How I hate it all. Jobs, bosses, programming, development environment, tasks, the system in which they are written, subordinates with their snot, goals, email, the Internet, social networks where everyone is amazingly successful, ostentatious love for the company, slogans, meetings, corridors, toilets , faces, faces, dress code, planning. I hate everything that happens at work.
I burned out. For a long time. Before I really started working, about a year after graduation, I already hated everything that surrounds me in this damn office. I came to work to hate. I was tolerated because in the first year I showed impressive growth. I was treated like a baby. They tried to motivate, understand, provoke, teach, guide me. And I hated it more and more.
Finally, they could not stand it and tried to scare me. Yeah, I don't do shit on the current project. Because the project manager, your pet, screwed up my work for a month, caved in to the client and framed me. Yes, I sit all day choosing the next song to listen to in winamp. You called me and said that you would fire me if you ever see this again. Ha.
See, more than once. Just because I hate you. And I despise. You are morons. You just come and do what you're told. You have been doing this for so many years. You do not have any changes, neither in position, nor in income, nor in competencies. You are just attributes of the system you find yourself in. Like tables, chairs, walls, a cooler and a mop. You are so pathetic and senseless that you won't even be able to realize it.
I can work harder and better than you. I have already proven it. But I'm not going to carry the whole company on me. Why me? Why don't you? I have enough of my winamp. I don't need anything else to hate you. I will sit and hate you all day long, not forgetting to take a break for lunch.
When you got used to my hatred, I quit. You behaved like chairs - you stopped paying attention to me. What's the point of hating you then? I'll go to another office, I'll burn out there.
The swing continued for several years. Hatred was replaced by indifference. Outright sabotage took the place of apathy. Sometimes violent activity began if the boss came across tough. Biting the bit, with hatred for the whole world, I gave out the result. And again he hated, fell into depression, outright laughed or trolled everyone he could reach.
I tried to be as toxic as possible, infecting as many others with my hatred as I could hook. Everyone should know how much I hate this job. Everyone should sympathize with me, support, help. But don't hate work. This is my privilege. I after all and you, supporting me, hate.
This went on from approximately 2006 to 2012. Dark time. I remember it like a bad dream. It is strange that I was never fired then - I always left on my own. I have never seen such a vile bastard as Ivan Belokamentsev v.2006-2012.
And then a strange streak began. Everything has changed. More precisely, not so: everything has changed. But I didn't even notice it. Seven years flew by without me noticing. In these seven years, the state of burnout never came to me for more than half a day. But I never thought about why.
I wondered why others didn't. Burnout topics are getting more and more popular. Recently, I was scrolling through the list of reports for a conference where I am going to speak soon, I came across Maxim Dorofeev - and he was about to talk about professional burnout. Articles on this subject often catch the eye.
I look at people and I can't understand them. No, they don't hate work like I did. They are just indifferent. Burnt out. They are not interested in anything. They say they do it. They won't say, they won't.
If they give them a plan, a deadline, a standard, they will fulfill it. A little overfulfilled. Through the sleeves, without interest. Well, yes, in compliance with the standards. Designed in the same way, through the sleeves. Like machines.
In life, everything, of course, is interesting. You listen in the kitchen, or you stumble upon a friend from work in social networks - life is in full swing. One is a cyclist. Another - all the mountains of the Urals climbed. The third is a volunteer. Everyone has something.
And at work, 8 hours of life, 9 including lunch, 10 with the road, they are all like zombies. No fire in the eyes, no sewing in the ass. The manager is not interested in selling more. The manager does not care about improving the performance of the department. It doesn't bother the programmer to figure out why it doesn't work. At least for the sake of professional interest.
More or less live and move those whose boss is a goat. And even better - Kozlin. Constantly presses, raises the bar, increases the standards, does not allow you to relax. Such employees as in Vysotsky's song - he was gloomy and angry, but he walked. They are also burned out, but they are constantly being defibrillated, and at the very least something can be squeezed out of them. In the evening they will reboot, as best they can, they will inflate coffee in the morning, and let's go.
I was wondering why I didn't. More precisely, why I used to be constantly burned out, and now I almost never go.
For 7 years I have been going to work with joy, every day. During this time I changed 3 places. I've had horrendous, from a normal point of view, days, weeks, and months at work. They tried to sit me down, survive, humiliate, kick me out, overwhelm me with tasks and projects, convict me of incompetence, reduced my salary, lowered my position, even kicked me out of work. But I still go to work with joy, every day. Even if they manage to spoil my mood, and I burn out, then, in a maximum of a few hours, I will be reborn, like a Phoenix bird.
The other day I realized what the difference is. Two things helped. First, I now work a lot with young people, which has not happened for a long time. Second, I wrote a thank you letter for the first time in my life. A person from the place of work that was in 2012 and changed something in me. Preparing his praises, I tried to understand what, in fact, happened there. Well, I figured it out.
It's simple: I always have my own goal within the system.
This is not self-help, self-hypnosis or some kind of esoteric practice, but quite a pragmatic approach.
