Re: In the Trenches, A Bit of Venting

[David Handy <david -dot- handy -at- automsoft -dot- com>]

Unclebonsai:

I've never worked in a contract position, and your situation 
-- workload, organisation, office politics -- are obviously 
unknown to me. But I have a few questions that I hope might 
clarify things a bit. 
In no particular order, and in the context of your concern that 
your contract may not be renewed if your tech-writing 
colleague persists with spinning his wheels... 

*  Have you been given deliverables by your client? Are you 
meeting them? 
    Sounds like you're doing a good job for these guys. But 
how specific are your deliverables -- have you specific doc 
tasks or are you generally putting out fires? This leads to...

*  Were these deliverables given to you individually or to you 
and Mr MFA collectively? 
    If you're meeting your deliverables and you're not impeded 
by Mr MFA, then you're left maybe with a slowpoke as a 
colleague but no other major problems. If you and he are 
working together on common projects and he is slowing you 
down, you can act to change that. One (hopefully) non-
confrontational way to do that is to be proactive and (e.g.) 
propose a project plan that addresses his working preferences 
and yields genuine documentation results. This needn't be a 
matter of holding his hand, but of acknowledging him as 
colleague. 

    Ghosting that point is the matter of whether or not you have 
a manager who is in touch with the documentation issues and 
your workload. If you don't have someone like that, it's tough. 
But you gotta have someone to report into.  

*  Are you doing Mr MFA's work for him? 
    If the answer's Yes -- i.e. you're picking up his slack on a 
daily basis -- then you are absolutely entitled to raise it with 
him or with a manager. I like to think I'd raise it with him first, 
so that he can get himself organised without dragging his boss 
into it. You may be working with this guy for a while. But I 
don't know your situation and whether that's the best way to 
go. 
    If the answer's No, then you have less to sweat about. 

Speaking of which...
It sounds like you're very conscientious and naturally keen 
to keep your job. But if Mr MFA is happy, and his boss is 
happy, and your boss (the same person) is happy -- a lot of 
maybes I grant you -- then maybe you can sit back and enjoy 
it. This isn't the same as Andrew's exhortation that you should 
let this guy dig his own grave docs-wise. It describes a 
situation in which you can do your job well while not sweating 
your coworkers. 

Just my two cents.

dh
automsoft

PS I thought Bonnie Granat and Mike Bradley posted 
perceptively on this topic yesterday. I agree with Bonnie 
that Darwin doesn't or needn't apply in the office. Anyway, it's 
my experience that good managers know more about what's 
going on in their offices than we think. 




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