My life seemed perfect during the summer of 2000. I had a great job, a great relationship, I was painting, I was selling paintings, I was writing. Life was good. I think we all go through these good times without knowing. I too did not know, how good I had it.
After the acquisitions, the crazy NY client project with the crazy unruly HC team, I could not see past all this noise to realize how good I had it all this time.
One day my technical lead walks into my cubicle and asks me to come to his room. Go figure, as the project manager I did not have a room to myself but my tech lead did. Also strange was the fact that my tech lead was my manager because I was a senior engineer in the SAPE corporation and he was the head of the tech team but I also was the project manager so I was supposed to be his boss too. Are you getting a headache yet? No wonder SC fucked up so bad eventually, how can a company be run with these circular hierarchies??
Anyhow, I get asked into his room and he starts to tell me about this new initiative SAPE has kicked off. They are planning to take several HC employees from the Austin office and relocate them to New York City offices. This was being done in an effort to transfer the rich media expertise we had in such abundance to the New York City offices that were in need of these capabilities. It all sounded great but I failed to see the connection between all this and myself. My life was already consumed by my ever-so-slowly tanking project, I could not see past it or think that there could be something else for me to do other than run this project.
And sooner than you know, it is taken away from you; the innocence is lost. With that one sentence he said to me, it was taken away from me, even before I agreed to it openly. He said that it did not matter if I was currently assigned to a project as a project manager, I still could be relocated to NY and also get to do what I liked doing --technology.
It seemed tempting, it seemed like the right thing to do, it also frightened me. I have never been the one to take plunges into major changes in my life. So to some point I was completely terrified and partially in a state of denial. Over the course of the next two weeks after much consideration, a prolonged over-analysis, and consultations with my partner, my parents, my best friends the writing was on the wall. I had to go; it really was not much of a choice.
The Austin office was being sized down, it was obviously we all could be laid off any minute now. The pressure of the possible future layoffs, the tanking morale was taking its toll and working at the Austin offices was becoming a pain. In the middle of all of this corporate drama, I was a foreigner who was on a H1-B visa which means I am allowed by the INS to work for a company for a specific period of time.
An H-1B worker can not work for anyone else other than the approved sponsor company. He can not have any others sources of income in the US. He also is approved for employment for a maximum of 6 years of employment in the US after which he has to leave for a complete year and stay out of the US for this period of time. After this leave of absence, he may return to the US for another six years of the same type of visa. Complete bullshit if you ask me. It never made sense to me, and I think it never will.
So the NY office presented the chance to stay longer with SC and created a chance that they might get me a green card eventually.
So the choice was made. I was moving to New York City...
Category :
My experience in project management has left me quite disgruntled about the whole team dynamics, communication patterns and people in general. It seems that though people are smart, productive and constructive on their own when you put a bunch of these people into the same room all hopes go out the window.
I am not sure where my hopes went as a project manager; surely not out the window because our windows were sealed shut as we were in a fancy high rise building: 800 Congress in Austin Texas. My coworkers and I from Top Marks Productions(TMP) had been moved to this partially empty office filled with bitter memories of HC's first cut & clear project failure of mass proportions: the Smart & Big prototype. It was a proof of concept project made for a educational software publisher startup. I am not too familiar with all the intimate bitter details of the engagement but let's say the couple broke up before they were able to conceive any kids with the correct count of chromosomes.
So here we were in this fancy new office space, and it seemed like our life had immediately improved. Most of my coworkers spent their days surfing the net and plotting what they would do with the pay-increase. I was re-assigned to a huge project working closely with Ally Jackson, my boss from TMP.
Working with Ally was great, and we understood each other. However, Ally and I were the only TMP members on the project team, the rest of the team which by Fall 2000 had grown to more than 15 people were HC'ers. It seemed that HC'ers were taught to disobey project management, misbehave in meetings, just rebel against authority with or without reasons at any given time. This was almost a core value that was respected and encouraged in HC; the employees always had the right to throw a hissfit or if not that a 3 year old tantrum.
