W2-Labor Camping

Over the past few weeks, it should be no news to my fellow associates at my current “day job” that I am in the process of firing my manager. The 30,000 foot reasons are these:

• I’m not a “real” developer. This new manager encourages me to learn about the technology behind a few very large-scale, high-profile applications. The programming language this technology uses is Java. The application servers are based on IBM or Apache Foundation technology—all of this is running on virtual machines with Sun Microsystems technology somewhere in the mix. This encouragement is disconnected from my years invested in Microsoft platforms. This is not his concern. He would dangle a statement like “real developers can work on more than one platform” in order to induce me into abandoning my Microsoft experience for at least a year, while I run out and prove to him that I am “real” developer.
• I am recalcitrant. When you wish to take the time to go further—and most of you don’t—what is really happening here is that I see no need to reveal one’s authority over another person unless it is absolutely necessary. This is because I am software developer. I am no longer a shopping mall employee (so can speak from years of gruesome experience). This new manager does not share this concept (with me). He is very quick to reveal the inequality between us and I fail to conceal my disgust with the situation. At bottom, for some reason—which I assume is extreme ignorance—this IT manager is not respectful to me. He does not seem to be maturely and adeptly concerned about losing yet another team member (we lost another guy a few weeks ago). He must know something about the world that I do not. Right: So let me go out in the “real world” (again) and see how I may bump my head.
• I need attention. There is a reason why software developers are offered perks in the workplace and this has little to do with feeding the bottomless egos of useless political appointees. My hard work represents a valuable technical asset to a professional organization. My physical presence in the workplace does not mean to represent sublime and pleasure-filled obsequiousness for the sake of meaningless ceremony and decorum. When you respect me, I respect you… you first: I will follow your lead by example—when you regard yourself as my leader. I believe that this attitude is the cure for one or more forms of cancer. Only time will tell…

Now before I even get deeper into this, let me pay my respects to any stereotypes about American males, led by Homer Simpson, being a bunch of lazy, yellow, three-fingered idiots. I’m not here to overcome that yellow whiz you call “wisdom.” I’m sitting here looking at eight fingers and two thumbs on these brown hands—I’m not here to make you see what I see. Let me appeal to more experienced people who know that American corporations are not famous the world over for their efficiency. In fact, in the woefully outdated book, Black Life in Corporate America, it is mentioned without much fanfare that American corporations don’t need to be efficient for historical reasons—featuring slavery. Remember that this country has traditionally been the land of plenty. It follows that certain, unnatural traditions of waste follow.

So when the World Trade Center was demolished, I dropped my thin, protective contractor armor and took a permanent position in the sluggish bureaucratic wastes that most large “professional” American organizations still offer. For the past three years, I was very fortunate and did not fall victim to any of the negative stereotypes about the “middle manager.” In fact, my previous managers consciously and explicitly sought to shield me from the people who would abuse my resources without premeditation. My old managers understood that developers need to think and write code—not attend meetings, obey commands and then write code and think in our spare time. But of late, my time has come. I am now working with a middle manager from Hades. And I am in the process of firing him. I’m inspired to Blog in the public eye about this because of Rory’s plug for Mini-Microsoft. Here is a quote from that Blog:

Middle management is the fertile ground in which bureaucracy and process and metrics flourish.

Let me share with you the highlights of my eight-finger, two-thumb thought process:

• On Planet Me—here in the rasx() context—the IT manager should address me in terms of the projects at hand. I believe that IT managers manage projects—not people. When an information technology authority figure gives me “an order,” they should know that their “command” has to be justified within the context of some project. When they are not concerned about making sure this justification is valid, they have entered the world beyond our scope.
• An IT manager must show some respect for my technical expertise, otherwise he or she has flipped my Bozo bit. The manager I have now is “stuck” with employees he inherited from two or three managers who have left the company (one left the world entirely by an untimely death). One of these inherited employees, me, specializes in Microsoft solutions to large, server-based problems. This new manager has made it clear to me that his ideas about Microsoft’s role in his enterprise is very limited. I’m sure he has different things to say to different people. Sure, he will use Office or Exchange server but he “encourages” me to learn how to set up an IBM application server on a Linux virtual machine in the Java world. He is trying to turn an experienced Microsoft developer into a J2EE newbie.
• Ultimately, an IT manager is a team-member enabler. The manager at present imposes obstacles in the form of 8:45am meetings and is generally talkative but non-communicative. The assumption here is that he is almost entirely ignorant of what Microsoft has been doing for the last three to five years and is uncomfortable with getting into a “technical discussion” with me because of this. He will use in his words “the best tool for the job” and these tools just happen not to be from Redmond Washington. But the irony is that all these Java developers work on Windows machines: I have tried to install Tomcat on two different Windows boxes and have failed miserably. Does such a failure reveal “the truth” about my melanized technical skills—or does this reveal that the JDK and/or Tomcat sucks in the Wintel world?

My promotion through the ranks with my current employer as a Microsoft guy seems unlikely with this “helpful,” middle-managing impediment. I am effectively left with the choice of letting my Microsoft experience wither with ‘limited’ use, while I “grow” under a “different platform” or selling my Microsoft experience under new management at a new location with a different employer. The feeling here is that I need to go for the higher profits to be had under Microsoft technology.

rasx()