I invite you to connect, but only on your own time

This blog post is the 3^rd and final of a series of Anti-Pattern stories

In this last post of the series, I finally take the opportunity to rant a bit. Thinking back to the time when I worked at the aforementioned small company, I realize the reason I became so emotionally affected was because the company seemingly had great growth potential that never materialized. Below is one last story of workplace theatrics accompanied by quotes from my favorite movie of the last 5 years, Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

“Do Less… Well no, you gotta to do more than that”

One of my favorite lines from the movie applies to the network monitoring policy at this corporation. For at least some period of time, the paranoia from above was deep, resulting in a robust monitoring software rollout. Whereas some companies track proxy statistics to determine broadband usage and lists of sites visited by employees (a tactic I have no problem with), that was just the beginning in our case. Here, all corporate emails from most employees were published on the network to keep them honest. Additionally, the owner of the company installed software to be able to view keystrokes and screenshots from each employee’s computer usage on the network. Details about this product’s existence as well as the tracking information collected were only supposed to be accessible to the owner. When a Network Admin noticed a peculiar “SpyWare” program on the server, the “cat was let out of the bag”. In retrospect, we all should have had some suspicions based on the broad statement allowing company collection of data in the Employee Handbook.

Knowledge of keystroke logging was held in a fairly close circle, shielded from new employees. Therefore, I did not find out about it right away. Granted, I do not like the idea of anyone being allowed to track keystrokes, as that provides all the information needed to login as me on the network and possibly additional websites, etc. However, the network monitoring policy that frustrated me the most began when “questionable” sites became blocked, inaccessible to users on the network. Some of the obvious sites you would think of were on the list of blocked sites (Gaming, Personal Email, MySpace) but also blocked were those not so obvious sites (Personal Banking, LinkedIn, YouTube, Random Blogs). Many times during the day I would be blocked from information on the Internet I needed to do my job, such as tutorial videos on YouTube or programming help on a blog. The “straw that broke the camel’s back” for me was when I received a LinkedIn Connection request from the owner, but I was not allowed to accept it while on the company network. How can the site be considered valuable and reputable enough for the owner to use it to connect to employees during work hours but not reputable enough to actually allow them to reciprocate while on the job? It was as if we were being asked to “Do Less.”

“So then do something about it”

If working at this place was so dreadful, why did I continue to work there? Well, for one, I didn’t have the option to create a rock opera about Dracula (I kid). But as stated above, I truly believed that the company would grow and along with that would come personal opportunities. The key benefits to working for this company were:

• Growth Potential
  
• I was given tremendous amounts of responsibility early, which was frequently a rewarding challenge
  
• I viewed the job as a resume builder, thinking that I could land any job after about 3 years
  
• My colleagues were great to work with and are some of my best friends today
  
• I got to work on brand new Microsoft technologies
  

“It’s really good, Peter. I just don’t understand it”

3 posts now have revolved around my time working at this company. It’s time to get to the point by explaining what I learned by constantly having to “walk on egg shells.”

• It pushed my leadership ability to a new level. I was forced into making technical leadership decisions within a short period of time after beginning the job. Because of the high turnover, I went from being the 3^rd most experienced technical person in the company to the 1^st. This meant that I had to learn to make decisions without the reliance of someone who had relevant experience.
  
• I learned when and how to speak up, to voice my opinion.
  
• I learned that it is important to be able to articulate the points for or against a decision.
  
  • When responding negatively to news about a decision, I learned to be able to describe reasons why a decision made me uncomfortable.
    
  • When presenting, it is important to start with an “Executive Overview”; don’t assume that the audience knows immediately what you’re talking about.
    
  • When selling an idea, I learned to prepare for critique and to validate benefits.
    

Perhaps most importantly, I began to understand how stressful it can be to own/bootstrap your own company. For the owner, his or her entire livelihood is at stake every day. The occasional emotional response to bad news can be expected.