I've been very unlucky in my life. All my life I have been surrounded by people who do something real. And I, as you might guess, am a representative of two of the most meaningless, far-fetched and unreal professions that you can think of - programmer and manager.
My wife is a school teacher. Plus, of course, the class teacher. My sister is a doctor. Her husband, naturally, too. My father is a builder. A real one who builds with his own hands. Even now, at 70 years old.
And I? And I am a programmer. I pretend that I help all sorts of businesses. Businesses pretend that I really help them. Business also pretends that business is people. By helping businesses, I help people. No, in general, these are, of course, people. You can only list them on one hand. Well, those whom I help when costs are reduced, profits increase and staff are reduced.
Of course, there are – and maybe “probably there are” – real programmers in the world. Not those who “work,” but those whose work helps people—ordinary people. But this is not about me and not about my profession. Yes, I forgot to mention: I am a 1C programmer.
Any automation of any business is not real work. Business is generally a fairly virtual phenomenon. Some guys were sitting there working, and suddenly they decided that things weren’t going to work that way, and that they needed to do the work, and not hunch over their uncle. They made some money or connections, founded a company, and are trying to make money.
Well, yes, there is – or “probably there is” – business has some kind of social mission. They like to say this - they say, we create jobs, make the world a better place, producing our products, paying taxes. But all this, firstly, is secondary, and secondly, it is not unique.
Every business creates jobs, produces products and pays taxes. Neither the number of jobs, nor the volume of production, nor the amount of payments to the state in any way characterizes a business in terms of its “realness” on my scale. Well, in the end, all this is the second echelon of the main goal - making money for the owners.
We made money - great. At the same time, you managed to come up with some kind of social mission for yourself - great, urgently add it to the advertising booklet. When the owner goes into politics, it will come in handy. And that’s what the advertisement tells us about how healthy yogurt we produce for the whole world is.
Since business, as an object of automation, is not real, then automation, as an improvement of this object, cannot be real. All the people working at the enterprise are put there with one goal - to help earn more money. For a similar purpose, contractors are brought into business. Everyone makes money together by helping each other make money.
No, I’m not a hungry preacher, and I understand how our world works. 99 percent of the time I don’t worry about this topic at all. Moreover, both the programmer and the manager are paid quite well for their work.
But I find it terribly awkward to be in the company of real people. See above - I find myself in such company every day. And with sincere pleasure, almost opening my mouth, I listen to stories about their work. But I have essentially nothing to tell about mine.
One day I found myself on vacation with my sister and her husband. She is a therapist, he is a surgeon. They then lived in a small town where there were only two surgeons available. The long warm evenings were spent talking, and I heard all sorts of stories. For example, how, after a major accident, nine people were brought in to stitch up, for one surgeon on duty.
What was especially striking was that he told it completely calmly, without the feigned emotionality and attempts to embellish the story that are typical of managers like me. Well, yes, nine people. Yeah, stitch it up. Well, I sewed it up.
With childish naivety, I asked how he felt about saving people’s lives. He says that at first he tried to somehow realize, or rather, force himself to realize that he was doing something truly useful and valuable. Like, I saved a man’s life. But, he says, no special understanding came. It's just the way it works. They brought it and sewed it up. And he went home when the shift was over.
It was easier to talk to my sister - she was very interested in the topic of career growth, and at that time I was an IT director, and I had something to tell. At least some kind of outlet, at least in some way I managed to be useful to them. Told her then-unformulated career steroids. By the way, she later became deputy. head physician - apparently we have something in common in character. And her husband sews people up like that. And then he goes home.
My wife’s profession became a constant source of torment. Every day I hear about her class, about the children growing up before her eyes, about their teenage problems that seem so important and insoluble to them. At first I didn’t get into it, but when I listened, it became interesting.
Each such story became like reading a good fiction book, with unexpected plot twists, deeply developed characters, their searches and rebirths, difficulties and successes. This is, in a way, a session of real life in a series of my pseudo-successes, pseudo-failures and pseudo-difficulties. I literally envy my wife with white envy. So much so that I myself am eager to go work at school (which, of course, I will never do for financial reasons).
I will also mention my father. He lived all his life in the village, and worked as a builder all his life. There are no corporations, teams, ratings or reviews in the village. There are only people there, and all these people know each other. This leaves a certain imprint on everything that happens there.
