On Personal Martyrdom and Pretending to be Something that you are Not

I think that sometimes the world, and by the world, I mean the people in the world, think that I’m not paying attention to them.  That the words they so effortlessly spout bounce off the thick and callous exterior of my head and fall unheeded into the gutter.  I haven’t written in quite a while, but for some reason, I’m driven to write today.  Perhaps it’s because someone was so kind as to offer me the voluminous praise of referring to me as a “journalist.”  Whatever the case, here I am.

Two things have caught my attention over the past few months that I’ve not taken time to write down.  The first is that someone quite correctly referred to me as a “martyr” when it comes to work.  Since that time I can’t really do much without thinking quietly to myself… yeah, I’ll be fucked, but they’re right.  It just oozes from everything I do.  Some terribly shitty job to do?  Something idiotic and redundant and no fun whatsoever?  Well hell, Slaven’s practically jumping up and down to volunteer.  What the hell?  While this *SEEMS* like the attitude of a real team player, someone who will do whatever it takes to get shit done, really it’s the attitude of an ass who doesn’t really take proper care of the rest of the team.  While I’m off doing the shit work the rest of the team is flailing for leadership.  Overall, they fucking suffer MORE because I’m not delegating properly and letting the shit work fall where the shit work belongs: with the junior members of the team.  Further, it puts a hell of a lot of pressure on the people at the bottom.  There is a strange solace to the low-level work of any job.  You know quite clearly what is expected and you can measure your results.  Just because it’s crap doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value.  It’s an ass-move on my part to take that away from the position where it belongs.  That’s how you prove yourself and work up.  If senior leadership takes all the garbage work then, surprise surprise, junior members of the team are forced to perform at levels they’re not prepared for and feel like shit because they’re not excelling.  They would have excelled if they’d been able to start at the right level of work.  But they couldn’t.  Because someone had to be a fucking martyr and do the job for them.

So the first lesson is, ironically, to be selfish.  Stand up for what you want.  Not just because it’s good for you but ultimately because it’s good for everyone.  There is a natural pecking order to things and on some levels it seems completely unfair.  Why the hell should someone have to do the shit work in whatever it is you do?  You know why?  Because it’s how you learn to do the real work.  I am often harkened back to the tattoo parlor.  There, they have an “intern” who does nothing but absolute garbage work.  He makes people fill out forms.  He sanitizes instruments.  He does all the crap work that nobody else wants to do.  But you know what?  When he finally graduates from that position he’s going to know that shit backwards and forwards.  He’s going to know about hygiene and he’s going to know about the mechanics of not getting the place sued because some drunk guy got stars tattooed on his face.  Add to that the fact that when he finally gets to put ink-to-skin he’s going to appreciate it so fucking much.  In playing the martyr I’ve denied the natural order of things fucked up someone’s career path in the process.  That sucks.  Speaking of tattoo artists though, I need to call Roger.  It’s about time. 

The second thing that’s echoed about my head is a reference to the “Imposter Complex.”  This little tidbit was posited by my gf/fiancée and her father.  I’d long suffered from this affliction but never quite realized it had a name.  Overall, I consider myself good at my job.  I’m fairly in tune with what’s going on at both a low level and a high level but part of me still fears that someone’s going to dig in and determine that I’m actually a total dumbass and have no clue what I’m talking about.  This is, in a nutshell, the imposter complex.  The feeling that you’ll be discovered as not knowing nearly as much as you think you do.  To remedy this, perhaps it’s appropriate that I just come clean and say what I think that I am with no pretense whatsoever.

So let’s start at the beginning.  As a programmer, I’m fair.  I’m the sort of person who would rather write 20 lines of code that absolutely everybody understands than three lines that were effusively elegant.  If you look at the body of my work at my current job you will probably understand it all immediately.  While some programmers will revel in the succinctness of the C# delegate, I’d quietly say that a simple for loop is more than sufficient.  My work is plodding, mundane and uninspiring.  But for the most part it gets the job done.  When I have the chance, I like to cover all the bases and test the reasonable cases for any bit of code but I’m also impatient.  I want the thing to work.  I’m focused on nuts and bolts.  Appearance and presentation are secondary and often so dependent on the browser that I’d prefer that it look like shit than write it once for IE, once for Firefox and once for Opera.  I’m a Luddite in every sense of the word.  At least to the extent that preferring to omit client-side code constitutes a Luddite.

As a product manager, I’m a bit better than fair.  I try to focus on the big picture, am more than willing to say “no” when it doesn’t serve the product direction as a whole and tend to be fairly good at taking product requests and stretching them out to cover not only the current requests but a fair number of future ones.  I could be significantly more limber in this area, but one is only granted so many development hours.  I yearn for a day when development of a product is driven by the developers rather than the sales team but I fear this will never happen.  Such is the sad state of the revenue-driven world.  I understand and only seek to gain a balance.

As a people manger… well, I’m not qualified to say.  Technically speaking, I’m not really the manager of anyone but I hope that those who work with me understand that I really only have their interests at heart.  Perhaps it’s the martyr talking again, but it’s fairly typical for me to suggest that anyone in my group might be happier somewhere else even if it promises to make my life a living hell after they leave.  Ultimately, I want people to be happy in their work.  Even if it totally screws me over.  There was a time when I thought I could offer an environment that provided an optimum mix of product freedom and stability.  That time has passed.  I think I understand what people look for in a job and I hope that I’m able to convey that to them so they can find the best outcome for themselves.  I’m hopeful that I can foster not only some level of contentment in the current jobs of those under me but also help them look beyond the here and now, a facility that I sadly lack.

To summarize, I think the lesson here is that I need to be more selfish.  I need to focus on my needs and my desires and not get nearly so bound up in what the company wants or what my co-workers need.  They’ll sort that out for themselves and the company will certainly look out for itself.  Ultimately one gets only a single life to live.  If one lives it with too many others in mind, one is simply giving away the only thing you truly have.  Martyrdom must cease.  It is time to reclaim again what one has duly earned.