Re: Blue chip, bored, and biding time

[Kat Nagel <katnagel -at- EZNET -dot- NET>]

This sounds distressingly familiar.  This blue chip company
wouldn't be located in upstate NY, would it <g>?  Maybe not.
I guess all decaying bureaucracies eventually wind up at
this point.

A couple of suggestions:
1.  Reread Geoff Hart's message, especially the bits about
speaking up at meetings, finding an overworked techie and
making yourself useful, and leaving a paper trail of every-
thing you do while you're waiting for your own project.
Been there, done that, know it can work.

2.  If you can't get anyone on site to answer your questions
about your place in the department, find an outside source of
information. If you work through an agency, find an account
rep who has dealt with that department before.  Attend the
nearest meeting of a relevant professional association (STC
or WIC or one of the IEEE SIGs).  Network to find someone who
has worked with these people or with a closely related
department.  Ask what's going on with that group/department/company.


Geoff commented:
>>To me, it sounds like your real problem is that you're simply not
communicating well with the rest of the team. Solution? Sit down with
some of your colleagues or your manager over lunch, and ask them to
tell you what's going on. Buy someone lunch, if necessary; you
shouldn't have to go that far, but if the communication is that bad,
it'll be a great investment in figuring out what's going on. <<

Another possible source for the problem is internal politics.
Is this department under threat of reorganization or downsizing?  If
so, it might be difficult to find anyone who will speak honestly
onsite, even in the cafeteria or a nearby restaurant.  I've had good
luck asking colleagues and managers to meet me for breakfast
somewhere away from the typical company haunts.  People are much
more comfortable speaking freely when there's no chance a subordinate
or another manager may be listening on the other side of a cube wall.


Geoff again:
>>somebody somewhere has to have the original set of memos that
launched the project, unless you're living in a Dilbertesque
nightmare. (If that's the case, run, don't walk, for the door.)<<

Dilbert is popular with many of us because it's TRUE.  And
running isn't always an immediate option.

I had one project where I wasn't cleared for the specs or the
bug reports, couldn't see the prototype because 'the engineers
are working on it' and wasn't even on the distribution list for
the minutes of the project team.  The only way I could get any
information at all was to offer to type and copy the meeting
minutes. They got so tired of having me bug them to fill in the
detail ("I'm sorry; I wasn't there.  Did she complain about the
ferdigabble falling to pieces -before- or -after- the programmer
blamed the blodgett problem on the maintenance department?)
that they finally 'made' me attend the team meetings myself
<heh, heh>.

Once I started asking questions and making suggestions at meetings,
everyone loosened up and, as Geoff suggested, I wound up with more
work than I could handle.

Good luck.  And, if your blue chip company is a large multinational
megacorp headquartered in upstate NY, contact me offlist.  I might
be able to suggest better strategies for dealing with specific
personalities.


K@
katnagel -at- eznet -dot- net
Kat Nagel,            MasterWork Consulting Services
Technical writing | Editing | Conversions | Webstuff

"The transformation of calories into words, of words into money,
 and of money into calories again are the three cycles in a
 freelance writer's metabolism."  /Mary Kittredge, _Poison Pen_


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