An ex had a major surgery a few years ago. We're still friends, but she was long into a new relationship. I never knew her family well, at least not well enough to get an update on a surgery that was an even bigger deal for them. That time period between being sure she must have been out of surgery and stalking her sister's social media hoping for an update was tough. She's also doing well! As I get older I realize the things that really stand out in life are people. I'm glad lil is doing well!
continuing creative pursuits - enjoying having a lot of time on my hands while also living under the fear of unemployment but life is alright i think
The drama at work increases... I had a direct, no hold barred, somewhat contentious discussion with a manager 3 levels up from me about my job. I said I had nothing to do, I had received no direction from my manager on what I am supposed to be doing, and my official job title and department are both no longer extant... but I still am a "Program Manager, Channel Sales". He was aggravated with me for bringing this up, and I said I shared his aggravation, because I LIKE work, and having a career path, and knowing what metrics I need to hit on a quarterly basis to get my bonuses and promotions... neither of which I have had in three years, because I haven't had the same manager for two consecutive review periods during my 6-years of working here. TURNS OUT, there is a huge reorganization of our sales department happening TODAY, several Executives are losing their jobs, and the whole department is being rebuilt from the ground up. Confidentially, my manager told me my job is safe (I refrained from asking, "what job is that, exactly?"), so I wait and refresh my email, awaiting notice of the changes...
not having direction at work sounds so great when you're overwhelmed... but in reality, it's terrible when it lasts any real amount of time. Sorry mate. On the flip side - I'm glad you've still got a job, and it sounds like you may be able to build up around what you want to do going forward? (although I think I remember a loose job search in the recent past)
There are personalities who would just shrink back into the woodwork, try not to get noticed, and ride this out for as long as possible and see it as "free money". I'm not that way. I grew up working in Silicon Valley, where you ARE your job. And while I have shaken off the unhealthy aspects of that perspective and have healthy boundaries nowadays, there's no denying that I have a need to work and have a task list of things to accomplish that will provide my unique values to a project. I like being needed and appreciated. With this big sales re-org, maybe I get the chance to rescope my work/role, and do something where I feel needed and valued? Or maybe I find that at a new job? Either way, I'm looking with positive energy to the future...
I had one job right out of college that I hated. I got hired as a manufacturing engineer by Chrysler at a time when Daimler was trying to dump them to anyone who would make a realistic bid. On day one my new boss basically told me he's too busy to train me, so until he gets around to it, just make sure I look busy whenever his boss is around. They paid me $53,000/yr for doing almost nothing. That was a high starting salary for the time. Many of my classmates would have jumped at it, but I resolved to quit on day 1. I stuck it out from April to September, because I figured I could handle a summer of shit until the next gig I found started, which was graduate school. From Chrysler I took a $32,000 pay cut to pursue grad studies, and have not regretted it for a single minute ever since. There's nothing like taking pride in the work you do and feeling like you're doing something that contributes (to the world, to your sense of self...whatever, as long as you don't feel like a bump on a log).
I had a job where the sales VP got Metrokane to pitch him on a bunch of shelving for the warehouse and it came in at like $450k. I said it looked like a lot of money so I spent a day reconfiguring everything and came up with the exact same amount of shelving from the exact same company for $200k. I then spent four days putting it up, rather than our company paying Metrokane $50k to install. The sales VP responded by having my 6'x6' cubicle broken into three 6'x2' carels. Same marketing guy had bought the machine shop without acknowledging that the company didn't do any machining so when I put on safety glasses and made chips nobody was willing to question who I was making them for. So I ran a CAT5 cable back to the machine shop, moved my computer in there and made shavings for eight weeks. God I hated that job.
Going to have my first professional speaking experience in March! 30-45 minutes to discuss and present on Data Driven Product Development as it relates to the food/bev industry. The funny part is, the kind of stuff that veen is doing is way more advanced...but I'm excited and hopefully it will be a good networking opportunity. Outside of that, I've been watching Get Back and it is one of the most interesting and weirdly voyeuristic documentaries I've seen. Revisited the album Let it Be and while it's not the Beatles best by any means, it's held up surprisingly well. The skits are something which I hadn't previously appreciated but during this listen found myself very entertained by how well they fit into the album tracking.
