Workin’ 9 to Eternity

Unlike what the title may evoke, this epistle has little to do with real eternity but rather with the perceived eternity of one’s working life in a particular position. Few people go into a job with the intent to only stay a year but it doesn’t take long for the ‘this is the last job I’ll ever have’ attitude to turn into a visceral need to be anywhere else. Inevitably, what was novel or interesting in the beginning turns into day-to-day humdrum existence. What was amusing becomes annoying and you find yourself inhabiting a cubical-shaped personal hell filled with a million screeching harpies.

It seems indisputable that every job suffers from this inevitable decline; what varies is the rate at which this decline occurs. The rate of descent into personal job hell varies from job to job and from person to person. I for one, tend to become rather bored with exceptional rapidity. Once the learning and innovation phase of a job is over, I’m ready to find greener pastures with less predictability and more room for innovation. It has been my experience that all the truly entertaining work of establishing procedures, developing standards and building the foundation for future work in the department is done after the first year. After that it’s just reapplying what you’ve built over and over again. Once you’ve established that baseline, you’ve guaranteed yourself a vacuum of real quality entertainment for years to come.

Sometimes the hell isn’t of your own making but instead inherited. I sadly point to my own colleagues who have in fact entered such a situation. Coming into the department well after its practices were established they now have to live with them or attempt to change them. While they have done a great job of bringing their own special knowledge and experience to the department I am sure it’s frustrating trying to work in an area whose standards don’t quite meet their own. Interestingly it is their commentary and criticism which I now find most interesting. Having established a certain way of doing things I’m endless intrigued by the differing viewpoints they being to the exact same set of problems.

Sadly our society has an ‘If you can’t say anything nice then don’t say anything’ mentality that filters their real feedback. Those who subscribe to such a motto do themselves and their peers a great disservice.

Lastly, some jobs just can’t last. When the job involves creation of a product, support of that product will eventually take its toll. You can alleviate this somewhat with draconian long-term support contracts and the like but the crux of the matter is that someone will have to support this customer for the life of the product and that person is probably the one that created it in the first place. So as time goes along, the person who created the product is less and less able to create new product because of ongoing responsibilities to existing customers. Eventually the wicket snaps and they will go somewhere else merely to escape their own creations.
And thus the cycle of creation and escape continues…