Thoughts on leaving a company

I'm a happy employee these days. I have a decent job, a nice work area, a reasonably fast computer, tasks that are matched for my skill level and provide challenge, colleagues who understand the meaning of teamwork, competent managers and a company that matches my career goal: make the world a smarter and better place to live in.

But not all was always well though. My previous company was an ass. To be specific, its employees. No, they didn't try to kill me or call me names, but it was a death sentence for a career that wanted to reach far above the clouds and the stratosphere.

My line of specialty has always been in software engineering. Building web sites. Yeah, that's what I find interesting. The crazy thing is that I was only able to do that abour 20% of the time. The rest of the time, I was busy attending equipment evaluation meetings, connecting printers to the network, cleaning computers of viruses, answering odd queries on the phone like, "Where should we buy a camera?", and 7 dozen things that aren't remotely related to web development.

so I resigned last May, hoping to end my disastrous streak in that company. Wrapped up my work, but had to turn things over to someone who had a different skillset than mine, so my documentation was deemed inadequate. Yeah, I know. Kind of like a dermatologist getting scolded for not being able to do a heart operation because the heart surgeon left for another company and didn't give a 50-volume crash course on how to do a bypass.

Next up was my clearance. Oddly enough, every single office signed it without a fuss. Know why? I had no administrative, property or financial obligations left to satisfy. So my clearance was good to go right?

Hell no. A few weeks right after I left, one of their systems that I built before broke down. And before I know it, my clearance was on hold indefinitely for that reason. I tried to help them out, which was the professional thing to do, but they wanted me to go over and fix it. My new company had restrictions that prevented me from doing so, so I told them I could only provide limited assistance. Their answer? They believed what I was saying was a bunch of crap and the second to the last signature required on my clearance was signed hoping that as friends, I would go the extra mile.

Such a comment was said in an outburst and might have been reasonable to them given the circumstances, but it was still unacceptable. And in any case, it is a wrong assumption to bring up the clause of friendship for business. Even now, I'm at a loss on how they arrived at such a conclusion. So if it's to each his own now, I'm going to defend the honor of my company. Because so far, they've proved they deserve it more.

So I played along, even talked to someone who might be able to help and a demo was scheduled. Took several days before I even got a realistic date, but at least it's on. Two days from now. They've been throwing petty distractions at me like, "Oh, where's your key?" and "Hey, the evaluation for the first half is done. You'll get some extra cash if you make yours.", just so they can prolong the discussion. I cannot count how many times I've said to myself, "Yeah, whatever. Can we just finish the important matters first?"

I now know what I have to do. Demonstrate that it works. Get them to say that my clearance will be released upon seeing it work. Hope for the best. If the best doesn't come and in its place the worst, then it's time to burn bridges.

I officially want nothing to do with your company or its people again.

Blood boil

I really need to rant.

Working for government sucks. Separating from a government agency, even more.

I had resigned about 45 days ago, but still, when I visited a while ago, my clearance was still not signed! Why? I haven't the vaguest why. According to the staff, I had some sort of requirement that was not submitted, yet not a single person from their organization could point it out. Neither did anyone inform me of anything. If this is regarding new problems they're experiencing in their network, I don't give a bull's ass. That's their problem.

The time records I had also made last December 2007 and January 2008 was lost, so instead of giving me options on how I could finish it, the staff just looked at me and said "we don't have a copy of your time records". I wanted to reply really badly with "Thank you for saying the f_cking obvious".

Awwww

Why, what is wrong? One of your toys no longer working? You've been bragging about it for years and now it's suddenly out of order, you cry for my name? My help, my talents and goodwill? Which you've spat upon all these years?

In the words of Tony Stark: You can't have it.

Big ass crock

You wretched animals. You accept my goodwill only to spit in my face. What in the universe makes you think that I am willing to spend my time, limited resources and talent for a free lunch? Further goodwill and benevolence from the bottom of my heart?

Yet you still grieve me by witholding money still rightfully mine due to a bureaucratic process. Had you continued to pursue the endeavor to make the process electronic and grabbed cock when facing the problems encountered, I would not be covered up to my balls in shit.

