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Structure vs. Rules

As part of my wrap-up at Floundering Non-Profit I had an exit interview with TemporaryBigBoss during which the fact that I had problems with Floundering Non-Profit’s lack of structure. TemporaryBigBoss laughed when he heard that I was going to the Federal government remarking that I would have plenty of structure as a Fed. I agreed with him at the time but it’s turning out that we were both wrong.

Structure is systemic. It is dependable processes that make sense allowing people to put their actions to certain events on automatic. They don’t have to think because they know if A then B. Structure has responsibility and accountability built in to it.

It is not filling out a form simply because it’s time to fill out a form. It’s not requiring your employees to account for every minute of their work days when they’re working from “an alternate location.” It’s also not telling your employees one thing, like that there is no overtime unless it’s pre-authorized, but then issuing them blackberries and expecting them to be constantly available. These are rules for the sake of rules, and the Fed has plenty of rules and not all of them make sense.

Starting in December the Department for which I work is requiring that every employee use a special badge with a chip in it to log into her computer. Digital certificates do provide more security than an id + password system particularly because it requires that users remember only an eight digit number which they theoretically picked specifically because it is memorable. So, no more forgetting your badge in your other pants and getting a temporary stick-on badge for the day from security.

And that’s fine. It is a government building and it’s the government’s computer equipment and systems which gives the government the right to control how its employees access those resources. It’s their right to set the rules for accessing their systems and facilities. What’s not taken into account with this new rule, what doesn’t consider the structure of the Department’s day to day business is the fact that if you are a new employee it takes 4-6 weeks after all your paperwork is in to get a badge with a chip in it.

Four to six weeks during which you will be unable to login to your computer, access your email, or get into any of the network systems you might need to do your job.

Rules are not structure.

Rockwell had no idea

You are being watched. You might think you aren’t but you are.

I’m not talking about security cameras of which there are an astounding number: Slate.com reported in 2010 on a five year-old study done by the New York Civil Liberties Union which counted 4,176 in Manhattan below 14th street. That’s 4,176 concentrated in one-sixth of the island. The same Slate.com article reported “The initiative [in NYC] is based on London’s Ring of Steel, which launched in the 1990s in response to IRA bombings. Britons may be the most videotaped people on earth. London has some 500,000 security cameras, while Great Britain as a whole has about 4 million.”

Think about that for a minute: that’s 4 million cameras in an area smaller than the state of Oregon. Security cameras aren’t just the province of big cities any more. Speed cameras, toll booth cameras, even cameras at the fast food drive through can all be used to observe your movements. But this isn’t what I mean when I say “you’re being watched.” I mean something even more insidious. I’m talking about your filter bubble.

Wikipedia defines the filter bubble as “…a concept developed by Internet activist Eli Pariser in his book by the same name to describe a phenomenon in which websites use algorithms to selectively guess what information a user would like to see based on information about the user like location, past click behavior and search history. As a result websites tend to show only information which agrees with the user’s past viewpoint.”

Pariser’s book and website provide more insight into not only how Google and other entities track your behavior online but how the smallest interaction with an add, link, or seemingly unrelated site can accrete to form what may or may not be an accurate picture of who you are and how that picture will influence in the future what messages you see.

Contemplate an Internet where ads pop up on unrelated sites simply because you visited a merchant’s website at some point in time.

Or how about a world in which search isn’t neutral but tailored specifically to what the algorithm thinks you want to see.

Imagine a political campaign where the messages are so micro targeted that you never actually get a full picture of the candidate’s positions, only message tailored to your interests designed to sell the candidate to you.

I didn’t notice the filter bubble in effect until after I read Pariser’s book but once I started looking for it I could see it everywhere: when I search for political topics or news stories Google serves me results from particular sources slanted toward what I normally read online and quite often those results are neither the freshest or most complete; when I visit a merchant’s website invariably that merchant’s advertising shows up on other sites powered by Google ads; and then there is the fact that Google reads my gmail.

Over the weekend I emailed a friend/former coworker to follow up on a remark she made to me while we were socializing at dinner on Friday. She highly encouraged me not to just quit my demeaning, frustrating job at which I have been totally marginalized and specifically told that I am not allowed to use anything but the barest range of my skill set. No, she said, make sure you have some place to go to before you leave.

