Story Archive - November 2008

Gobble Gobble (11/27/2008)

In an economic meltdown, spend everything you have before it's worthless. - Scott Bourne

Somewhere around six months ago I came to the realization that my skillset and my desires did not have a strong overlap with my job responsibilities. I spent the first five to seven years out of school nearly free of any management requirements. Sure, there I ran teams and from time to time had a direct report or two, but in generally I was a individual contributor.

Sometime around the start of 2007 I got hoodwinked into managing my organization. The boss (who had been managing it) and I had a long talk about career paths and growth goals and that sort of thing and at the time I was pretty sure that I was a very happy person, but smooth talker that he was, he jedi mind-tricked me into taking over running the team with the now infamous quote, "don't worry, the team runs itself." Ironically shortly after that moment, he took almost all the experienced members off the team and put them into other groups and then he himself switched groups out of management back to be an individual contributor. Very Machiavellian of him. So I hunkered down and worked myself exhausted and after hiring the team from four people up to thirty people with four different sub-teams I can tell you, very honestly, the team does not run itself.

Still, it wasn't a problem. I'm a smart cat, and I thought to myself, "Jordan, this can't be that hard, and your old boss is no smarter or more experienced than you, so you can totally handle this." You know what the answer was? I could, but I disliked it a lot. The amount of time and care and thought it takes to manage P/L, track availability, forecast effort and such leaves no time left to invent and create. Sure, creating a good project plan takes skill, but it just doesn't scratch that itch that I have deep in my soul.

So what has happened? After a multi-month search, I've hired in my new boss. Yep. I've hired in someone who can run the business strategic management of the team taking that load off of my shoulders and letting me focus on a different area; letting me focus on running the quality, which seems like a very very nice area to focus on for a while. For that new change in things, I am very thankful! Seriously, hiring a replacement to myself at a financial services startup company that sells in the hardest hit sector of a rapidly collapsing economy can't possible go wrong. Happy turkey day.

Choo-Choo-Choose You (11/13/2008)

I'm just riding this train as long as I can. As long as I'm having fun, I'll do it. When it stops being fun, I'll try something else. - Gabrielle Union

I never took the train home when I was going to university in south bay. It took longer, cost more, had very inconvenient times and placed me into a city designed for cars without a car. I wish it would have been more opportune. I really do! But as a young punk I much preferred taking the roof off my car, blasting punk rock, and making the beautiful drive up I-680. That was then, and this is now, and these days I’m much more interested in saving the world than my own time, money and convenience.

Anytime there are two weekends in a row heading up to Sacramento, it is just too much for me to deal with the drive.. Putting an extra three-hundred miles on my car and burning up another six gallons of gasoline just seems so old school. Capital Corridor runs along the same path I drive, and pining for the days when I used to take the train in to work I thought I would take the train up to a birthday party.

Seriously though, to take the train for Hayward to Sacramento costs $25? Are you kidding me? That same trip costs me less than $10 in gasoline (I know, I know, I drive a Prius, but still). The “Hayward Station” is a platform sitting in a not-so-nice area of town. So next time I try this out, I’m going to have to target somewhere that is less likely to have my window broken.

So when are we going to have that high speed rail built? I am super excited by the prospected of being able to take the train down to LA for a day trip. If there is one reason why it’s nice that we haven’t ejected southern California into its own state its to give us the ability to build a high speed rail without having to get the Feds involved in the process. Don’t we live in a world where we should have super cheap and awesome high speed transportation? Yes we do.

Not the Night I Expected (11/07/2008)

This is one of those days that the pages of history teach us are best spent lying in bed. - Uncle Willie (The Philadelphia Story)

You know I used to dislike sushi? It's true. Through college people would scrape up a little bit of money and say, "let's go get sushi!" I tried it a few times before I was ready to declare, "I am sorry, but sushi is just gross." CG once told me, "ohhh, the reason you don't like sushi is because you go to cheap college sushi places and those ARE gross." Well, fair enough, and so I trimmed back a little on my expenses, saved up, and she and I went to a "nice" sushi restaurant. It was disgusting.

Fast-forward to post-college where I am working in the Financial District of San Francisco. There was nothing so trendy and popular as a sushi lunch. I would go for social obligation reasons, shudder, and have either delicious vegetarian sushi or maybe some sort of other bento box. My coworkers would pretend not to know me. Something changed in the past five years and I'm not exactly sure when it happened, but sushi has become a comfort food for me.

These days my backup plan on the way home from the office is to call an old coworker with a simple question: sushi? Upon a yes, we go out for good food and good talk before I head home. Unfortunately, the past few weeks have been tough. He has currently separated from his insignificant other (her choice) only to realize that he wanted her to be significant even if he always told her the opposite when they were together. This has changed our sushi conversations that once revolved around him verbally abusing me for being a tool into conversations where he needs to be emotionally comforted. Thankfully, I've had quite a bit of experience talking with broken-hearted high schoolers who felt like they would never fall in love again, and while the man is a over a decade older than I am, the same basic talking points work well.

This Friday, I had a set of original plans to go do some artsy stuff that fell through on me and so instead I started off the night by going to the gym with coworkers. This was my first trip to the gym since January and it was nice to pretend I was going to do this regularly. See, as long as I can skate the three miles to my favorite brunchy place on a lazy Sunday morning without collapsing, I feel I am not in need of going to the gym.

On my way home from the gym I debated back and forth on making the sushi call, but finally decided I would just head home and relax with roommates who would probably end up watching some SciFi or Anime; I got home to a house in darkness. Strange. So I plopped myself down on the couch with a glass of wine and started reading the Great Gatsby (please note: if this is a book where you only read it in high school because you were forced, this is a book worth reading with a fully developed and appreciative adult mind). A couple chapters later one of the 'mates stumbled down the stairs and announced he was heading home to see his family.

I shrugged, read another chapter, and then put on Philadelphia Story, which I have been meaning to watch for a long time but haven't run across the proper viewing conditions for. Only at home on Friday night? Yes, those are the perfect viewing conditions. Five minutes into the movie the cat finds her way downstairs and stretches out luxuriously on my lap. A few hours pass. The movie ends, the lights go out, and I drift to sleep earlier than I have for a long time.