For example, masters of their craft are held in high esteem there—those who do the work with their own hands. Builders, mechanics, electricians, even pig killers. If you have established yourself as a master, then you will not be lost in the village. Actually, that’s why my father once dissuaded me from becoming an engineer - he said that I would get drunk, a specialty that was too in demand in the village, due to the complete absence of any repair shops.
In our village it is difficult to find at least one house in the construction of which my father did not have a hand. There are, of course, buildings his age, but since the 80s, he has participated in almost everywhere. The reason is simple - in addition to ordinary construction, he became a stove maker, and in the village they build a stove in every house, not to mention every bathhouse.
There were few stove makers in the village, and my father, to use my language, occupied a niche and developed his competitive advantage. Although, he continued to build houses. Even I once participated as a subcontractor - for 200 rubles I pierced moss between the beams of a folded box. Don't laugh, it was 1998.
And he took part in the construction of the stove a couple of times, with the privilege of “bring it, give it, move on, don’t interfere.” The funniest moment in the whole project was lighting this stove for the first time. Smoke begins to pour out of all the cracks, and you have to sit and wait patiently until the smoke “finds” a way out. Some kind of magic. After a few minutes, the smoke finds the pipe, and for the next few decades it will only come out through it.
Naturally, almost the whole village knows my father. Almost - because now many people from the neighboring city have settled there, for the sake of clean air, the forest across the road and other village delights. They live and don’t know who built their stove, bathhouse, and maybe the whole house. Which is generally normal.
This “normal”, in a strange way, distinguishes all the real people of real professions I know. They just work, do their job and move on with their lives.
In our environment, it is customary to build a corporate culture, engage in motivation, measure and increase staff loyalty, teach slogans and conduct team building. They have nothing like this - everything is somehow simple and natural. I am increasingly convinced that our entire corporate culture is nothing more than an attempt to convince people that their work has at least some meaning other than making money for the owner.
The meaning, purpose, mission of our work is invented by special people, printed on paper and posted in a visible place. The quality, the credibility of this mission, its ability to inspire is always at a very low level. Because the task solved by writing a mission is virtual, not real - to convince us that helping the owner make money is honorable, interesting, and in general, in this way we are realizing our personal mission.
Well, it's complete crap. There are offices where they don’t bother with such nonsense. They make money stupidly, without bothering with the husks, without trying to put on top a beautiful blanket of mission and contribution to the development of society and the state. Yes, it’s unusual, but at least it’s not cheating.
After talking with real people and rethinking my work, I, to my great satisfaction, began to have a simpler attitude towards work. I haven’t been going to corporate events for a long time; I ignore all “employee codes”, dress codes, missions and values with great pleasure. I’m not trying to fight them, it’s not right - since the owner decided that everyone should wear pink T-shirts with Mabel and a unicorn, this is his personal business. Only I will wear a yellow T-shirt. And tomorrow - in red. The day after tomorrow - I don’t know how my soul will ask.
I also rethought my work to improve efficiency. In general, I have been seriously ill with this topic for a long time, but I have always put business at the forefront. Like, we need to increase its effectiveness, this has meaning and mission.
It is necessary, of course, if this is my job, if I was hired specifically for this. But, usually, this activity is secondary, it comes as a trailer to some “ordinary” work. Therefore, it is optional and gives wide scope for creativity.
This is where I get creative. Now my main focus is increasing the personal effectiveness of employees at work. Not so that the business earns more, although this goal is also achieved, but in a trailer. The main goal is to increase employee income. Those who want it, of course.
After all, every person, having come to work, will still spend the whole day there. Time spent in the office is a cost, and it is constant. And the money and competencies that he earns are his result. We divide the result by the costs and get efficiency.
Then everything is simple. Costs, i.e. time at work is unlikely to be reduced. But how can you get more results? And efficiency is growing. Roughly speaking, this is the effectiveness of “serving time”, because work is a forced necessity, if without embellishment.
Of course, I cannot reach the level of “realness” that doctors, teachers and builders have. But at least I’ll help someone. A living, sad, cheerful, problematic, unkempt, beautiful, eccentric, gloomy, but real – a Man.
Or should I become a school teacher? It’s too late to become a doctor, but you won’t be able to become a builder - your hands are growing out of your ass.
Source: habr.com