I follow @KathySierra on Twitter, and this gem rolled through the tweetstream earlier today:
@KathySierra One of many reasons I was an awful manager: I assumed everyone loved "the work", even if they hated "the job".
An interesting distinction, that--she certainly can't be accused of splitting hairs for any job I've ever held, and I suspect that's true for many, if not most. My "work," in the purest sense, is banging out code. But that can only be done in the context of my "job," which involves things like:
- Meetings
- Wiki documentation
- Pitching other people's code up the server food chain
- Spot-checking the output automated processes and figuring out what went wrong when the output is wrong or non-existent
- Doctoring data when people ignore the instructions in front of their faces and deliberately subvert checks and balances
- Scribbling what I did under each billing number every day and plugging it into the time sheet form at the end of each week
- Keeping an eye on news about the firm's industry, which has next to nothing to do with programming
- Translating--meaning explaining what an application does in the real-world context of its use, or explaining the gap between what was expected and what actually happened.
Not a lot of time wasted on politics, thankfully. Politics, to me, is a sign that the gap between the work and the job has grown intolerably wide: EPIC Management FAIL there.
But one thing that I think that needs pointing out (and not merely because Ms. Sierra only had 140 characters to work with) is that the work can suck and the job can be just fine. Retail, for instance, was something I did to pay for college & other sundries. I can do it; I'm just not natively wired for it. The semi-annual storewide sale should, by all rights, have been a nightmare on 18 wheels. But the store manager made sloppy joes that were To Die For--as we said Back In The Day--and those in large part made it worth it. Those plus the fact that the shifts certainly didn't drag.
But, that being said, the gap between work and job should, optimally, be as minimal as possible. Nothing's a sure formula--I get that, honestly. But I also think that it minimizes stress when people feel like they're doing something close to what they're "officially" expected to do. And if they're doing something close to what they're passionate about, so much the better.
