Here's an interesting observation.

A couple of months ago I was working on a project, and it seemed like 
the most exciting thing *ever*. I even offered to write a piece about it 
and have it published. I avidly worked on putting together the first 
draft and making it as great as possible.

A week or two ago, I had to come up with the final version. And 
suddenly, just a few months later, it seems like the most boring, 
uninteresting project imaginable. I put all this work into writing the 
original draft, but I just can't be bothered to finished it off. Even 
just rereading it seems tedious and boring.

Eventually I did in fact do a final recheck and get the article 
published. But it just seems strange to me that something which was so 
all-possessingly fascinating a month or two ago is suddenly dull and 
uninteresting today.

Maybe that's why I never actually finish anything. I get bored too 
quickly...

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> A week or two ago, I had to come up with the final version. And suddenly, 
> just a few months later, it seems like the most boring, uninteresting 
> project imaginable.

Sounds very familiar!  You say you'd hate being a manager, but if you were 
you could do all the fun bits yourself, and when it gets boring delegate it 
to someone else :-)

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scott wrote:
>> A week or two ago, I had to come up with the final version. And 
>> suddenly, just a few months later, it seems like the most boring, 
>> uninteresting project imaginable.
> 
> Sounds very familiar!  You say you'd hate being a manager, but if you 
> were you could do all the fun bits yourself, and when it gets boring 
> delegate it to someone else :-)

Heh. Delegation FTW! :-D

Nah, I still don't think I'd like that. Managers are supposed to order 
people around, not do the actual technical work. (Not that all managers 
seem to realise this...)

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> Nah, I still don't think I'd like that. Managers are supposed to order 
> people around, not do the actual technical work. (Not that all managers 
> seem to realise this...)

I don't see how if you are a manager in charge of only a few people, 
ordering them around is going to take up 100% of your time.  Most managers I 
know that are in charge of a small number of people do plenty of technical 
work themselves in addition to their managerial duties.

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scott wrote:
>> Nah, I still don't think I'd like that. Managers are supposed to order 
>> people around, not do the actual technical work. (Not that all 
>> managers seem to realise this...)
> 
> I don't see how if you are a manager in charge of only a few people, 
> ordering them around is going to take up 100% of your time.  Most 
> managers I know that are in charge of a small number of people do plenty 
> of technical work themselves in addition to their managerial duties.

In that case, I guess it depends on company structure. Most managers 
I've seen are in charge of dozens if not hundreds of people. If you're 
only in charge of (say) 3 people, that makes you like more of a team 
leader than an actual manager...

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> Most managers I've seen are in charge of dozens if not hundreds of people. 
> If you're only in charge of (say) 3 people, that makes you like more of a 
> team leader than an actual manager...

I think it's just whatever arbitrary job names the company comes up with :-) 
Also the size of the company probably makes a difference as to how many job 
"levels" there are and what counts as manager.  Here we only have about 100 
people, so it goes Engineer/Researcher --> Manager --> Director --> Managing 
Director.  Obviously in a larger company you need to start putting in more 
levels like Team Leader and Senior Manager or whatever.

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>> Most managers I've seen are in charge of dozens if not hundreds of 
>> people. If you're only in charge of (say) 3 people, that makes you 
>> like more of a team leader than an actual manager...
> 
> I think it's just whatever arbitrary job names the company comes up with 
> :-)

Yeah, figures.

> Also the size of the company probably makes a difference as to how 
> many job "levels" there are and what counts as manager.

Seems to depend on company culture more than actual size. Some companies 
just seem to prefer layers and layers and layers of management, while 
others seem to try to keep everything as flat as possible.

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Invisible wrote:
> Maybe that's why I never actually finish anything. I get bored too 
> quickly...

Success comes from recognising that work is 80% (or more) boring crap, and 
being able to do it even when you don't want to.  I get tons of consulting 
jobs that anyone could do but I'm the only one with the persistence to 
concentrate on a tedious crap task.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

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Invisible wrote:
> Seems to depend on company culture more than actual size. 

It also depends how old the company is. "Middle management" used to do what 
SAP does nowadays.  The phone companies were all managerially organized like 
their networks, so there was an "outside" VP and an "inside" VP, and under 
each were managers of the region, the state, the area code, the central 
office, and then each piece of major equipment in the CO had a manager. 
Pretty fascinating, really.

It wasn't until the '90s they renamed the management to get away from the 
names of the places they managed.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

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Darren New wrote:

> It also depends how old the company is. "Middle management" used to do 
> what SAP does nowadays.

What *does* SAP do?

Actually, what does middle management do? From what I can gather from 
Dilbert, not a lot!

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