professional – 15 Minute Copy

I Design, Therefore I Am (A Designer)

August 29, 2022

I’m pretty sure that I’m a designer. I have a couple of degrees in the field and more than a few job titles with the word “design” in them, so I take that to mean it’s something I am capable of. The funny thing is that many other people without any of those things that I have feel that they are more than capable of doing all that highfalutin design stuff. Designers are everywhere, it seems. I should have saved all that college money and bought myself something nice instead.

It’s not like designers are doctors or lawyers who have to pass tests and get fancy certificates to hang on their office walls, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are factually what they claim to be. The exception might be architects that do, in fact, design for a living and also require testing and certification to lay claim to their professional titles but having buildings that don’t collapse is a good enough reason for that. While not all other areas of design have such a consistently high bar to clear in terms of the preservation of human life, there are certainly situations where you don’t want an amateur—or at the very least, an amateur alone—to have sole designer responsibility.

In spite of what some may think, designers are knowledgeable and possess specific talents and skills that you don’t pick up through osmosis just because you use stuff that’s been designed. Just because you’ve flown on an airplane to visit your grandmother in Albequerque doesn’t mean you’re ready to pilot the aircraft. Yet, design isn’t given the same institutional respect. Anyone can design because all you’re dealing with are colors and forms and maybe some words, and who can’t do that?

It’s a shame, really, because a lot of the same people who bemoan so loudly all of the things they have to use that are so poorly designed are also the ones most vocal about their ability to design the better mousetrap. Ironically they lack the self-awareness that would lead them to realize those terrible designs may have just been created by someone who shares the same self-aggrandized opinion of their own untrained design skills.

Quiet Quitting? How About You Loudly STFU.

August 23, 2022

In many ways, history is driven by the struggle between those who have vs. those who want. Or need, depending on the prism through which you interpret class struggle. Either way, many of the cultural changes that have led humanity to where it is today were the product of the masses looking for a bit more. Time. Safety. Money. More of something that was scarce for them and that they wanted in greater abundance. A broad generalization of the progress of humankind, but I’ll stand by it.

In addition, these incidents have often been driven by unexpected events outside anyone’s control. Most recently, the global Covid pandemic and subsequent shift in modalities among knowledge workers from office life to remote participation. Having the technology to allow this transition to happen literally overnight in many cases and with minimal if any loss of productivity gave many employees pause as they started to reconsider the need to continue the industrial revolution habit of 8-hour work days and 40-hour weeks that included unpaid commuting times on the top so they could show up in an uninspired office colocated with people, most of whom they never professionally interacted with anyway. After a year or so of no longer having to do all that, many workers, when faced with the prospect of returning to that life, to their great credit, thought to themselves: “fuck that.“

Naturally, the businesses that operated relatively seamlessly through the preceding period, where their workers were given much greater control over their existence, work/life balance, and sanity, were shocked. After all, hadn’t they spent all of this money on real estate, office furniture, and conference rooms to make these workers more productive and indeed happy? In turn, when faced with the prospect of eating all that capital investment, they also thought to themselves: “fuck that.“

One of the manifestations of this employer/employee tug of war is the insinuation that businesses are no longer getting the pound of flesh they pay their workers handsomely for. Rather than focusing on business outcomes (one of their favorite pre-pandemic rallying cries), they told tales of workers stealing from their benevolent employers. The theft was no longer Post-It notes and Sharpies from the supply closet; now, they were stealing time. It’s hard to ensure that you’re getting the 8-hour days and 40-hour weeks you pay so much for when you no longer have a physical panopticon within which to ensure you are getting value for money.

I don’t know how this growing, if not subtle conflict, will eventually play out, but I will say this: “workers of the world unite!” Even if we all do it from the comfort of our own homes.

Manager In The Middle

August 21, 2022

I never set out to be a middle manager. Like most people, I imagine how and where I started my career is not something I can really explain this far down the path. Of course, I can trace my employment history back through my resume and LinkedIn, but how all the pieces fit together and why I made certain decisions to stay or leave certain employers doesn’t even seem to make much sense to me now. I can tell a compelling story for sure, but like most stories, where the truth lies is in the eye of the reader.

I do enjoy my middle management job. Or at least parts of it. And I happen to be pretty good at it as well. I love helping people be successful. I love being the lynchpin for solving complex problems by empowering people. I love making employees and customers happy. If making people happy was all I had to do, I’d have one of the greatest jobs in the world.

Alas, there’s a lot more to it than that. And of course, everyone has to shovel shit sometimes, as my dad used to tell me. Fair enough. What I don’t subscribe to, however, is the tension between having limited control over my circumstances yet full responsibility for the outcomes. The biggest piece of fiction I ever heard was “people don’t quit their company; they quit their manager.” Utter and total bullshit. I certainly accept that there are terrible managers in the world that are all but impossible to work for, but to make a blanket statement like that is a dereliction of reality bordering on the irresponsible. I, for one, have never quit because of a manager. Even ones that I didn’t particularly like or respect. But that’s just me. What do I know? I’m only a middle manager.