I Don’t Miss The Office Politics
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This weekend I took a much needed break from coding and read Bill Blunden’s book, Cube Farm which basically documents his perilous journey through software engineering in a corporate environment and the office politics that came with it. The book is short and makes for an easy read.
I’ve had the book for a while but only committed to reading it completely after taking a break from a rather intensive programming session. The book really resonated with me and wasn’t that dissimilar from my own journey through software engineering. Particularly the book reminded and reinforced my reasons for working so hard for myself when it would be so easy to slack off. My simple reasoning is that while I don’t particularly care for working extremely hard, I would rather do it for myself than for anyone else. I’ve done that before and don’t care to repeat the past.
All through school I was preparing to work for some one else but never myself. I started as early as high school. During the summers of my junior and senior years in high school I didn’t know what I wanted to study to in college, but I knew I liked computers. I figured if I decided to go into Computer Science, it would look good on my application if I had some type of computer experience.
At the time NASA offered summer internship programs. So I applied and was accepted both summers. In a way I consider these two experiences the best employment experiences in my career because all the idealistic illusions I had about working as a software engineer were immediately shattered. These work experiences proved to be a good template for all the software engineering and research positions I had after that. Maybe it’s the jobs I took, but essentially in large companies and research institutions no one really seems to know what is happening most of the time. But it is so easy to get caught up in the day-to-day routine at these places and get stuck in them. And there is nothing innately wrong with this; it’s just not what I wanted for myself.
I was tired of not working on the projects I wanted and decided to strike out on my own in 2005. It was the scariest thing I ever did. It wasn’t until that very moment I realized how dependent I had become on the the corporate infrastructure and I how I had lost confidence in myself. My soul had been sapped. I had to slowly build up confidence in both my technical and business skills. But bit by bit I started taking responsibility for my own success. It’s been 3 years now and leaving the corporate world to strike out on my own was the absolute best thing I could have done. The past 3 years have been the best in my life and I only see things getting better.
It’s funny how you can find just the inspiration you need at just the right moment without actively seeking it out. After reading the book, I sat down to finish my project.
KJ