The first part of it is to treat any job as an opportunity. I used to do it the way I did: I came to some company, looked around, gave an assessment. If you like it - ok, I sit and work. If I don't like it, I sit and burn out. Everything is not right, everything is wrong, all idiots are engaged in nonsense.
Now I do not give an assessment in terms of "like" / "dislike". I'm just looking at what's out there and identifying what the system offers and how I can use it. When you look for opportunities without judging, you find exactly opportunities, not shortcomings.
It's like, roughly speaking, being on a desert island. You can lie down and lie down, noah and complaining about fate, until you decay. And you can go and, at least, explore the island. Find water, food, shelter, detect predators, natural hazards, etc. Anyway, you're already here, why whine? For starters, survive. Then, get comfortable. Well, develop. It definitely won't get worse.
I also use this analogy: work is a project. Before subscribing to this project, choose, analyze, compare, and evaluate. But, when you already fit in, it’s too late to whine - you need to get the maximum benefit. On ordinary projects in which everyone participates, we do just that. It's not often that someone walks away from a project team if they don't like something (unless they made a big mistake in their initial estimate).
Purposeful search for opportunities leads to a strange effect - you find them. Not standard, like doing tasks and getting paid for it. This is the facade of the system, for which you went to work here. But inside, if you look closely, there will be a whole bunch of possibilities that are not visible from the outside. Moreover, they are completely ownerless, because few people pay attention to them - after all, everyone is busy solving problems and getting money for it.
Most of the time we work in some kind of business. We were allowed into this business like a goat in a garden. Can't a person from the street come into your office, sit down in an empty seat, start solving problems, get your salary, drink coffee from a cup and climb the career ladder? No, your job is a private club.
You were given a subscription to this private club. You can come every day, even on weekends, and work at least 8 or 24 hours a day. Few people have the opportunity to work at your job. You have been given the opportunity to take advantage of it. Like that.
The second and main part of the approach is its goal. I'll start with an example.
I, in communication with programmers and project managers, had a gap in understanding for a long time. They all said - well, we have such and such tasks, and there are a lot of them, and they gave us projects, customers demand, you can’t agree with them, everything is tough there, no one listens to us and is not going to listen.
And I said in response - damn it, dudes, the task is rubbish, why are you doing it? Why don't you do better with this or this? After all, it is more interesting and more useful there, both for you and for business? And the dudes answered - uh, what are you, a moron, how can we do what we were not instructed to do? We carry out the tasks and implement the projects that we have put in the plan.
When I worked as an IT director at a plant, then, paradoxically, I initiated more than half of the projects and tasks myself. Not because there were few requirements from customers - more than enough. It's just more interesting to solve your projects and tasks. Therefore, I set myself tasks myself. Even if he knew for sure that soon the customer himself would come running with the same task.
There are two important points here. The first - whoever got up first, that and slippers. Simply put, whoever initiated the project will lead it. Why do I need a supply chain automation project led by a head of supply? I can do just fine on my own. When I am in charge of a project, I am interested in it. And the head of supply will be a consultant and executor of part of the tasks.
The second point - who pays the girl, he dances her. Whoever initiated the project and manages it determines what will be done in this project. The end goal in both cases is about the same, but if the project is led by a subject, then it turns out bullshit - he starts writing technical specifications, tries to shift his thoughts into technical terms, encounters IT resistance (of course), and the result is meaningless shnyag. And when the IT director manages the project, it turns out much better - he understands the business goals, and can translate them into the language of technology.
At first, this caused serious resistance, but then people saw the result and realized that it was better this way - after all, they received more than when they asked “make me a button here, and a mold here”. And I'm interested, because the project is mine.
Its purpose acts as an injection, a genetic modification to work. Any task that is given to me, I poke my target with a syringe, and the task becomes “mine”. And I do my job with pleasure.
There are a million examples.
They put me, roughly speaking, some kind of plan for a month to solve problems. And I, if you remember, are a fan of speeding up work - this is one of my goals. Well, I do an injection, or, with the light hand of some commentator, “Belokamentsev’s bite” - and, using simple tricks, I’ll cut 250% of the plan. Not because they will pay more for it, or they will give some kind of grade - simply because this is my goal. The consequences are not long in coming.
Or a new director tells me that he wants only high-quality IT service. I told him - hey, dude, but I still know how to do this and this. No, he says, only high-quality service, and shove all your "superpowers" up your ass. Ok, I inject, and create a service with measurable parameters that exceed its expectations by 4 times. The consequences are not long in coming.
He asks the director to display the performance of the company on the screen. I know that he will play and quit in a week - the wrong person. I inject, and add one of my long-term goals - the creation of universal tools for wide use. The director quit after a week, and the whole company sat down. Then I rewrote it from scratch, and now I'm successfully selling it.
And so with any task. Everywhere you can either find or add something useful or interesting for yourself. Not to do it, and then look for “what we learned in today's lesson”, but in advance, with a clear statement for ourselves. Although, of course, there are also unexpected exhausts that were not planned in advance. But that is another topic.
