Priorities
In response to Aozora's question, yes it is safe to ask my opinion of my day job. I really like my day job. I consider myself pretty lucky, but like every cube dweller there are good days/weeks/months and bad days/weeks/months. The good part of my job is the people I work with in IT. The bad part lies outside of IT, this is not to say there aren't good parts out there just that there are no bad parts in IT (or very few).
The "badness" started last week when someone over in marketing asked me why I wasn't working on his project. I told him that someone else in marketing had told me that a piece of that project was on hold and so I thought we were both waiting on the third guy. He then chewed me out for not telling him that the other parts of the project were on hold and then basically told me I needed to keep working on the other parts. I told him that I had plenty to keep me busy, and so when one part of a project was put on indefinite hiatus, then the whole project was going to end up getting less attention and a lower priority, and I was going to move on to focus on more time sensitive stuff.
His next e-mail was a request for the various people in marketing to have a weekly meeting with me where they would set priorities. For me the implication was that they would set my priorities. I had a problem with this. But the biggest problem is that I already fell that my core job is getting neglected because I'm getting nickeled and dimed by all these requests from marketing. I'm finding it difficult to work on any of the big projects that are out there because every day there's another dozen e-mails from marketing, and they all seem to think they're pretty important. So having a meeting would just further warp the perceived importance of their tasks over my core tasks.
The death of a thousand e-mails
The "badness" started last week when someone over in marketing asked me why I wasn't working on his project. I told him that someone else in marketing had told me that a piece of that project was on hold and so I thought we were both waiting on the third guy. He then chewed me out for not telling him that the other parts of the project were on hold and then basically told me I needed to keep working on the other parts. I told him that I had plenty to keep me busy, and so when one part of a project was put on indefinite hiatus, then the whole project was going to end up getting less attention and a lower priority, and I was going to move on to focus on more time sensitive stuff.
His next e-mail was a request for the various people in marketing to have a weekly meeting with me where they would set priorities. For me the implication was that they would set my priorities. I had a problem with this. But the biggest problem is that I already fell that my core job is getting neglected because I'm getting nickeled and dimed by all these requests from marketing. I'm finding it difficult to work on any of the big projects that are out there because every day there's another dozen e-mails from marketing, and they all seem to think they're pretty important. So having a meeting would just further warp the perceived importance of their tasks over my core tasks.
The death of a thousand e-mails
posted by DireKobold at 10:03 AM
2 Comments:
I wouldn't worry about marketing. Worry about the guys that print your checks.
Cross departmental warfare always reminds me of stories about feudal warlords struggling within a kingdom. It is all the more fascinating the more distant and less involved you are.
Glad to hear you like much of the rest of the job. It is a fortunate thing.
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