The Perfect Position - A Wish List

“If you want to build a ship don’t herd people together to collect wood
and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them
to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

– Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I'm discovering that I'm not an engineer in the same vein that many seem to commonly use that term. I'm probably in the top half – on a good day perhaps even in the top quarter – of networking-specific technologists in my area. It doesn't bother me to have met many I consider better. I keep them in the back of my mind when I need to vet an idea or problem. Or one day hire them. I can stand out well enough technically, but my own selling point is different:


I start with the technology, but my interest is in the whole picture. I've solved small problems while buying time and experience to understand the bigger ones: technical, organizational, financial, so that when those problems mature I will have the solutions my company needs. I am restless, impatient and move quickly in identifying and implementing solutions. What I want is a sustainable, scalable, successful product or service.

I'm not satisfied in complete abstraction from the technical because it detracts from the holistic view. And I'm not satisfied in confinement to some small part of the technical. This presents a niche category where I am worst at incremental improvements in a limited, predictable role, and best with environments in crisis, ambitious projects, and having to adapt in a number of uncomfortable ways to get the job done. The challenge to bringing order out of chaos and something from nothing is a prerequisite of chaos and incompleteness and the political will to change it.

Energy

Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory.

-George Patton

Some time ago I read an article in the Harvard Business Review that recommended you should Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time. I have found that when I have done above and beyond it is where I have maintained excitement and intensity. There it was easy to do so. Where I have been adequate and unimpressive is where that energy has been steadily eroded and where I've competed in very narrow confines. Knowing my time is finite, I am learning to run from the latter and to identify where I am likely to keep my initial intensity. Finding work which will leverage and cultivate your energy is not an easy task.

I have found that my first week at a company is a good predictor of the rest of my time. I always begin by looking for some way to ensure that I have contributed. At a consulting company, I was billable my first week. At a service provider I was doing discovery for a failed datacenter to support my colleagues who went on-site. At one place, desperate for some small victory of pride, if it meant getting hammer and nails to hang a white board, I did it for my own sake -- and I left not long after.

The Mission

“It’s all about finding and hiring people smarter than you. Getting them to join your business. And giving them good work. Then getting out of their way. And trusting them. You have to get out of the way so YOU can focus on the bigger vision. That’s important. And here’s the main thing, you must make them see their work as a MISSION.”

– Sir Richard Branson

The ideal workplace ought to have a clear mission its people get behind. This can take the form of:
1) Doing something necessary and beneficial in the world
2) Creating something new and noteworthy in the world

Absent (or complementing) this, the tasks represent:
1) New challenges and responsibilities for me; something I haven't done before
2) Greater risk of failure and reward; a crisis to manage

In each case, there must be:
1) A personal investment for me; whereby I identify corporate success with my own

A paycheck and warm office seat is a poor substitute, even if it represents the necessary minimum in life. I need something more. I need the kind of purpose that makes you get out of bed in the morning eager to face what lies ahead at work, and that consumes your mind in your idle moments. I've had this when I did my best work.

Leadership

I really like to lead people. I brief them, I train them, I prepare them, I turn them loose on the world and am often very proud of them. I have found I can lead motivated people. I have led teams of up to five engineers at a time to accomplish specific goals. I have led groups of up to 30 in informal settings (teaching football, conducting choirs).

As much as I like the technical problems, I've enjoyed many non-technical challenges where people become organic tools and resources to solve those problems. You have to analyse them correctly, position them correctly, enable them and trust them to be effective. At an earlier place, as things ramped up I knew that the work would be too much for me and I was looking forward to putting together a team when the time came. I like knowing who I needed.

I see myself directing people and where there is a particular challenge or need, rolling up my sleeves and wading in with the team. I'd like to be the sort of manager who never asks what he isn't willing to do himself.

When I've trained others formally or when I've had to explain to others what we need to be doing and why, there is often a spark of connection that happens, where they "get it", where I know I've just enabled them, or filled in a long-standing gap in their understanding. This is pure joy.

People

I find I can't work in a vacuum. Telework is nice some days. Especially if you are sick and in the middle of something. Just knowing that, if the unexpected happens, you're not burning limited PTO. Flexible scheduling, or the ability to even set your own hours (work from office, work from home, work from the nearby restaurant) can be a godsend and very liberating.

But I have to be at the center of things. Telework amounts to a much needed, refreshing break. It's also a break from being surrounded by people, constantly faced with new and challenging situations.

I need to be taking in from people, and giving to others, face to face.

If I'm abstracted too much, too long I lose engagement. I've had very challenging stints supporting private contracts remotely -- I loved it -- but those were short and complemented my face-to-face, office daily job.

Motivation

I love leading people. I want to lead people. I am also intensely wary of positions labeled "management". And I'm nearly as happy being led by a good leader.

As much as I can't stand a paycheck as the primary motivation, I have an even harder time understanding those for whom it appears the only motivation, that is simply keeping it. I have no idea how to reach them. I hate threats. I hate workplace corrections. Were I to do it rarely, I could live with that. I would be miserable in any position where I had to do this regularly. It takes all the energy and intensity out of ambitious planning.

If I have to lead a number of others who don't have this motivation I have learned the value of lower level managers with thicker skin.

