Category Archives: Work

Wow, So What’s With the Gag Order?

10 Wednesday Apr 2019

Posted by in Career Building, Work

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So, to recap from last season, a shrunken budget dislodged me from the job I loved and separated me from the co-workers that I cared about. I retreated to a co-working lab for a month or two to have a real space to pursue another job and to work on a side project to keep my skills alive.

Then I thought I found the perfect job. When they described the job, I heard: “We work on a large, complicated software application.” I thought I’d finally broken out and was being invited to work with the big boys. I was swooning. I didn’t ask enough questions. I blame my bipolar mania for erasing any caution from my mind (nope, not my fault–I pretend anyway).

What I got was somewhat different. By the third day when I had not been introduced to the code repository or code base, I realized there was no repo and there was no codebase. The large software project that I had imagined existed, but was the property of a vendor. “Working” on the application consisted of writing “if” statements that would do custom validations on records.

They are nice people, but there was no “team” and I went days where the only human I spoke to was the barista in the lobby. I was deeply siloed and had little interaction with the other programmer–nice guy whose laid-back attitude suited his job (he’d been there ten years and was responsible for all of the more complex systems running).

I decided to make the best of what I had and worked hard to reform myself into someone who could do the job and do it well. But I missed coding. I missed coding a lot. That part of my brain started to atrophy. I spiraled into a deep depression (hello, bipolar!) My husband was supportive but also kept nudging me to change my circumstances because what was happening obviously wasn’t working.

With my husband’s support, I quit. I didn’t go in that morning thinking I was going to quit. It was something my husband and I had miscommunicated about for a couple of weeks: he was supportive but in my depression, I twisted his words into an injunction to keep working to help keep the family stable. That was me–my fear and guilt–filtering what he said. Married essentially 21 years at this point, I still have trouble understanding sometimes. (Can’t wait until that period just before we both need hearing aids and literally can’t hear each other.)

Over a lunch hour IM session, my husband and I finally got on the same page. I had something I wanted to build on the side to build my skills which had slid in the fifteen or so months I was in that job that didn’t suit me. My husband finally got it through the haze of my depression that yes, he saw me suffering, couldn’t handle it anymore, and wanted me to quit.

So I wrapped up the last few small requests I had and wrote an email notifying my supervisor of my resignation. She didn’t exactly shed any tears or anything; I think we all knew I wasn’t a good fit for the job. I’m happy now, driving my own boat and reporting to no one while I work full time on my web application and I’m pretty sure they’re happier too after hiring someone more suitable to the job. I like to think that both parties came away all the better for my resignation. I wish them well–nice people, nice place, just not the kind of work that I do.

Why the silence? I couldn’t commit myself to saying anything about my job-related depression. I didn’t want anyone to know while it was happening. Once it’s in the rear-view mirror, it’s important to be honest about it, but while it’s happening, not only are you less motivated to do anything, you’re less open to hearing well-meaning people trying to perk you up and give you advice. The world is full of nice, well-meaning people who, for all their good intentions, can’t break through your depression.

The End of an Era

04 Sunday Jun 2017

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On Thursday, June 1, 2017, I received the bad news that my position had been eliminated from the renewal of the SSGCID (Seattle Structural Genomics Center for Infectious Disease) government contract. The grantor of the contract, NIAID (the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) had, in anticipation of the cuts in the upcoming national budget, ordered deep budget cuts across the board, a directive they had received from their parent, the NIH (the National Institutes of Health). My position will go unfilled and that money distributed across the scientific staff so that they can be retained as FTEs and do the actual science, which is–after all–the point of the whole thing.

My position will not be filled by someone younger and/or cheaper than I am. It simply does not exist as a line item in the next SSGCID budget. The web application that I’ve labored on for the last eight years will be left without a caretaker for the final five years of its life. I’m confident in my manager’s skills and familiarity with the underlying database to be able to curate the content of the database through manual SQL manipulation. However the front end? The middle tier? She has neither the desire nor the time (she’s a real scientist and works on real, awesome science stuff for the good of the contract) to take over my web app and so it will languish.

Eight years is the longest period I’ve spent in any job. I’ve been held here by golden handcuffs. One of the greatest of these has been the no-drama friendliness and delightfully geeky intelligence of my coworkers. If I geek out about some aspect of programming, I can appreciate a lab researcher geeking out over some new process they tried in their experiment and vice-versa. SO. MANY. NEAT. PEOPLE! This was especially valuable to me because they hired me after I reentered the workforce after taking two isolating years off with my second child.