The whole six months I was on that project, I spent less and less time with the team and more and more time with my estimation sheets, paper trail, the contract, meeting with Ally. Some of this was the demands of the project, but I must admit most of it was my general fear/hatred of having to deal with the childishness of the HC people. So the rift between the project management and the team kept growing and I just could not bring myself to admit I had to do something; I thought I was fine, who could blame me? And if they did they could look at the tens of excel spreadsheets, the Microsoft project files, the 30 page client contract and admire my work.
The truth was out there, no matter how much paperwork I piled on it. I sucked as a project manager and what was worse was I did not feel the need to actually make it better. There are moments in our lives where we realize we're doing something we CAN do but is not meant for us to do; and we want to stop. We want to stop and pull out, pick the train up from the track and move it to the adjacent one; hell, sometimes I want to put the train on the green slopes without any tracks and see what happens...
I was nearing that point, I was dreading showing to work every day. I was dreading asking a team member to do something for me; mostly because every time I asked them to do something they would always come up with an alternative but not necessarily better and/or more efficient method of doing it and kept insisting on it until I caved. You see it was not about getting work done, it felt like they were trying to break me.
While my life at work seemed like it was completely falling apart, my life outside of work was as good as it had ever been. I was in an amazing relationship with someone who did not ask all the wrong questions, did not answer all the wrong questions. He could truly be counted on; he was someone who could actually calm me down. It is my personal belief that he has got to be the human equivalent of a deserted misty pine forest on the skirts of Zigana (A peak located on a series of mountains in North Eastern Turkey).
I am not sure where my hopes went as a project manager; surely not out the window because our windows were sealed shut as we were in a fancy high rise building: 800 Congress in Austin Texas. My coworkers and I from Top Marks Productions(TMP) had been moved to this partially empty office filled with bitter memories of HC's first cut & clear project failure of mass proportions: the Smart & Big prototype. It was a proof of concept project made for a educational software publisher startup. I am not too familiar with all the intimate bitter details of the engagement but let's say the couple broke up before they were able to conceive any kids with the correct count of chromosomes.
So here we were in this fancy new office space, and it seemed like our life had immediately improved. Most of my coworkers spent their days surfing the net and plotting what they would do with the pay-increase. I was re-assigned to a huge project working closely with Ally Jackson, my boss from TMP.
Working with Ally was great, and we understood each other. However, Ally and I were the only TMP members on the project team, the rest of the team which by Fall 2000 had grown to more than 15 people were HC'ers. It seemed that HC'ers were taught to disobey project management, misbehave in meetings, just rebel against authority with or without reasons at any given time. This was almost a core value that was respected and encouraged in HC; the employees always had the right to throw a hissfit or if not that a 3 year old tantrum.
The whole six months I was on that project, I spent less and less time with the team and more and more time with my estimation sheets, paper trail, the contract, meeting with Ally. Some of this was the demands of the project, but I must admit most of it was my general fear/hatred of having to deal with the childishness of the HC people. So the rift between the project management and the team kept growing and I just could not bring myself to admit I had to do something; I thought I was fine, who could blame me? And if they did they could look at the tens of excel spreadsheets, the Microsoft project files, the 30 page client contract and admire my work.
The truth was out there, no matter how much paperwork I piled on it. I sucked as a project manager and what was worse was I did not feel the need to actually make it better. There are moments in our lives where we realize we're doing something we CAN do but is not meant for us to do; and we want to stop. We want to stop and pull out, pick the train up from the track and move it to the adjacent one; hell, sometimes I want to put the train on the green slopes without any tracks and see what happens...
I was nearing that point, I was dreading showing to work every day. I was dreading asking a team member to do something for me; mostly because every time I asked them to do something they would always come up with an alternative but not necessarily better and/or more efficient method of doing it and kept insisting on it until I caved. You see it was not about getting work done, it felt like they were trying to break me.