A wise manager, a long-time friend, commented that if you are a good engineer, a lot of management is learning to work with people who will never live up to your standard or want it themselves, and being able to use their ability nonetheless. It takes a toll on you because you will never be able to move as fast with a team as you were used to doing on your own.

The real possibility of being fired in a workplace yields some minimal guarantee that the lowest performers will not last long enough to severely demoralize others, but there has to be something more to energize others to perform: to encourage those at the bottom to come up and those at the top to stay.

Iron sharpens iron. I don't know many people who really want to work with the unmotivated. Everyone wants to do work that is enjoyable. We all perform best when its something we like.

This is where a corporate mission, a sense of purpose in which the employees feel personally invested is critical. Without that, you must do your best to find and convince your employees to see the tasks of their job as part of their personal (if temporary) mission.

Companies ought to recognize and reward contribution. I would say of the companies I worked with at least one did a fantastic job of recognizing good employees on its engineering teams. My experiences reflected particularly well the approach of my first-tier manager and his above him. He never once had to correct me, and I felt a strong desire to live up to his faith in me.

Political and bureaucratic barriers kill energy. A overarching mission, or an acute crisis can de-fang excess barriers to mobility and and reward quick, decisive thinking. Conversely, businesses or agencies that "cannot fail" have little incentive to curb the mountains of paperwork and process that drive capable people into frustration.

Pride in Ownership

I need to believe I own a significant part of the mission. If it is my network or project for one year or three, it is still mine, succeed or fail. If I'm simply step 4 in a 12 step team effort, or if my piece cycles through me and is out the door never to be seen again, this is not a good fit.

I like to make decisions and I like to enjoy the fruits of my good decisions. I like being around long enough to see others benefit from my good decisions. I like to feel the risk of having to live with and operate around the consequences should I make the wrong decision. These are powerful motivators. Without significant risk/reward of this kind, I'm operating in a vacuum.

I want to be the responsible party, at the top or close to it. I want my stamp on it when it is over. I want something to look back at and say "See, I achieved that! That there is my energy and thought poured in".

Work/Life Balance

I look at my work as an investment of myself, in myself. Work that necessarily ends at a given time, that is easily detached, isn't engaging. I like the feeling of being consumed by problems and surmounting them by sheer persistence and innovation. This makes me feel, energetic, and that energy naturally spills into everything else I do and who I become.

I'm not looking for work to become my life, but rather that work being an integral reflection of who I am should naturally exercise and leverage my most intrinsic strengths and passions. Exercise for the body, and exercise for the mind. Where work is pitted against life, that work dulls the mind.

I work best where there is bleed-through of the two. I like the flexibility being able to pack up and go home if there is an emergency. I like that with the best work, I'm thinking about it on the way to work, on the way home, during dinner, in my idle time at home when the kids are in bed. This is engaging work. I don't understand the 9-to-5 mindset where everything stops at quitting time.

My focus is on getting interesting tasks done in a way that gives me pride and satisfaction, which lasts beyond the current task or even company. I like not having to feel like I'm cheating the company by taking care of my family, and I like not feeling like I'm cheating my family by going above and beyond.

Flexible environments focused on performance and real-work achievement are the ideal.

Distractions:

My work pattern is obsessive, until it isn't. In the ideal role I have multiple projects, some high value, some mundane. I have enough and not too many of each. On high value, high-visibility projects I tend to dive in to the exclusion of all else, until I burn out and lapse into temporary apathy. But I've surrounded myself with more mundane tasks. When my energy starts to wane, I shift to the mundane tasks, the small accomplishments that I can complete and tick off to my satisfaction, and when I've tired with them, I'm rested enough to return to the bigger projects. Where I've done best I've had the freedom to shift my focus as needed with the net result being that my energy is maintained and my engagement undiminished.

I was designing datacenters. Needed refreshment came in the delivery of a box of cables to correct the spaghetti mess in one of my network closets. It was the best cabling job I did in my life, a source of pride, however trivial.

In each task, great and small, I had the sense that I was pushing my organization on, that tomorrow it was bettered positioned than today.

I work in fits: start-and-stop cycles of obsession and burnout, and the momentum is ever forward. Productive distractions make me more efficient; they allow me to relieve banality in one task by jumping to the next, allowing to return refreshed. I don't want to stop.

Diminishing Returns

My interest is in growth. For long projects the hardest part for me is always the easiest, final 10%. I like establishing the frameworks, the structure, setting things in motion, attacking the trouble areas. What I do here, I do to my satisfaction. Once it appears that work has achieved stability, sustainability -- that any other engineer can do it just fine -- I prefer to leave it to them and attack the next challenge. Often there isn't another engineer and your perfection needs to continue to the end. But I've learned the effectiveness in having someone to take over. And ideally for them, it's learning how to do it right until they too become the principal driver.

There is nothing like the adrenaline rush of feeling out of your depth, pursuing a problem. I will think long and hard, and find the right way out. The euphoria of solving a major problem is often muted by the banality of the minor incremental steps afterwards. This banality is easier to manage if my mind is rushing on to the next major problem.

Conversely, I may not make good manager of a stable environment.

My Creed

I've written this on every desk for the last four years:

marmoream se relinquere, quam latericiam accepisset

From Augustus Caesar. Effectively: "I gave back in marble, that which I received in brick (namely, Rome itself)." This is a reminder to myself that when I begin at a place I intend to leave whatever I touch in a better state than I found it.