Since there was beer involved, and since I am completely exhausted pretty much all the time now, I wasn’t thinking as quickly as I should so Saturday morning this is part of what I wrote to her:

My point about “just away,” which I was not expressing well thanks to the uberpils, is that if I were in a romantic relationship where I was being gaslighted (I don’t remember things correctly), jerked around (No, I can’t have a clear definition of my role.), marginalized (So, my work assignments are things that no one gives a cr*p about and that offer no value to the American public thereby negating the whole idea of “public service.”), patronized (I’m supposed to take career and technical direction from people that don’t understand the fundamental principles of web communications? Seriously?), and just generally aggravated (I wasn’t kidding: I’ve woken up angry and thinking about work every. single. morning. for the past month. This sh*t is getting old.) on this scale no one would be saying to me “Don’t leave until you’ve found someone else to be with.”

Right after I sent that message gmail served up this advertisement:

Now tell me, how long do you think it’s going to be before I start seeing ads for relationship counselors all over the Internet? I suspect I’ll start seeing them sometime within the week.

If you’re interested in searching where you aren’t tracked try duckduckgo.com or learn visually about how your filter bubble works.

Blog title gleefully swiped from Rockwell’s 1984 single “Somebody’s Watching Me“

Eating the strawberry

Human beings are not known for our ability be present. Nor are we known for our ability to see details. We do not approach situations with beginner’s mind – that state of possibilities rather than knowledge.

We tend instead to cling an imagined, romanticized version of the past; we call this nostalgia. We tend to anticipate and extrapolate based on previous experiences which may have only the slightest bit in common with a situation in which we find ourselves. And it is these two actions – clinging and extrapolating – that often cause us to make the worst decisions.

For the past five and a half months I have been working at a job that I loathe. It’s not particularly onerous as jobs go: my life is never in jeopardy while working; my boss isn’t physically abusing me; and I am paid a decent wage for the hours I am expected to work. But other than money, which in this economy is not something to be rejected, this job provides absolutely no rewards:

  • The work is not interesting.
  • I have no autonomy or control over my work flow.
  • I’ve repeatedly asked to use a broader portion of my skill set even going so far as to volunteer to take on massive responsibilities only to be told no because the skills I want to use do not fit management’s narrow definition of my job duties.
  • The physical working conditions are inherently dismal with no privacy, no ventilation, and no access to natural light.
  • My expertise, that for which I was theoretically hired, is consistently disregarded in favor of decisions, when decisions are made at all, that risk nothing and benefit only the few.
  • My bosses’ management style is not management so much as a series of conflicting games with ever changing rules.
  • In the five and a half months I’ve been there five people have left for other jobs

Because of this not merely lack of reward but soul sucking despond, I have found myself lately looking back on my previous job with loving longing and good feelings something for which I have roundly slapped myself.

My previous job at FlounderingNonProfit was filled with conflict:

Once there was a monk being chased by a group of tigers. The monk ran and ran until he found himself at the edge of a cliff. When he looked over he saw a ledge but it held another group of tigers. Then the monk noticed a perfect, ripe strawberry growing in the grass. He reached down, picked it, and ate it.

I am a firm believer in the theory that my job is not my life but because I am so miserable for so many hours in the day my job is taking over my life substituting seething anger at Management’s audacity and SeniorManagement’s inability to see Management’s incompetence for relaxation and enjoyment of my hobbies. Creativity sailed out the window months ago as is clearly evidenced by the gaps between, and the one note theme of, these essays.

My last job was not perfect but it provided me with some intangible rewards I was unaware previously how much I value, and it is those rewards and that value that incline me to ignore its conflicts and to cloak that time in a haze of nostalgia.

The challenge is to see through that nostalgia and to figure out how to apply what I value – autonomy, broad range of tasks that allow me to solve problems creatively instead of just enforcing management’s whims, flexibility in my schedule along the order of “your job is something you do, not necessarily some place you go,” and access to natural light – to not only the job search but to the rest of my life.

The concurrent challenge is to figure out how to be present and eat the strawberry.

Thank you, but no

Yesterday evening I walked away from a “final interview” for a job that while it would have underpaid me both based on my market value and based on my inflated Federal salary would have allowed me to work within walking distance of my house, at home part of the time, in casual clothes, and for an organization for which I already provide my support with my donor dollars. Why?