While my life at work seemed like it was completely falling apart, my life outside of work was as good as it had ever been. I was in an amazing relationship with someone who did not ask all the wrong questions, did not answer all the wrong questions. He could truly be counted on; he was someone who could actually calm me down. It is my personal belief that he has got to be the human equivalent of a deserted misty pine forest on the skirts of Zigana (A peak located on a series of mountains in North Eastern Turkey).
Category :
No matter what I do, wherever I go, I do not seem to fit anywhere. I grew up in Istanbul, Turkey, a wild, wild crazy wild city. I lived in the Levent neighborhood, a sort of wealthy, well educated part of town -- along with the privileged/rich people. My family is not rich but I guess they make enough. I have never been short on cash until I started maintaining my own balances in my late twenties. Now in the US, I live a poorer life but somehow it feels a lot more centered than my carefree life back at home. I think this is definitely one of the appealing points for me in terms of my existence in the US --my freedom and the struggle that goes with it.
Istanbul is eight hours ahead of Texas time, seven hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time. Right when it is time for me to go to bed over here, the people over there are just waking up. Needless to say this creates plenty of opportunities to have incoherent conversations between these two destinations. On the US side, I am fading as the late night hours roll, and on the Turkey side people have just jumped out of bed and have not even had the chance to wash their hands and have some coffee.
Conversations with my parents feel a lot like the weather; there are good days, there are bad days and then there are disaster days with tornados, and hurricanes with emotional casualties on both sides. I think my parents are just like the weather in NY, everything can be great for the first half of the day and then things can get mighty crazy all of a sudden. Many times I find myself tiptoeing my way through these perilous conversations trying not to trip over some word game, not to mention something that will remind them of an unpleasant event, not to make a single non-conversation related noise on my end (this usually results in my parents getting real paranoid that there's someone else in my apartment --the worst thing that can possibly happen to me according to them. We'll delve into this later.)
I believe that through the years I have developed an allergic reaction to my parents; its strength feels so beyond what simple bad feelings and arguments can create, it's almost a chemical reaction. They have been known to give me day long migraines and these days I can not find the strength to confront them on the phone, in e mail or in person. My parents have made an art of using their sorrow as a weapon to control me, my life, and my choices. My feelings of obligation make me unable to ignore what they do to themselves when I do something they do not like. So in many I guess you can say I am parent-whipped --big time. Or am I?
It is hard to find that comfortable sweet spot, where the desires/expectations of the family are met along with one's own wants and needs. It is a crazy maddening life consuming balancing act and I find myself in the middle of it all unable to find the energy to care. So what is wrong with me?
Istanbul is eight hours ahead of Texas time, seven hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time. Right when it is time for me to go to bed over here, the people over there are just waking up. Needless to say this creates plenty of opportunities to have incoherent conversations between these two destinations. On the US side, I am fading as the late night hours roll, and on the Turkey side people have just jumped out of bed and have not even had the chance to wash their hands and have some coffee.
Conversations with my parents feel a lot like the weather; there are good days, there are bad days and then there are disaster days with tornados, and hurricanes with emotional casualties on both sides. I think my parents are just like the weather in NY, everything can be great for the first half of the day and then things can get mighty crazy all of a sudden. Many times I find myself tiptoeing my way through these perilous conversations trying not to trip over some word game, not to mention something that will remind them of an unpleasant event, not to make a single non-conversation related noise on my end (this usually results in my parents getting real paranoid that there's someone else in my apartment --the worst thing that can possibly happen to me according to them. We'll delve into this later.)
I believe that through the years I have developed an allergic reaction to my parents; its strength feels so beyond what simple bad feelings and arguments can create, it's almost a chemical reaction. They have been known to give me day long migraines and these days I can not find the strength to confront them on the phone, in e mail or in person. My parents have made an art of using their sorrow as a weapon to control me, my life, and my choices. My feelings of obligation make me unable to ignore what they do to themselves when I do something they do not like. So in many I guess you can say I am parent-whipped --big time. Or am I?
It is hard to find that comfortable sweet spot, where the desires/expectations of the family are met along with one's own wants and needs. It is a crazy maddening life consuming balancing act and I find myself in the middle of it all unable to find the energy to care. So what is wrong with me?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)