I've worked for the same organization for eight years.
Eight years.
That's a long time.
If I were a dog, I'd be pushing out of middle age now.
I could've experienced about three or four Silicon Valley careers in that amount of time.
Instead, I've stayed put like the typical bureaucratic barnacle in academia or government.
Why?
I wondered the same thing myself. In fact, I've gone through several periods of introspection and retrospection on the subject.
First off, the company continues to pay me. Through four or five business models, eight or nine rounds of layoffs, 9/11 (we make software for banks based in NYC), and the dot-com bust, I haven't missed a single paycheck. I haven't experienced the drama of working for a Titanic or a Lusitania. No one has ever asked me to work for free. I haven't had my last paycheck swallowed up by bankruptcy proceedings. I never had to call the cops to get at my personal property after the CEO went ape-shit and locked the building.
Secondly, they always manage to find something new and interesting to keep me occupied. I started out as a larval tech writer with a certificate in hand and less than a year spent as a contractor writing hardware doc for high-zoot silicon wafer inspection equipment. Everything was new and interesting back then.
We transitioned from Smalltalk to Java. I was the driving force behind Javadoc generation, finally getting management to understand that Javadoc wasn't a silver bullet that allowed the code to "document itself." I exercised my fledgling programming skills by extending Javadoc with my own custom tags. This was before Sun made it easy. We pioneered on-line, thin-client risk-management software for FX trading. I built context-sensitive on-line help from scratch on the cheap.
Aside from the technical gewgaws, my manager rocked. She did her damnedest to make sure that we worked on stuff that interested us. We were always learning, either through university extension courses or from her redlines.
I honestly enjoyed my coworkers. The fact that the old guard, core group of writers were all UCSC grads (go Slugs!) must've had something do with the paradoxical combination of laid-back atmosphere and intense drive to do a good job.
When I was asked to manage the team, I swallowed my pounding heart and knuckled under. My coworkers were all awesome during the transition. They eventually explained to me that they were ecstatic that they'd dodged the bullet that hit me square in the forehead.
In the three or four years that I managed the group, only the lay-off times truly sucked. With investors losing money and gaining some sense, the company had to cut people loose or die. Survival makes people and corporations do the strangest things. All the folks in my team went on to better, sometimes different, things.
In the age of offshoring, the company even toyed with the idea of building a documentation group in India. That experiment lasted a year, during which we learned a whole lot.
Now it's just me. I am the Atlas on which all the company's documentation rests.
I'm comfortable with that. I've developed calluses in all the right places.
So it was with some large degree of cynicism that I accepted the inevitability of the company BBQ.
I work damned hard. The company benefits from my nearly unkillable sense of self-worth. I do not want to produce crap.
I enjoy my work.
I enjoy the majority of my coworkers and our management team.
Still, when given the choice between spending even more time around the people I already see for 40-50 hours a week or spend time with my wife and kids, it's not even close.
Hell, I married the person I want to spend the most time with and kids grow too damned fast.
So if it's an evening of drinks and pool, where I can't drink because I need to drive home afterwards and I can't play pool worth beans, I'll take the consequences and beg off.
However, this was a BBQ during the workday and families were invited. I couldn't see a way to get out of it. I hoped that my son might enjoy himself by the lake while his dad gritted his teeth and endured one team-building activity after another.
In the end, I have to admit, I enjoyed the hell out of myself.
The beer on tap was fantastic.
I pulled during every bout of interdepartmental tug o' war, mostly as a sub on undermanned teams. In the final match, I served as anchor as Services pulled victorious against Engineering despite their attempts to jump the gun and catch us unprepared. You developers might be scheming, lying, cheating bastards, as George W. Bush has taught us, might make right.
I wowed the crowd with my prowess at the dunk tank, hitting the target with two out of three throws, dousing two deserving coworkers.
We spent the final hours paddleboating around the lake and flying kites in the late afternoon sun and breeze.
All in all, a nearly perfect family day.
Yay. Rah. Go. Team.
Pakeha