Another aspect of the golden handcuffs is the mission behind the SSGCID endeavor. Its purpose is to take genes that are potential drug targets and discover the shape they make when the protein they produce is crystallized. The crystal shapes then suggest pockets and other landing points where medicinal compounds could block the protein from acting, sending a chain reaction through the bug (SSGCID works on bacteria, fungi, and viruses) and kill it or at least render it non-harmful. My web app is a tiny cog in the works, tracking the genes we were studying (over 14k of them have been selected) and helping to push them through the pipeline. However, it is critical in helping to produce the numerical evidence needed every six months to provide to NIAID that we were still worthy of our funds.

I am sad to leave this position behind because I feel this chemistry of people and mission and corporate culture will be hard to find. However, I am also somewhat relieved. I knew I couldn’t stay for the whole thirteen years. That seemed like too long in the same spot, especially if I didn’t get a chance to dig into new technologies as they arose. A part of me is really looking forward to a new opportunity to grow my skills and to work as a programmer among other programmers.

Even though I’m still somewhere in the stages of grief and couldn’t FizzBuzz to save my life, I am starting to apply for jobs. Even though many look quite tempting, I’m finding myself feeling a twinge of terror each time I do it, because each application leaves you vulnerable to rejection. How many interviews will it take before I finally don’t choke at the whiteboard? How many interviews will it take to find a team that feels like I “click” with them and would be a good addition (I’m not exactly a stereotypical coder)? I’ve learned so much about being more at ease, more “me” when around strangers by observing some of my more socially gifted coworkers. Will it be enough?

My funding runs out at the end of August. I’m not bitter–they didn’t really want to cut me from the budget but I don’t actually do the science and without the science happening, I’m useless and I know it. I know others who are still on the contract have made sacrifices, such as cutting back their hours to save money. They will still do the same amount of work, but only be paid for a fraction of it. This makes me sad because they are good people who do good work and they deserve to be compensated appropriately.

So, let’s wish them luck on a successful next five years as well as wish me luck on finding a good new job to call home.

What’ve I Been Up To Lately?

11 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by in Career Building, Completely Personal, The Project, Work

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I always feel like the stretch between the time the kids start school in September to the end of the year goes by like rolling down a flight of stairs: fast and bumpy. So what’ve I been up to lately?

1: Most important, though not necessarily the biggest time-sink has been keeping the kids on track at school. Cron Family Study Hall? Actually a big success! My eldest’s progress report came home with fantastic grades, an order of magnitude better than last year. We are so proud and I’m glad I took charge and laid out a system that works.

2: Probably the biggest time-sink is this beautiful creature:Clover

I love her dearly and she’s been a great addition to the family. However, at six months old she’s still very curious (which encompasses both “destructive” and “wants to eat things that will require stomach surgery”). She takes a lot of time and energy to train and treat properly. Lots of discipline required (on my part), like never, ever getting to sleep in again because she needs to “use the facilities” and be fed at the same time every morning.

3: November gives me a special dispensation from doing just about anything beyond the bare minimum to survive. November is National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. Why? Because it’s a fun challenge! It requires self-discipline, writing at least 1,667 words of creative narrative every single day for 30 days straight. 1.6k may not sound like a lot, but when you’ve got writer’s block and a ticking clock, it gets tense pretty quickly.NaNoWriMo

This year, I’ve taken on the extra responsibility of hosting a write-in, where fellow WriMos in your neighborhood gather in a local bar or coffeeshop and your behest and write in “word sprints,” writing as hard as you can for about 25 minutes at a time. Then you break, chat, drink, and get ready for the next sprint.

Sprinting in Seattle is hilarious because we are all so “Seattle-polite.” If I ask people if they are ready to start another sprint, they all look shyly at their keyboards and murmur noncommittally. Luckily I have an abettor (a non-native) whom I can shout down the table at and ask if she is ready. She will actually answer me. But most of it is monitoring who went to the bathroom, who’s at the counter waiting for their latte, and the ebb and flow of conversation before ordering the next sprint. For all their chatting and elbow-rubbing, sprinting for three hours can get you well above the required daily word count, so it’s very rewarding to run the write-in and not only soar above the goal myself, but to get other people soaring too.

4: Reading. I binge-read so many books about teenage development and learning disabilities that I had to force myself to alternate one fiction book for each non-fiction book. On one book, I took 15 pages of notes, which I then forced my son and husband to review with me over the course of two weekends.

5: OMG, d3! I finally got the opportunity to start something new at work: data mining, data visualization, and (to make visualizations), d3. It may not be the best tool out there and the learning curve is deliciously hard (which is terrible because we need this data out fast-fast-fast to protect our revenue stream). I’ve got books in my Amazon wishlist about the underlying theory of data visualization and I’m looking forward to my self-taught course and getting enough solid theory under my belt that I can make a coherent presentation to my co-workers as well as actually build cogent and useful visualizations.

