tl;dr I'm an arsehole
Apr. 28th, 2014 10:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
swehElse-net there was a comment about a person who was a delight to work with.
I wish I was one of these people.
Unfortunately I'm not. And I'm trying to work out; why not?
I started $JOB[$CURRENT] in October 1999. I had my first review in Jan 2000 where my boss said (effectively) "You should speak up more. You know your stuff".
See, this was the first time I'd been in a large environment. Up until then I'd had a maximum of (maybe) 10 Unix machines to run. I tamed them, so they got me working on NT. I tamed that so they got me doing Oracle. Then Lotus Notes... *shudder*
Then I changed jobs; now we had 650+ machines, of which I had zero history and knowledge. I'd previously worked on the basis of knowing every single config, every cable, every switch; I knew my environment and could diagnose just by running a mental map. Now I was in a situation where I couldn't do that.
I assumed that the existing team members were as good as me and _did_ know this stuff. So I didn't speak up; I didn't interrupt; I didn't correct. I was the newbie out of my depth and these guys were working on a scale I hadn't work at.
So I thought. It took me a while to realise that, umm, maybe not!
One kicker was the paging system; we used an old monitoring system that had a known flaw in its DR processes; a monitored machine might fall over to the other server but not get deleted from the first and the first would eventually think the client hadn't checked in and so assume it was down and so raise a ticket causing a pager alert. Basically whoever was on call would get half a dozen false pages over night.
My first night on call? Zero pages. Why? Because I wrote a quick script that compared the two servers and deleted the stale entries. I ran it just before I went on shift. It wasn't perfect (a server could become stale overnight) but it meant I got a whole nights sleep; apparently this was unheard of. No one from a team of 20 had thought of this. They'd all been suffering sleepless nights for years.
As time went on scenarios like this kept appearing. I actually _was_ the smartest person in the room; the quickest to come to a solution; the quickest to find design errors... And I could do this in my sleep.
Another example; in 2002 I was asked how long it would take to do a job. I took my estimate, doubled it, redoubled. And then told the end-user "this isn't official; that's just my estimate". My boss complained,
telling me that no one else can do the job so quickly (despite my 4*overestimate). As it happens it only took me 1 hour; we'd planned on 4 weeks. The fix was easier than I'd hoped (reverse engineering a DB schema change on CA TNG monitoring).
11+ years later and I'm still the smartest person in the room. Every so often challengers appear; they don't last. I'm getting tired of people trying to prove me wrong. Why do I have a vision of old-West gun-slingers?
(Heh; those 650+ machines in 1999? Now I'm writing code for 50,000+ machines...)
I participate in some other fora. One, in particular, that I like is because I'm _not_ always the smartest person. There's a massive knowledge base. Areas I've never even looked at, they have knowledgable people. And, of course, non-techie "people" aspects of interaction are always eye-opening to me.
My memory is telling me we recently had (on that fora) a discussion around "people who are never wrong" and how they deal with other people (at least I think it was there). I think I am one of these people. I've become an arsehole simply because I've got fed up with teaching people Unix 101 time and time again for the past 20 years.
Tori asks me "Aren't you bored with always being right?". I joke back "No; just with other people being wrong".
I'm not sure that's a joke, anymore.
(2 weeks ago; "P1 issue! ssh logins are taking a minute!". Very first thing I said "check DNS"; 10 minutes later an alert email goes out about a DNS load balancer having failed; DNS team assumed no impact...)
There was a guy I knew; his name was Peter Sumner. He was the archetype of "delight to work with". He had so much patience, was able to teach so much. I wanted to be him. My life is lessened by his passing (heart attack a couple of years ago). I'll never be him, though. I don't have his patience.
I've actually taken this week of work because I was sniping at people too much. I need to step back. Maybe a week away from work will help.
I think I'm beginning to disappear into my own ego arsehole.
And I don't think I like the person I've become.
I wish I was one of these people.
Unfortunately I'm not. And I'm trying to work out; why not?
I started $JOB[$CURRENT] in October 1999. I had my first review in Jan 2000 where my boss said (effectively) "You should speak up more. You know your stuff".
See, this was the first time I'd been in a large environment. Up until then I'd had a maximum of (maybe) 10 Unix machines to run. I tamed them, so they got me working on NT. I tamed that so they got me doing Oracle. Then Lotus Notes... *shudder*
Then I changed jobs; now we had 650+ machines, of which I had zero history and knowledge. I'd previously worked on the basis of knowing every single config, every cable, every switch; I knew my environment and could diagnose just by running a mental map. Now I was in a situation where I couldn't do that.
I assumed that the existing team members were as good as me and _did_ know this stuff. So I didn't speak up; I didn't interrupt; I didn't correct. I was the newbie out of my depth and these guys were working on a scale I hadn't work at.
So I thought. It took me a while to realise that, umm, maybe not!
One kicker was the paging system; we used an old monitoring system that had a known flaw in its DR processes; a monitored machine might fall over to the other server but not get deleted from the first and the first would eventually think the client hadn't checked in and so assume it was down and so raise a ticket causing a pager alert. Basically whoever was on call would get half a dozen false pages over night.
My first night on call? Zero pages. Why? Because I wrote a quick script that compared the two servers and deleted the stale entries. I ran it just before I went on shift. It wasn't perfect (a server could become stale overnight) but it meant I got a whole nights sleep; apparently this was unheard of. No one from a team of 20 had thought of this. They'd all been suffering sleepless nights for years.
As time went on scenarios like this kept appearing. I actually _was_ the smartest person in the room; the quickest to come to a solution; the quickest to find design errors... And I could do this in my sleep.
Another example; in 2002 I was asked how long it would take to do a job. I took my estimate, doubled it, redoubled. And then told the end-user "this isn't official; that's just my estimate". My boss complained,
telling me that no one else can do the job so quickly (despite my 4*overestimate). As it happens it only took me 1 hour; we'd planned on 4 weeks. The fix was easier than I'd hoped (reverse engineering a DB schema change on CA TNG monitoring).
11+ years later and I'm still the smartest person in the room. Every so often challengers appear; they don't last. I'm getting tired of people trying to prove me wrong. Why do I have a vision of old-West gun-slingers?
(Heh; those 650+ machines in 1999? Now I'm writing code for 50,000+ machines...)
I participate in some other fora. One, in particular, that I like is because I'm _not_ always the smartest person. There's a massive knowledge base. Areas I've never even looked at, they have knowledgable people. And, of course, non-techie "people" aspects of interaction are always eye-opening to me.
My memory is telling me we recently had (on that fora) a discussion around "people who are never wrong" and how they deal with other people (at least I think it was there). I think I am one of these people. I've become an arsehole simply because I've got fed up with teaching people Unix 101 time and time again for the past 20 years.
Tori asks me "Aren't you bored with always being right?". I joke back "No; just with other people being wrong".
I'm not sure that's a joke, anymore.
(2 weeks ago; "P1 issue! ssh logins are taking a minute!". Very first thing I said "check DNS"; 10 minutes later an alert email goes out about a DNS load balancer having failed; DNS team assumed no impact...)
There was a guy I knew; his name was Peter Sumner. He was the archetype of "delight to work with". He had so much patience, was able to teach so much. I wanted to be him. My life is lessened by his passing (heart attack a couple of years ago). I'll never be him, though. I don't have his patience.
I've actually taken this week of work because I was sniping at people too much. I need to step back. Maybe a week away from work will help.
I think I'm beginning to disappear into my own ego arsehole.
And I don't think I like the person I've become.