I even tried to help your sorry ass when it was not faring so well by seeking alternatives. Your solution? Write it on a sheet of paper, just as things have been done for hundreds of years. Welcome you toad, to the 21st century.

If worse comes to worst, you can have that shitload of cash. Just expect nothing more from me than scarcity.

Not if your life depended on it

I have epilepsy. For several years already, actually. I didn't ask for it, but heaven saw it fit to gift me with excessive neuronal activity in my brain. But I'm done complaining about my situation. I now see it in the words of William Ernest Henley:

"My head is bloody, but unbowed"

I'm taking medication for it though. Trileptal. The dosage has varied through the years, but I'm on the decreasing slope now. I still have to take it daily though, no very late night gimmicks and no getting up too quickly from bed upon waking up as my brain still thinks it's sleeping. In other words, college sucked.

Today, I went to Mercury Drug to buy some medicine. As I did throughout all my purchases, I took out my prescription note and money to pay. When it was my turn, the pharmaceutical attendant read my prescription and said "where's the other one?"

Me: What other one?
PA: The one for 600mg. This says 300mg.
Me: I don't have one. My doctor told me to just say I need the 600mg tablet because I need to cut it. My doctor put that note at the bottom. See?
PA: Cut it for what? It says here one and a half twice a day.
Me: Look at this. It's basic fractions. One and a half of 300 is 450mg, my morning dosage. To do that, I have to break this tablet into 4 pieces, which basically guarantees that a good part of it is wasted because you can't cut it cleanly without pulverizing it.
PA: I'm still not giving you the 600mg because--
Me: Call your manager. Now.
PA: (calls manager)
Me: Is it your policy to not give medicines that are not written in such a format as this?
Mgr: Yes
Me: Even if the person's life will depend on it in a few hours?
Mgr: (thinks)
Me: I guess not. What's your name?

At that point, the manager just signaled to the assistant to get me the medicine. They saw it as just another person who walked away with a bunched of tablets. I walked away with my life.

Super villains

"You aren't given respect, you earn it."

So many times I've heard that phrase, yet I've consistently taken the hard way. It's not in your credentials, it's not how many toys you have, it's not who your parents were. It matters not how rich your are, what your position is in the company, or if you ride a Kawi 250. It's not about trying to please everyone either (you do that, you're everyone's b***h).

Sometimes however, getting that respect is like shooting a piece of paper a mile away with a Super Soaker 50. No matter how hard you try to be pleasant and professional, some people will act like brats because they want to be the star, not you. They want to stay in the limelight. They want other people to see that they're better than you because they got there first, they're older, or they've marked their territory and you're a threat.

I guess I'm at a point where people think I've outstayed my welcome or outlived my purpose. Maybe that's why I'm so at peace to leave. And so I leave what I called "my office" with the bitter thought below, paraphrased from Spiderman.

"And they found you amusing for a while, the people here. But the one thing they love more than a hero is to see a hero fail, fall, die trying. In spite of everything you've done for them -- eventually -- they will hate you."

I achieved hero status when I started. It was good while it lasted. Now, I'm just another staff member who quit after the expected three-year turnover in this office, just like my predecessors. And yes, they go into greener pastures and achieve greatness. Maybe that's where Green Goblin was right in the end, "why bother?"

I digress

It's so hard to do something that requires considerable focus when all of a sudden you have to explain the basics to someone whose job it is to know such things. It's frustrating, downright a waste of time, and completely sidetracks you.

New things, I believe, should be introduced with a fair amount of detail. Things like what it is, how it fits in our lives and what applications it has all deserve some explanation time when being introduced. However, if that something is new to someone because of their ignorance, that's an entirely different matter.

Being completely oblivious to something already there for the last 10 years in one's field is just another way of saying you refuse to adapt to changes that would make your work better and help you do things smarter. Adaptation to change prevents one from moving into irrelevance and extinction, but when I think of it, I won't mind if some people end up in a natural history museum.

Dance around like an old fat sow

I started working at 2:30pm today. Yeah, 2:30 in the freakin' afternoon! Thanks a lot PLDT. Your services are as impressive as a sneeze trying to uproot a tree.