A combination of existing circumstances and simple ethics.

Monday I had my “mid-year” (read: I’ve been there 4.5 months but this is the time when mid-year review forms are do so check, check, check off that box we must) at LoathsomeJob during which UberDirector wanted an “honest assessment of my time in the department.” What I told her:

  1. All of my co-workers have been very nice and great in helping me get oriented.
  2. I’m working with co-worker K. on getting more familiar with our blast email system and we’re getting some templates in place to make those communications more useful to subscribers.
  3. I’m having difficulty adjusting to working with so many people after coming from a small organization.
  4. I’m an introvert so I do not thrive a culture that includes regular, large group meetings. I’d much rather meet with people informally or in a small group.
  5. I don’t understand why the non-web communications staff feels the need to bounce around like a pinball inside a super collider when it comes to deadlines.
  6. I am used to having more autonomy when it comes to getting my tasks done.

Those last two garnered excuses:

  • non-web communications staff have very demanding jobs and that’s both “just the system” and “just how Communications people work.” I responded by saying that a system is really just the people in it and if you want to change the system just change the way the people behave and also that I spent 5 years working in multi-national non-profit that required our press and print communications staff to consult with our international office and regional offices around the globe on a daily basis to coordinate multiple external communications events and that I’d never seen a comms staff function in this way.
  • UberDirector “has been very concerned because” I’m used to “operating on my own and making all the decisions.” For this I allowed as how I understood that there was a decision hierarchy and that I wasn’t objecting to lack of final authority but that I was used to getting a goal and parameters on achieving that goal and being trusted to apply my skills and experience without a lot of supervision, and, frankly, that hadn’t been my experience over the past few months of how things operate in our group. Then I gave her a specific example from the previous week that clearly illustrated how her meddling got in the way of efficiently achieving a goal. Well, that’s “just how things are here.”

All of that said, they wanted to know how I wanted to “shape the job to” me rather than just having me “mold to the job and the environment.” Using more of my technical skills is out because “we have certain contracts that restrict what people can do.” and that just letting me work on two sites, even though the workload would be tremendous and would be something I’d enjoy, “wasn’t really feasible right now.” I was, however, encouraged to get training so let me extend my thanks to the American taxpayer for the user experience design training for which you are about to pay. But all in all I walked out of my “mid-year” feeling a little bit like the person who had beat the crap out of me on Friday night had just given me two dozen roses on Monday afternoon.

It’s in this environment that I walked away from potential out.

I had a phone interview last week that was scheduled for 15 minutes. It ran for forty. Admittedly, I enjoyed hearing more about the organization’s plans and the job and how I might fit in but that doesn’t change the fact that the time used was nearly 200% over what was requested. That was my first clue.

My second clue was that even after telling this man that I worked downtown and that I’m in the process of getting ready to leave town on vacation he suggested a second interview time of 3:00 pm on the day before I leave. That would have required a minimum of 2.5 hours of either sick or annual leave for me to be on time. It took us about half a day to arrange for a 6pm on Wednesday interview.

The final straw, though, was about 25 hours before my scheduled interview getting an email asking me to provide a “…sample online assessment/audit or strategic online/new media plan for which you were the main author, and for you to review your approach, what you discovered, how you helped the organization, what tactics you used, etc. Do you have any such document that you could share with me ahead of time?”

While I understand that if you’re hiring someone who is going to help you evaluate not only your web communications systems but your internal systems you would want to see process documents, requesting that information at what is effectively the eleventh hour indicates to me that this gentleman and I have fundamentally different approaches to project management, or indicates a certain manipulativeness on his part. At this point in time I am prepared to deal with neither of those as individual possibilities nor both of them in combination.

Also, the end product of about 95% of my portfolio is public facing work, and while I’m happy to step through those projects and describe starting points, goal formation, assessment processes, and the operating strategies that enabled the projects to succeed, even if I could pull those documents together into an interview worthy package on such short notice that someone would ask to see proprietary work product documents produced for another, local organization seems inappropriate to me and indicates a basic business ethics incompatibility.

I am willing to admit that I may be oversensitive to manipulation at this point but really, am I not the one who would have had to live in the job? If I’m going to be miserable, it should at least be lucrative.

And if turning down this interview was a mistake, well, at least it’s my mistake.