6: Beer! So I finally got to go on a date with my husband. The first in probably 6 months to a year. We went to a place called Brouwers where they have the best pommes frites and a beer list that’ll make your jaw drop. I’d been trying to take him there for the last five years, but the stars never aligned. Our waiter was an excellent beer sommelier and I drank probably the best beer of my life (I still love you, Hilliard’s Chrome Satan, but this was really, really good). I was never much of a beer (or alcohol in general) person, but this has ignited a great exploration of new-to-us beers. We usually split a can/bottle between us over dinner and it’s been a great bonding experience to sit and critique the beer, kind of like we would a movie. No, I have not seen any movies lately.

7: Sadly, I’ve been sleeping. Sleeping poorly, sleeping too long, missing out on hours of my life. It’s not every day, but it’s a lot of them. Once my husband had enough lonely evenings, he ordered me to the local Sleep Clinic, where we are in the long process of figuring out why I’m so damn tired. Fingers crossed that we find a problem and solution. I am hopeful.

Excuses, excuses, excuses. Luckily the NaNoWriMo forums introduced to me a software product that overlaps with the vision of my side-project and I was able to get feedback about what they like/don’t like about it and it’s helped to shape my vision of what I want to build. Using the software myself, I can see how it is like and yet unlike what I want to do. So at least I’ve been doing some corporate espionage and hopefully (since I did 60% of my Christmas shopping today) I’ll start laying down some simple user stories and some code to match. I’ve already got a use case for using a network data visualization, making everything come full-circle. Yay!

An Open Floor Plan vs. a Small Private Office

17 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by in Work

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I’ll admit it: I lost a fair amount of work time today. I share a small office with two other people, neither of whom were present when I arrived this morning. So, I settled down, fired off my morning “chores” email to my son, and dived into a small feature that had been bugging me for too long with recalcitrant jquery problems. I did a fair amount of work.

One coworker emailed in that she’d been forced to commute to Bellevue and back and would be late. My other coworker was on a bus back from Vancouver, B.C., after doing an organized Seattle-to-Vancouver ride. So I had the place to myself for a good long time and I did get some stuff done.

Then my coworker who’d been diverted to Bellevue (or “Across the Water,” as we think of it) arrived. She got down to work as well, doing all of that Monday morning getting oriented, organized, and prepared to face the week.

It was all quiet tippity-tapping of keyboards for a while and then–I don’t remember who started it–we began chatting. And because we have a small, three-person office, there was no one there to disturb with our happy, tangent-filled discourse. We chatted, I confess, for quite a while.

Since our company contracted from three to two floors in the building, a lot of dynamics have changed. Our leadership had spoken enthusiastically of building more synergy from more people rubbing elbows, but they were speaking in general and not in relation to our particular situation.

Formerly, we sat as a group of five or so (the number undulates with a delightful stream of visitors, graduate students, post-graduate students, and others). We were also seated in a wide open area right next to the Help Desk folks (all pleasant) and, just beyond them, the Systems folks. Once in a while conversation would cross-pollinate across groups. Most of the time we chatted by caste. But the fact that you knew other people were within hearing range not only cut down on the loudness of any conviviality, it cut down on the length of it.

I’m mostly an introvert. Why do I sound like I’m advocating for an open floor plan as an aid to productivity? Well, I’m not. For one, not only has our group been cut into two subgroups on opposite sides of the building, we’ve lost the friendly camaraderie between ourselves and the unrelated IT groups that we used to share our open space with.

Most frightening of all is that one of us in our small office will be leaving permanently for India in December. He’s one of the kindest and smartest people I’ve ever known and he comprises 1/3 of my office. When he leaves, who will come and sit at that desk? How will that change the solid, stable chemistry built by six years of working together, sharing our ups and downs and inside jokes? Could the remaining 2/3 of us swallow a “poison pill?” Could we transform such a person? With so few people inside such a tiny area, we have no way to diffuse the tension.

Endless expanses of drab cubes is definitely the wave of the past, but oppressive walls and tiny pockets of people isn’t the wave of the future, either (our office is shaped like a Tetris block). Rather, the obvious answer is that not only do you need an open, collaborative space, you need one that’s flexible enough to offer some privacy (private phone call, anyone?) in addition to allowing folks who might not otherwise work together to rub shoulders.

I sit and think of December with a mixture of hope and dread: dreading the loss of a great co-worker and hoping against hope that whatever fresh blood comes along and occupies his former desk can help us make another, fresh whole that will keep our tiny office functioning, both during work and during play.

Who knows, maybe we’ll get a real winner and even host another Open House and have champagne and snacks, like we did when we first moved in. We got a liquor license and posted it proudly in our little Tetris block and everything. It was a great party–too bad you missed it.