For example, this text. When writing it, I pursue several goals at once. Don't try to figure out which ones. Although, you can easily guess one thing - the plus you set will help in achieving the secondary goal of “getting some money for the text.” But it is, after all, secondary - look at the ratings of my articles for yourself, there is such a sinusoid.
I think the meaning is clear - you need to add something of your own to any task, project, routine duty, a piece of the goal, combine vectors, benefiting the maximum number of recipients - yourself, business, customer, colleagues, boss, etc. This vector game in itself is quite exciting and will not let you burn out and get bored.
There is, however, a downside. The presence of their own goals is so obvious that it catches the eye. Therefore, I periodically experience difficulties in working with bosses and colleagues. They see that I am constantly playing some kind of game, but they do not understand its meaning and believe that I am up to something vile.
When they finally decide and ask, I honestly tell. But they do not believe, because the explanation sounds too unusual for them. They are accustomed to employees who "just work", and here - some methods, theories, goals, experiments.
They get the feeling that I'm not working for the business, but the business is working for me. And they are right, but only half. And I work for the business, and, excuse me, the business is for me. Not because I'm a villain, but because it's normal and mutually beneficial. It's just weird, which is why it's disgusting.
After all, everyone wants order, clarity and stereotypes. For a person to come, sit down, lower his head and work hard, achieving the goals of the company. They make a substitution, embellishing the goals of the company and exposing them as the goals of a person. Like, achieve our goals, and you will achieve yours. But, alas, this is a lie. You can check with your own example.
You can't just rely on the goals of the company. They are almost always the same - profit, growth in depth and breadth, markets, products, competition and, most importantly, stability. Including growth stability.
If you rely only on the goals of the company, you will not achieve anything. For myself, I mean. Because the business has written these goals for itself, there is nothing for the employee. Well, that is, of course, there is, but according to the residual principle. Like “let’s tell them that it’s prestigious to work with us!” or “and we have interesting tasks,” or “we quickly become professionals here.” And, of course, tea, cookies, and “what else do they need there, damn it ... a coffee machine, or what?”.
Actually, that's why people burn out, I guess. There is no one’s own goal, and strangers, consciously or subconsciously, quickly get bored.
Quite a long time ago, I realized that this technique should be used when working with subordinates - let them also be Phoenixes. Unfortunately, here you will have to observe a lot, think, talk with people and take into account their interests and goals. To begin with, having recognized them, these goals.
At least take some money. Yes, I know, many people say that money is not the goal. If your salary in Russia is 500k, then, probably, money is no longer very interesting for you. But if you receive 30, 50, even 90 thousand rubles, then after 2014 you probably don’t feel very comfortable, especially if you have a family. So money is a great goal. Do not listen to those who have 500k - the well-fed does not understand the hungry. And the phrase “money cannot serve a purpose” was invented by employers to make people content with cookies.
Talking to employees about money is dangerous. It is much easier to be delicately silent, not to rock the boat. When they themselves come to ask, you can excuse yourself. When they come to demand, you can give in a little. Well, etc., you yourself know how it happens.
I love talking to people about money. And, to be honest, I have not seen a single person who would say, “Oh, I don’t need money.” I'm lying, I saw one - Artyom, hello. Everyone else wanted money, but did not know with whom to talk about this topic.
Actually, in this case, you simply focus on money, a “money injection” into any task or project. In any company, there is either an understandable or murky, but income-raising scheme. I won’t dwell on this for a long time, there are several articles in Career Steroids. But the twinkle in the eyes of people is added.
Often there is a goal of increasing competencies. Sometimes it is directly formed, indicating a specific area. A person wants to learn a technology, a framework, a subject area, a customer industry, etc. This is generally a thrill, because such a person can be thrown off all the tasks on the chosen topic, even the most stupid ones - he will be happy. Well, without fanaticism, of course, otherwise you will beat off a person’s love for the goal, you will get a minus in karma.
Many are interested in career growth - either in a professional direction, or in a career, or in general, a transition to another field of activity, for example, from programmers to go to managers. It's not a question - just add the sauce of the corresponding goal to any task or project, and a person will not burn out.
Well, etc. There are also exotic options, such as leaving the profession altogether, buying a house in the village and moving there with the whole family. I have personally seen two of them. We take and turn the current work into the vector of a person’s goal - he needs to save up a certain, fairly large amount of money, and finally get out of the city. Everything, the injection is done. Any task is not just a task, but a log from his village house, or half a pig, or two decent shovels.
Gradually, a community of such individualists gathers around. Each has its own purpose. Everyone has fire in their eyes. Everyone comes to work with joy, because he knows why - to achieve his goal. Everyone is ready to experiment, apply new methods of work, find and apply opportunities, develop competencies, even adventures. Because he knows why, where every brick of the solved problem will fit in the big house that he is building.
Well, if, nevertheless, a dirty trick happens - where without it, then a person will grieve for an hour, maybe two, it happens that a day, but in the morning a reborn one always comes, like a Phoenix bird. And what the hell are you going to do with that.
Source: habr.com