Slightly Off KIlter

Maybe I should try harder not to care. When I don’t care, I’m quickly bored. But when I do care… I get into trouble.

In May 2004, I got a job. A first, the best thing about it was that I was employed again after two years out of work. However, it quickly became obvious that I liked this job. I liked the company. I liked my co-workers. I liked the exec staff. And I really liked my role in the company.

For a year and a half now I have been doing internal documentation support for a growing, VC-funded company. I started out revising how-tos and helping with design specifications. I moved into re-organizing the engineering intranet and writing architecture overviews. I attended meetings. I took copious notes. I made suggestions. I cared.

I’m happiest when I work for people who benefit directly from what I do. I do my best work when I’m helping people who say “I need…” or “I want…” or “It would be great if we had…”. This is the primary reason that I prefer doing internal documentation versus user-focused projects; I can talk directly to my clients and get their feedback. I can provide what my “clients” need to get their jobs done.

It’s a support role without the telephones and I am very good at it.

Over time, more people asked me for help. I reviewed more documents, helped more people with rewrites, and added more people to my client base. For the first time in a very long time, I started having visions of “career goals”. I cared about my job and the role I was playing in the company.

In June of this year I was granted responsibility for intranet content across the company. This was something I had wanted since my first weeks in the job. I was thrilled.
I created web sites for several teams and made even more suggestions. I received very positive feedback on every project.

Later in the summer, the company underwent an internal re-organization. These have often signaled the beginning of the end in past jobs but I wasn’t concerned. The reasons for the re-org made sense to me and my position remained intact.

I acquired a new manager, new to the company as well. I began “training him” in what I did. Apparently, I didn’t succeed…

About a month ago, my manager started talking about a new project for me. He went on at length about how I could make a “HUGE impact” [sic] and how much “fun” it would be. I wasn’t buying into the “fun” part (or the capital letters) but… it sounded like a documentation project. That’s what I do.

Gradually, over time, things began to change. Yes, it was a documentation project — except when it wasn’t. I was told that I would be required to spend 90% of my time on this one project and, if there wasn’t enough documentation work to do, well… There were other things that could be done. Things that would not normally be within the (fairly wide) scope of my current role.

I’ve never taken readily to being told what to do. I take far less readily to being told to work outside my skills and interests, to turn myself into someone I’m not, all because it would be “good” for the project (and for the manager, of course) if I would only change.

Did I mention how much I really liked the job I had been performing up to this point? I had built up a client base, I was in the middle of several projects that were temporarily stalled for various reasons (unrelated to my work) that could start up again at any time. I owed a lot of people in the company my support.

I presented this argument. I was told “no”. No recourse, no rebuttal, no negotiations, no compromise, no working for other people. Just. No.

Things went from bad to worse more quickly than I thought possible. There was talk of writing me a new job description (as if that would magically make everything all right). Weird and irrelevant constraints were added to my newly restricted, and heavily modified, job duties.

Perhaps I just shouldn’t have cared so much, but I did. In retrospect, I probably should have backed off sooner and gone to ground. I should have kept my mouth shut… but I can see no honor in that.

Instead, I let myself be motivated by my passion for my work — and my job blew up in my face.