When I arrived today at work, I was informed by one of my colleagues that a technician arrived earlier and went back to get a new modem. Okay. He arrived about half an hour later with two units identical to our modem.

After fiddling around with our modem, he came to the conclusion that the reason was that the DHCP service on the modem was disabled. (For non-tech people, the DHCP service gives your PC an Internet address so you can go online and take quizzes on Facebook)

Being a network administrator for the past 4 years, I took a few moments to ponder that thought, then my brain said "BS in its purest form". He took a couple more hours trying to make up excuses (and in the process got intimidated by Mac OS X's terminal -- saying he preferred the "old style", Windows). Finally, around 2:30, he quit and told me he'd endorse it to the ISP's "techier" guys, whatever the hell that is.

Some people totally loooooove BS. I bet if there were pools built for that, they'd be wading there like old fat sows.

Give me some double dutch

I'm sad. Lately, I haven't gotten much respect from my colleagues. Not because I did something wrong or scandalous, but for reasons I believe to be unfair. And when I'm sad, I buy good food to console my tortured soul. Give me some double dutch.

So today...

I was programming when I got to the office and making existing code prettier. It's a normal thing. To get more things done in the same amount of time, I have to either work harder or smarter. Given the choice between something that is a matter of laziness or stupidity, I'd go for the former. Better a lazy genius than a hard-working idiot.

Then out of nowhere, I get a notice that we have to set up videoconferencing equipment just for the plain purpose of testing if the equipment works. There's two things that came to mind here:

1. Technology has never been on our side. Even management admits this. We do all the trials we want in practice and get it right every time. When it comes to the actual implementation, a myriad of problems crop up.
   
   
2. It's one thing to test if you've never done this, but if this has been done over 30 times, that's another issue. Our office has only one web developer. One. The rest who dabble in it are a far cry. And it's a smart thing to expect that developer to do the same as someone who is actually competent in setting up online conferences? Further on, is it also logical to blame that person for the problems encountered when they do happen? Ever heard of Judas, you pig?

Unfortunately, we weren't able to solve the problem that cropped up. So after getting blamed and gotten a "you're worthless" look, I just contemplated in silence with my other developer colleague. After all, how much should you expect from two programmers when it comes to corporate video conferencing?

If I've learned anything at all, it's that our management doesn't know how to take care of its IT people. The said people are treated no differently than utility people, even though as few as they are, they can hold up many systems in the organization -- equipment, offices, initiatives, programs. As long as such abuses are tolerated, I doubt that its core business will flourish the way they want.

Office politics

Geeks don't get political. We don't like that. We leave people to do what they have to in areas of administration, management, operations and such. As much as possible, we want to be sitting in our comfy chair, looking at an IDE writing code.

So when I got to the office today (and after putting my job down), I got a call from an officemate demanding to know why I didn't go to work over the weekend. Now, there's a thousand reasons I could give and they still wouldn't give a rat's ass, so I decided to hear everything they had to say while checking my email on my iPod.

The talk was brief (or so I thought -- I was able to read about 6 emails -- I wasn't really listening), but the tone of voice was intense. Annoyed that we didn't help them "sign in and make a call" in Skype, they unleashed a flurry of complaints about our absence. Seems that people who don't want to help themselves and prefer to be spoonfed will never get anywhere. They won't die because of it (unlike in the Stone Age where you get scalped by a sabertooth tiger for your stupidity), but they won't share in the equivalent of battle glory today.

Metaphorically

I'm going to engage in a bit of wordplay today...

I work in an institution where the definition of "beyond the call of duty" is defined as "performing a task that is usually well out of your area of expertise ignoring risk to property damage or grossly inefficient use of employee time using reasons like 'the higher-ups need it', 'we need to impress our visitors', or 'you seem to always have an idea how to solve things so you do it'."

Let's break that down. The phrase originates from the military, where terms like "call of duty" or "duty calls" refers to something ranging from unpleasant (e.g., patrolling at unholy hours) to dangerous (e.g., going to war), but has to be done because they were trained to do it and they took an oath to do it even if it meant death.

