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What if you agree with this article, you do feel constrained in an unhealthy way by your job in a large organization, but you don't feel that leaving for a smal
by techiferous 15y ago
What if you agree with this article, you do feel constrained in an unhealthy way by your job in a large organization, but you don't feel that leaving for a small company or startup is an option (or at least not an option anytime soon)?
Well, here's a coping skill that can help you. Focus on doing your duty as well as you can, regardless of the context.
In other words, imagine your boss says that the web app must be written in C++ for political reasons, and you cannot convince him to switch to Ruby on Rails, and you just know that the project would die a slow painful death if written in C++. Well, supposing you are correct, you are in a crappy job: constrained to do the wrong thing and with a boss that cannot be convinced otherwise. And for whatever reason you've got to stick it out through this project.
Focus on being the best C++ web developer in the world. Do the absolute best job you can on the tasks that are assigned to you. Throw yourself into your work 110%. But to do this you have to shift your point of view. You cannot think about this as "wasted effort" since you know the project will ultimately fail. You must think about this as training. You are putting your mind through intense training, keeping your skills sharp, so that when the opportunity finally does come to leave your job (or perhaps a new boss comes along), your mind is in top form and ready to go. Sure, you've probably acquired some less than useful skills for web development (managing pointers) but you've probably acquired and maintained some very good transferrable skills.
Whatever you do, don't give up, because then your skills will atrophy.
- alexro 15y agoOr alternatively I'd do this: spend as low energy on this absurd project as you can, read about new stuff at your work if you can and grow your normal skills at home. Have a project on a side, help real people to solve real problems. Have no pity when you leave this boss and the company behind.
- parfe 15y ago>spend as low energy on this absurd project as you can, read about new stuff at your work if you can and grow your normal skills at home If you were any good you'd solve the problem the absurd project was created to solve. Instead you can't solve it so you pretend to be elite by "learning" rather than doing.
- a3_nm 15y agoYour boss tells you to solve the project using the wrong tools. Maybe you would be able to solve it with the right tools, but you're being denied the possibility.
- techiferous 15y agoThe only thing to be careful of here is that even though it is a sign of intelligence that you choose not to put forth effort toward a fruitless goal, your boss or another outsider may not view it this way. They may think you're lazy, for example.
- a3_nm 15y agoYou need a lot of energy (cynicism? doublethink?) to be able to see such a pointless exercise as an opportunity for training. It might be the optimal thing to do, but it is quite hard to ignore that part of your brain which tells you to avoid useless stuff. Besides, not all crappy tasks can be bent like this. Sometimes, there is just no way to disguise it as an interesting challenge.
- techiferous 15y agoAgreed. This advice is only for when you are trapped. It is not good to put your effort toward a pointless goal.
- samyzee 15y agohaha I tried that yesterday....my boss asked me to come up with documentation for some objective C code....in three days I not only documented two classes but also used a tool called appledoc for autogenerating documentation for all the classes....in fact I wrote a script that I added as an xcode target that when run not only autogenerates documentation but also uploads it on a central server. RESULT...I got severly REBUKED for not creating a word document and emailing it to him...in fact he threatened me about escalating my disobedience to senior management