You'd be surprised at how simple some of the things are that I do. It's just that most people don't even consider that stacking simple things together already counts (for almost all most purposes) as something advanced. I enjoyed reading this, which was both very relatable and typefies what the end game of data-driven work in practice actually is.
Oh my god. I am living this article right now. I have a team of three, expecting to grow to a team of five by the end of next year. Note: I was told that not all data scientists report to me, but this is true. The entirety of the What's Happening So Far section. Okay I'm going to stop copy/pasting this entire article, because I pretty much could. That's how on-the-nose it is for my current job.You're a bit confused because you were told all data scientists would report into the data team, but apparently other functions have their own data scientists? You make a note to follow up.
You notice a a lot of the code starts with very complicated preprocessing steps, where data has to be fetched from many different systems. There appears to be several scripts that have to be run manually in the right order to run some of these things.
In your weekly 1:1s with various stakeholders, you keep finding huge blind spots and opportunities for data to make a difference. You use these things as a forcing function for a lot of core platform work. In particular, many pipelines need to be built to produce “derived” datasets. There's a high upfront cost of those analyses, but subsequent analyses are much easier once the right datasets have been built.
You're starting to lay the most basic foundation of what is most critically needed: all the important data, in the same place, easily queryable. Opening up SQL access and training other teams to use it means a lot of the “SQL translation” goes away.
My sister discovered today that our high school gives out a scholarship in the name of our dead uncle, who sucked a tailpipe day after Christmas instead of deal with the prospect of returning to Harvard his Freshman year. You would think one or the other of us would have been made aware of this by our parents, aunts, uncles etc. Or maybe even the grandparents who founded the scholarship in his name. Nah. Kinda like how neither of us knew that he founded the drama club. Which probably would have been mentioned when I won their "best actor" Oscar or whatever. Nah. Her childhood was fucked up in a different way than mine. Still pretty fucked up. But you can't ask anybody because they've been living the lie for so long they don't even remember what the truth was. Apparently my posse is in Rolling Stone this week, I better look it up.
a little quote from an ear worm I've been listening to lately. life is good. worried about lil. I'm trying to find some more time in the day and some more oomf to crank out some projects that are in my head but I can't quite squeeze in to existence. I love you hubski. no seriously... I really do!got a lot on my mind. got some more on my plate
Now that I've come out of a few hellish weeks at work, I'm enjoying the calmness at work but simultaneously feel more bored outside of work. I have the energy to do things in the evening / on the weekend again, but don't really feel the desire to do anything. But I can't complain; the biggest thing I've been fretting about is whether or not I should park my savings in an index fund or not. And whether or not I've bought the right gift for a family member. One thing that has brightened my week is that I've been enjoying figuring out how to make better coffee at home. Ended up treating myself to the wonderful Wilfa Uniform, which is loud but great, and I'm using it to hone in on my preferred cup of coffee. The past days I figured out which grind size results in the best taste for my french press. Tried four different grind settings with the exact same brew method and beans, I'm sticking with the finer middle one for now. There's a supposedly great roaster next to my office, but I haven't been to our own office in weeks. A few weeks ago I also had my final career coaching session. We talked about my career goals and tracks. The conclusion we landed on is that I am completely done with being the analyst in projects. It sounds...arrogant? but I'm much happier when I'm the one who can find the solution and someone else can do the legwork of building it. I'd much rather be useful in 8 projects in a managerial way, than to be useful in 3 projects as a data analyst. If I'm still stuck doing programming work for 80% of the week by next Fall, someone oughtta remind me that I'm better off quitting. Which may be where I end up in 2022 regardless - it's way easier to start somewhere fresh than to have everyone around me relearn what I'm here for, I think. But we'll see.