Wednesday, February 02, 2005

Work sucks... no respect

I'm getting pretty sick of the work I'm doing now. I just had to write about this, as it has been on my mind for some time. Granted this has to be the 2nd most laid back IT job I've had. I have so many projects to work on, it drives me nuts. Actually, I should rephrase that... I love being on many projects and being s t r e t c h e d , but the problem is that most of my applications I support are support by me and me alone. No help! The worst part of this whole mess is the fact that I can't ask for 2nd opinions on bugs, tasks, ideas. I'm completely alone.

In my last job I worked for a rather large corporation... actually THE largest corporation in the world (you can figure that one out). While I was there I worked horrible hours and for huge amounts of time (60-80 hours per week). This job had ok pay, bad medical coverage, and other sub-par benefits. BUT, I do have to say that I was constantly innovative. I usually worked on the largest projects there... known as tranformation projects at that company. I had nothing but respect and people valued my ideas.

What really got me going today was someone asking everyone around me for help and not stopping by to ask me (let me finish the story so you know what I mean). This individual was asking different people around me for help. Sure I heard him, but I was so entrenched in my own dilemas that I figured if nobody helped him, then he may ask me. Well, he didn't and I'm not sure if he found an answer to his problem. But later at the end of the day another guy on my team, said "hey you should have asked Jonathan... he knows how to do that." And the guy flat out said no Jonathan doesn't know that..and can't help me. In to make me more upset, he had some questions earlier about some similar stuff and said the same thing about me not knowing it and didn't need my help.

Now, granted I feel like I've gotten remarkly stupid at this job since I do not stretch myself and a lot of the technology I use is out dated and what we do use is usually used in the not-so-best of situations. But come on,... over a year ago at my last job I had managers and directors begging me for my ideas... to come to their teams... to promote me to where I wanted to go. I wanted to move to Texas to be closer to family, which has been nice, but I'm getting sick of the lack of respect. I feel like I used to be somebody, and now I'm considered a "junior" developer at my new company. I'm sorry that designing the worlds largest company's single sign-on security system, corporate wide J2EE standards, rolling out 3 of the largest eCommerce web sites in ONE year, being one of 3 developers on the worlds largest employee portal systems, and not to mention a multitude of other corporate web sites wasn't enough. I'll go ahead and keep my "junior" developer title thank you!!!! While everyone else works their way up because they have "more years" in the industry than I (which for some reason this company thinks is more important than actual knowledge). I'll never figure that one out.

God I'm so pissed right now!!! I better stop before I start composing my sentences with nothing but 4-letter words.

3 comments:

Robin Alexa said...

I'm not sure if you are really upset about what you think you are upset about. Maybe you should really figure out why it bugs you so much that this guy didn't aske you for help. Does that make sense??

Jonathan said...

I really had to look at myself to figure this out. I THINK I was upset because I feel like I have a lot to offer. I used to help people a lot at my old job and that made me feel good. At my new company, my position doesn't put me in a place to really work with hardly anybody. So I usually jump at the opportunity to help where I can. Although, I'm afraid that the perception from people might be that I don't have much to offer since I have to work alone so much. I just don't want people to judge me but what I've had to do this past year and think that I don't know much.

Robin Alexa said...

Just let them know if they need any help they can ask you, and after a while they will most likely realize how much you can help, and how much you do know. Just my two cents which is a pretty basic approach but it should work! Good luck.