Mixing "beyond" in that phrase obviously refers to doing more than what is usually expected. It can be in quantity (e.g., doing extra hours on patrol) or quality (e.g., improvising a contraption so it can take one away from a dangerous situation or save lives). In any case, the key is doing something that surpasses the requirements considerably.

Going back to my office, this phrase seems a far cry from the original context. It has been continuously abused to bring glory to one's self for something they thought was not part of their job because it was not listed in their job description or somebody else in the organization has started doing a huge bulk of it and they "led that effort".

I'm not impressed though. Things change. Therefore, doing something in the same manner for the next decade isn't going to get one anywhere. It's going to be a matter of adapting to these changes and integrating them into one's mindset. So when crunch time comes and things require going beyond the call of duty, I think it'll be pretty clear who's going out into the field and who gets left to guard base camp.

Dumb and dumber

I'm not obliged to help you. Yes, I'm good with computers and you're students in this university, but it is not my problem if you're using f****d up software that messes up your PC. A lot of stuff in school goes around responsibility so if you aren't responsible, bad things will happen. Not because some staff member didn't answer your email, so stop making excuses!

And for you people asking me install email client software. If you can install your ridiculous screen savers that have malware, you can install Mozilla Thunderbird. You do not need to go through 7 years of web development or system administration to figure out what's written on your screen. Yeah sure, you'll need help if it's your first time to see a computer, but if you're still asking dumb questions until now, you have a problem.

Civil engineer Jec

Ah, no. Maybe just a construction guy.

Just after the qualitative seminar (where I was a participant, but turned into a Macgyver-all-around utility guy), I was asked why the hell the Internet connection cable had to go up to the rooftop. Our connection was an aerial one, so I explained that was the only point visible from the other building that could get into the hall. Instead of inquiring what else could be done to improve the "invisibility" of the cable, we got hit with this:

"What do we do?"

"Well sir, the ideal setup would be to drill a hole from on that side and protect it with a PVC pipe."

"Okay, so you guys drill a hole."

Right. I'm a friggin' programmer, not some dude with a mini jackhammer! But if you want a hole so bad, give me about two hours and I'll walk to the rail line, get a huge nail and a circus hammer, then start pounding on the east side of the building. Sorry if the hole isn't perfect, gets a bit large or looks like a baseball-sized diamond flew from the moon.

And the ranting continues

Let me see. Network engineer => Technician => Utusan.

Get one thing straight. I'm a programmer. I build software. Occasionally, I will do some other things like edit photos, transfer files to another server, build a server, or set up an Internet connection. But it's not because that's my job. It's because I refused to be an ignorant fool like yourself. It's because I chose to learn something that will help me work independently and smarter. It's because I understand that job qualifications aren't just something you put on a sheet of paper to fill it.

YAAFM

I just need to let this out because it's bad for my health to keep this anger inside me.

What the hell is your problem?! Just because I'm a tech guy, I'm supposed to fix your computer, even if you were irresponsible, negligent and downright careless in using it? Following that line of reasoning, if you stuck a knife into your pantry's outlet and got third-degree burns, should the electrician be at fault for putting such a hazardous device in your office?

Computers, just like your table or cabinet, are assigned to you. You're supposed to take care of them in the same manner that you keep your table clean and your cabinet organized. It is not the IT department's fault if you get a virus because you keep cancelling virus updates or scans. It is neither the IT department's fault if Microsoft kills your office suite program because you bought counterfeit software just so you have the convenience of using software you were used to.

One more thing. It is none of your freaking business as to what reasons are behind my resignation. So don't go around, asserting that just because you have a high position, you have the right to demand why I am resigning as if I was supposed to fax you the reasons a week ago. Besides, you damn well know why I am resigning. Given the choice between removing viruses from your PC and programming fun applications, I'd rather do the latter. Go get some novice PC enthusiast to clean up what you were to ignorant to do. You are a f*cking moron.

Test post from iPhone

If people don't want to eat something, the only way your getting food in their mouth is through blackmail or a gun.