Working through war and plague
It is not the stroke of midnight, but the breaking of the first dawn of the year which prompts me to reflect on that moment of equilibrium between the year past, and that which is to come.
Allow me, dear reader, to pause for a moment of self-indulgent personal reflection. Nay, come with me, if you will, on a stroll past ourselves as we try to digest how the past few years have moulded us. This is a story about me, but I’m not so special that you are unlikely to find fragments of yourself in my story.
For the past few years, I have described myself as “2020 fugee” – a refugee from the upheaval, stagnation and unrest that was brought upon us by that year of reckoning. I’ve had my share of feeling adrift, moving between one place and the next over the course of my life, but in that carefree past it was more often than not a flight of desire, not of obligation. The stasis of the pandemic, having to accept that things must stand still for a time, that we must all stay where we are, that events must simply be cancelled, erased, that milestones must be deleted and that everything will be done later when it would be safe again, this stasis must now come to an end. It is time to start moving again.
The irony in many cases, including mine, is that I came out of that period completely exhausted, mentally and socially. The mere idea of having to interact, to earn social capital, to be present for others that were not my immediate family, became for a period too much to bear.
I sometimes think about what happened to us during that vaguely defined time of pandemic, and whether we can ever recover from it as a society. The pessimist in me says that some cracks were laid bare and that once we see them, we can never unsee them.
However, perhaps we can go about fixing them.
Mission and purpose
For as long as I can remember, I have been working for common goals, finding my own purpose through a larger mission. First, this was the study of the universe through a series of postgraduate degrees in physics culminating in a Ph.D. and several postdoc positions. Scientific research has for decades been a team sport, and even more so in the physics domain. Personally I found myself perennially in collaborations large and small, working with others towards what we were all convinced was a greater good. During the latter period of my scientific career, this peaked as I worked in what was then a giant collaboration of more than three thousand researchers and engineers. The sense of community I felt then has been something that I will never forget and have sought ever since. There was a mission, and I felt that my work had a purpose through achieving that mission.
My decision to leave that environment was taken half-heartedly. I would have happily stayed in physics, had I not realised two difficult truths:
- I was not the world’s greatest physicist, indeed I was quite mediocre and the competition was fierce
- Physics as a career would not give me the stability and growth path I wanted.
However, one cannot so easily change one’s essence as one can one’s job. My next career was still in service, more explicitly so, as I returned to South Africa to help build public infrastructure for computing. Looking back on those ten years from 2008 to 2018, I find it hard to judge myself as having had any success. As a harsh critic, I would say that all of the work I did was just playing at the various roles of project manager, community manager, trainer, etc. The end result was that there was nothing really to judge, because the goal posts kept moving, so I can’t even call the outcome of those years a failure! Perhaps this is too harsh a critique, but I will let others be the judge of that.
One theme that did remain constant, I think, was that of working for the benefit of others. Yes, I had my personal agendas which I was following, whether I knew it or not, but this does not detract from the fact that the projects, infrastructure and initiatives that I was trying to move forward were always for the direct benefit of others. This gave me that warm and fuzzy feeling of somehow “doing good”.
A detour
I joined EGI enthusiastically in 2018 to continue this mission, and out of the blue came the biggest opportunity for detour in my life so far. I made the decision to leave the world of research and public service to enter the private sector, because I felt that the time had come to put myself to the test. I had had my share of projects in which I was but a part, which didn’t depend explicitly on me, but which I contributed to and I had always felt the frustration that my peers and collaborators were not “doing it right”. A whiff of arrogance had started to surround me, I suspect, and I found myself correcting folks, pointing out “the bigger picture”, arguing based on grand principles and generally pretending like I knew it all.
What if I didn’t?
But what if I did?
The opportunity to work in a tight, elite team presented itself as I was called to join UEFA’s new DevOps team. I still can’t believe that I was presented with that opportunity and the absolutely amazing environment I was presented with. I found the best colleagues – truly wonderful people, great at their job all at the top of their game – as well as a fertile environment in which to prove myself. I found myself the least prepared, least knowledgeable, least technically capable, least sure of all of my colleagues and that feeling of being uncomfortable and challenged every day was thrilling.
My time at UEFA gave me the chance to really see what I was capable of and held a mirror up to myself, not just the environment I was working in.
Lessons
Needless to say, I learned a lot during that time; lot of technology, yes, but also a lot about how things really work in the real world. Or rather, how things fail in the real world, all of the ways that they work on paper but not in practice. The most valuable experience I gained during that time was not the subtleties of the cloud, performance tuning or monitoring tricks – it was what it takes to be successful, how to think and execute quickly how to solve problems permanently instead of fix issues. I learned a few things about myself which I hope to bring into 2023 and beyond.
Who am I not
First of all, I learned a few things about who I am not:
- Not the smartest person in the room: just as when I was a physicist, I am never going to be the smartest person in a team. I have a meandering education and experience and I’m working with folks who have spent their lives working in this specific environment and are really good at it. This means that I have to remain humble and listen to others when they talk because they probably know things that I don’t.
