a tough spot because he's the first non-Japanese line manager at the site and he can't speak the language to maintain awareness of all of what's happening, although he seems to be aware that something's afoot.
Another major source of consternation is one of the satellite sites in the U.S., who reports to a manager in San Jose. The manager is one of the senior ones in my area, and he has our director's ear. He has a somewhat adversarial relationship with my boss, but amusingly, he seems to be ok with me (probably because I have no reason to butt heads with him). The satellite site has three people at the nominal level of a band above me, all of whom worked for our sister company. One of them doesn't seem to give a care about anything, because he's independently wealthy. One guy seems to be ok skill-wise. The other guy is capable, but flighty; he'll run with something for a while, then drop it. He wants to work with technical stuff, but doesn't want to mess with the details of implementation once the trailblazing is done, or so it seems. The sticky point is because he gets involved with the integration details, which is another communications path.
Then there's our sister department, of whom the chief agitator is also the most capable and productive person at our whole site. He's the highest ranking engineer in the area, and for good reason. However, he often will deal with things and not tell anyone else, or push things with us that don't have priority in the program, etc. He does so many things that it's hard to stay sync'ed up. When talking about succession with my manager, we figured that when this guy retires, the company would need 5-10 people to replace him. Reason being, there's no one else that has the unique combination of skills and experience that gives him a high-level perspective better than everyone else, along with a personality to drive to get things done.
Lastly is the department I'm in. The other guy who's at my level is moving to another team. (Maybe he got sick of working with me, or he feels like he can really affect change better in this other team; or, thinking cynically, my management knows that they can't leapfrog him over me without having me leave, so they're giving him a different path. Perhaps all three.) That leaves a gap that I don't know that I want to fill. My manager, fishing for strategies to cope with the new situation, offered that I could take over integration lead for all products. However, in taking that role, I'd have very little time in the lab doing real work, and worst of all, I'd have one experienced guy, who I don't have a great working relationship with, and three noobs in order to make things happen on three product lines. Plus, we'd still have the issues with the other teams.
My boss seems inclined to push me in the direction of dealing with more people instead of being cooped up in the lab. That's outside my comfort zone as an introvert. On the other hand, I can see that I could leverage my relationships with the other teams—all of them seem to be ok with me. (Other folks in my department have non-existent or adversarial relationships with at least one of the leadership of the other teams.) My other perceived liabilities are that giving me too many details means I'm going to drop something inadvertently, and, related to that, I don't necessarily communicate in a timely fashion.
If I had to, I think I could handle all the products from a lead perspective, but that's basically all I'd be doing. That job would be the step prior to management, which isn't really the direction I wanted. The rest of the world seems to think that going into management is the right direction for one's career, but not for someone technical. Going into management essentially freezes one's personal technical skills, because to the extent one doesn't do the work, one doesn't grow one's skills. I don't really want to manage people, either. I think I'd be decent at it, because I take the time to assess the situation before taking action (unlike some managers who come in and, "ready, fire, aim!") and I'm fairly circumspect in dealing with my teammates (which could mean that I'm not pushing hard enough). The real crucible for a manager, though, is how they deal with adverse conditions: no-win situations and problematic employees, and perhaps that's the real thing I've been avoiding. Perhaps facing those tough situations head-on is what I need, regardless of what position I'm in.
Essentially, this whole situation is prompting a lot of navel-gazing on my part, trying to figure out my career in the middle of one of the most difficult times, where work, family, and other entanglements are already consuming most of my time. The question is, where to go from here?
Leave a comment