Job stuff.
ErinPooh -- Saturday, July 20, 2002 -- 12:25:37 AMBring your job-related challenges, gripes, triumphs here!
This thread is tagged: career, job(All users will see what tags exist for a thread. Please tag carefully!)
Good deal about the assistant, Erin. I know you had some issues there.
Good luck, Pebbles. I'm glad you're doing what you're doing.
I'm good at my job and I make enough money to meet my needs, even the ones some people wouldn't call needs. I'm getting steady raises and stock options and other perks to keep me with the company. My boss thinks I'm great. My co-workers come to me with their questions on work issues and express awe at how much stuff I carry in my brain.
So why the hell do I feel like a big fake who doesn't know what the hell she is doing and is bound to be found out at any minute. Why do I feel I need to find another job - an easier job - when I know that would probably bore the hell out of me.
Do you think it's too late for me to go back to school to get my Masters? (I'll turn 50 in 2003)
It wouldn't fix the problem, which is internal. You're determined to see yourself as incompetent and inexperienced, even though you clearly aren't. Getting a Masters won't make you feel any more competent--you're just fixating on it as a psychological excuse for feeling "fake" now.
sigh
You're right, of course. It feels like the cure to feeling like I don't know enough should be learning more, but
1. I can do that without going for a Masters as my company has a great on-going training program with all sorts of technical and managerial classes.
2. If this is just my internal insecurities talking, I'll never feel like I know enough.
Maybe I should look for a counselor or something.
(ok, I'll stop whining for now)
No problem whining, just whine about your internal insecurities, not your supposed lack of education. (g)
shawi, there is a name for this: imposter syndrome. It is very common among high-achieving women, apparently. I just googled and got this website which seems to have quizzes and a resource list. Might help you figure out whether you want a counselor or would rather work through this on your own.
In other news, our users are really really annoying. When a problem comes up, they like to come up with a workaround, stop using the feature they have a problem with, and never tell us. Also, the bossman for the group that uses our software is absolutely impossible when it comes to thinking and talking about software options and future needs (he likes to declare flat-out that they'll never need a thing without understanding what the thing is, and gets all angry and abrupt when you try to explain the issue, since after all he's the bossman and he TOLD you it wasn't important), but half the time when you try to do factfinding with the users, they pass you off to him.
The partner is now flat out refusing to give us software that will take us no more than 2-3 days to develop against. $5,000/year...for 2-3 days of development time. Oh, and by the way: they may or may not be able to provide some marketing opportunities.
Fuckers.
LC - Thanks for the link.
j-ro - There is not enough money in the world to make me iron. I have been known to completely re-wash laundry that I didn't get out of the dryer quick enough just to avoid ironing it.
When I was forced to change careers (disabling accident), first I took a bunch of aptitude tests to see what I would be good at. They said I'd be good at anything. I took a bunch more tests to see if my personality/interests could be matched to a career or set of careers. They said I had widely diverse interests and would be happy doing almost anything.
So, I picked this career with one motivating factor - Making enough money to have my own house and a HOUSEKEEPER.
Funny thing is, turns out I'm too paranoid to have a housekeeper. I've never been able to hire one because the idea of having someone else in my house with my stuff squicks me out.
chuckle
j-ro, what about catering? I used to work for an economist who did catering on the side (both in the office as a research assistant, and in the evenings as a bartender/server). She just did a few jobs here and there, and had certain things she made really well. You could be a kosher caterer, which I'd bet would be pretty popular.
I just want to report that I've got the best boss. Not only has he nearly talked his VP into promoting me, he's basically letting me write the revised job description geared toward what I'm most interested in moving toward and finding ways to download some of more rote stuff. It'll need to be reviewed and approved by all the corporate people, of course, but still. All bosses should be like him.
Gargh. There's a system here that I've been involved in supporting for years, which has been "about to go away" for most if not all of that time. The system that's supposed to replace it has been written and put into production use, but the new thing is missing a set of features that the old one has. This is because (1) it has been frequently and loudly asserted that these features are only necessary for finishing genomes, not for finishing BACs; this is not true, although it is true that *most* BACs can be finished without them and (2) at a critical stage in the development of the new system, it was loudly asserted that the company wasn't going to finish any more genomes: this was also not true. Nobody's working on getting these features into the new system, and the man-hours haven't been budgeted for it; the theory is, if we get a certain grant that requires us to already have those capabilities and a bunch of others, then we can afford to start writing.
So. The old system is getting quite dinosauriffic -- it was written as a proof-of-concept that got pushed into production use, and since then the other systems that it depends on have been replaced. The muckety-mucks have been keeping support for the old system at a minimum life-support-only level since it's after all "going away soon". The most recent surgery happened early this year, and since I was only in one day a week at that point, the responsibility for cobbling together a way for the old system to work in the new environment fell to someone else.
I just got a request to add a BAC to the old system; it now turns out that, since it's "going away soon", the workaround to allow the old finishing system to work with the new data pipeline is (1) largely manual and (2) not suited to after-the-fact requests like this. Running around like chickens with heads cut off will ensue.
yeehaw!!