- Not the hardest worker in the room: I have a family, I have responsibilities outside of the office, I cannot afford to be dedicated to the work more than 8 or 9 hours a day (even that is a stretch in a normal week). I am older than most of my colleagues, my energy levels are not what they used to be, and I choose to dedicate the best part of that energy to my personal life. I also see this as a job, not a calling. I am here to get work done by being professional, not by being passionate. That is ok, but it means that I need to have habits and set clear expectations both for my colleagues as well as myself and my family.
- Not a rock star: I don’t crave recognition. I don’t need people to call out my name, invite me to guest blogposts or podcasts, conference appearances. I don’t need an audience. I do not want to be the face of anything, because I know that it’s all been done before. I don’t want to be bamboozled by hype… get real and show me the data.
- Nothing new to say: I don’t have original opinions in this environment. Perhaps I never did! but I’m certain that whatever I have to say has already been said before by those more eloquent and experienced than me. I have seen a bit, done a bit and learned a bit, but after all, we’re talking about computers here. It’s not quantum mechanics. My role is not to come up with edgy hot takes, it is to learn and improve those around me. There is more than one way to lead; “Linkedinfluencer” is not my style.
Who am I
So, am I just the opposite of the things I am not? To an extent, I am defining myself in opposition to things which I have learned that I am not, but there are also things which I am, not just things that I am because I am not their opposite.
I am:
- Conscious and appreciative of counter-narratives: I get sceptical when I hear “just-so” stories, broad generalisations and aphorisms at work. “This technology will revolutionise…”, “we have do do things this way because…”, “the data shows…”. These are all narratives, stories that people tell to support an existing point of view. These are really useful, they help us to get on the same page, to get the point across – heck, I do this all the the time myself! – but they are just stories. They are not the truth. The truth is there is always a counter-narrative and if we’re not aware of it, we risk talking ourselves into a corner.
- Capable of living in other peoples’ skins: I’ve been around, I’ve seen and worked in places that my colleagues barely know the names of. I know that people think and work in different ways, and that while these may not be original, they are indeed diverse. I became aware that the world is a racist, classist place when I first stepped out of high school, and almost all my experience since then has been a clash between principles of equity and the messed up way the world seems to be organised. Working in Africa and working in Europe are wildly different experiences, with people having wildly different biases, points of view and priorities. Some of these people may have violently opposed world views to yours, but they are still people. Whatever the official line, you don’t have “workers” at work, you have people and those people are frikkin weird… and I am frikkin here for it…
- Multifaced experience: I am trained as a scientist and at heart I still reason about the world as a scientist. However, I speak four languages, I have lived in several cities, on several continents. I’ve been poor, I’ve written code, managed projects, I’ve been responsible for liaising with high school principals and foreign ambassadors, I’ve had folks die on me and seen my babies born. I’ve had good managers, I’ve had no managers and I’ve had terrible managers. I’ve been told “whatever it costs, just get it done”, and I’ve been told “there’s no budget, just get it done”. I haven’t really found a way to write this on a CV, but it’s really the biggest thing I’ve got going for me, from an employer’s point of view. Throw me in the deep end fam, I’ve seen it before, I’m good to go.
- I care about quality: Quality makes the difference. I am not, by nature, a person who cares about the nitty-gritty details. My scientific training (and perhaps the reason I was so drawn to it), taught me to look for patterns, for general laws, to see the big picture. But in the real world of people, this doesn’t make the difference, it’s quality that makes the difference. Being prepared, anticipating pain, building things that are free of defects, designing for elegant function, rather than appearance.
Back to service
Coming back full circle, my purpose has always been found through others, it’s time to accept and embrace that again. I have spent the last 2 years more or less focussed on myself at work, to the detriment of the community out there I had found myself a part of.
I am taking a turn away from myself and back towards serving others, this time as engineering manager at the company I work at. In my mind, this is an opportunity to “do it right” – to put my own personal convictions and ideas to the test in a challenging way – but also a way to rediscover purpose through empowering others and improving their lives. I want to bring a rigorous approach to designing processes in our company such that they actually make our lives better first: less miscommunication, less toil and unrewarding work, fewer meetings, more context when it’s needed, fewer surprises, putting the right tools and information in the right hands, at the right time. I want to design for elegance, for happiness, for efficiency.
It’s time to channel my inner Deming!
My own experience has been that a good manager can mean the difference between happiness and despair, between fulfillment and frustration, the reason people stay and the reason people leave. Good managers come in different forms. Some of them are memorable for your personal relationship with them, others are able to change the system so that it’s better by design. I don’t know what effect I will eventually have in this new role, but I intend to bring those things that I am, and those things that I am not, to this new role.
I don’t want to be the superhero that everyone sends their troubles to and that then magically makes those troubles disappear – I am not that guy! I want to make things better for others by making my own life a pit of stress… I want to solve problems by removing them from the system.
I want to see people shine. I want to shrug off the lethargy and I want to feel us all picking up that spring in our stride again, to have fun at work, to build things that last.
If this sounds like a nice place to work, hook me up. If the place you work already sounds like this, good for you and your team, and hey, let’s compare notes.
Have a good 2023 y’all,
The Dude has spoken.