Where does the sharing of institutional knowledge end and the free ride begin?

I’m having a moral dilemma at work. A woman I work with—I’ll call her J.—is calling me just a little too frequently for help. Not just help. Training. And not just training. Training on processes I had to work pretty hard to create, and which, in theory, should pay off with more client-related work coming my way.

J. isn’t much of a problem solver. She cries for help long before she puts any thought into solving her problems herself. And perhaps because people in GIS tend to have stumbled into the field through a sink-or-swim process whereby some supervisor throws software at them and says “figure it out,” I have high expectations where GIS problem-solving is concerned, and perhaps I’m holding a bit of bias against J. because I don’t think she measures up.

I don’t mind helping her with little problems, but lately she’s taken to asking me how I did some bit of analysis or modeling so that the process I worked to create becomes easily duplicated by her, and the billable work goes her way. The modeling alone has taken me years to learn, because much of it is intuition-based. A person could spend a lifetime learning and studying this field. And being asked to share has lead me down the path of internal conflict and resentment.

How much sharing is too much? I know, from the company’s standpoint, it’s best if internal knowledge is duplicated to prevent bottlenecks in scheduling someone’s time. And they like to have knowledge spread and shared, because it benefits the company to have a broad skill set from which to draw, and because it helps them with employee retention if professional development and training are benefits of employment. But, because billable hours are finite, and in essence we compete for them, isn’t it unjust for anyone to expect me to freely give away the knowledge I’ve worked to gain? Even if the company was paying me while I gained it?

If I left, the knowledge would come with me—I wouldn’t be checking it at the door on my way out. So I feel comfortable in saying that I own it. And if it’s mine, am I obligated to share it just because someone asked?

I fully admit I’d probably be less annoyed sharing this information with someone smart enough to come up with it on their own. Also, I try not to be territorial about my project work, because first and foremost, it annoys me when others get that way, and second, I have no absolute right to that work. If someone in the company finds a better way to do it, then they’re entitled to have managers come and request their skills.

But J. hasn’t come up with a better process. She hasn’t solved or done anything innovative on her own. She just wants to duplicate what I know how to do. And I’m not being paid to train her. It benefits me in no way to share my knowledge with her, unless it’s work I’m trying to move away from doing. This isn’t that kind of work. And it isn’t training she could go out and pay for, either, so suggesting outside courses isn’t an option.

So, if I train her how to do my work, the company gains one more skill set for an employee, J. gains knowledge, and I lose billable work that otherwise would’ve come to me. If I don’t train her, the company breaks even, J. loses billable work, and I gain billable work.

What’s the verdict? Share or not?

I know I’ve been largely silent on the blogging front, and you’d probably never notice the difference, but I’ll be in San Francisco for the next few days, which gives me a justification for the silence, this time.

Why is it some folks seem almost willfully incapable of considering all the effects of their actions? Recent interactions with a coworker have me so frustrated that I’m nearing the point of calling for someone to post her head on the battlements as a warning to others.

This woman is in a position of enormous responsibility–she manages all the data many, many other folks use in their analyses. And for reasons unfathomable to me, she’s incapable of notifying anyone when there’s a change, what changed, why the change was made, or providing any other warnings that our analyses may need to start over from square one. Twice in the past two weeks, I’ve found out sheerly by accident that everything I thought had been settled was in fact in a state of flux, and she wasn’t capable of quantifying the amount of flux in either instance.

Her preferred method is to make changes, document nothing, and then maybe send out a summary email, or instead sit back and hope no one notices. If these miscalculations were really someone else’s fault, as she claims, she’d be in a position to prop herself up a bit for finding and fixing them. But I can’t help but suspect these problems are directly attributable to her, and that’s the real reason she’s not telling anyone about corrections. That’s the only reasonable explanation for taking a “hide and hope I’m not discovered” tactic.

And I suspect she truly believes she’s not at fault, though I’m not clear whose fault she thinks the mess is.

This happens all around us. People routinely deceive themselves into focusing on the benefits of a decision without weighing the potential consequences, either to themselves or to others. Whether it is government forcing some new law down our throats only to be suddenly astonished at the unintended consequences, or the individuals who are almost entirely responsible for the entire practice of product liability law, looking ahead and seeing the ramifications of one’s actions is rapidly becoming a lost art.

It’s to the point of the absurd–even pedestrians don’t want the responsibility of considering what happens if they step in front of the car. If you ask them, they’ll focus on suing the bastards who had the temerity to hit them, but they never consider the hours of physical therapy, the crutches, the stitches, or any of the other negative implications associated with stepping into the path of a moving car.

And, just like my coworker, they demonstrate a complete inability to take responsibility for all the consequences of their actions that follow. They hide, and hope no one calls them on their role in the ensuing mess.

I know sometimes hearing “I’m sorry. I screwed up. It won’t happen again,” isn’t satisfactory, but right now, I’d be content to just hear it ONCE from a responsible person who means it and commits to looking both ways before crossing.

I promised myself that come Monday, I’d decide whether Company A or Company B would employ me. Unfortunately for me, someone who dwells, I spent most of the weekend mulling it all over–sleeping little, eating even less, fretting with the weight on my soul. B. was the only person who managed to get my mind off the whole sordid affair for any measurable length of time, and I’m grateful for those precious moments where I could forget the decision pressing on me.

This morning, I arrived to work nearly three hours earlier than usual. First, horrid construction has been threatening the commute of South Sounders, and warnings have been issued for some time about how bad the drive downtown could be, so I wanted to get on the road as early as humanly possible. Second, I really do have plenty of work to get done, and the early morning hours in a silent office make it feasible. But last, I wanted a last few moments in the almost religious silence where I wasn’t given over to wonderings and suspicions about how much my coworkers knew. On Friday, some of the glances I got made it pretty clear who was in the know, and I didn’t really care to repeat the gawk show upon my arrival today.

Oddly, my manager arrived early, too, and though I know he’s busy, I suspect the hour might have had something to do with me. I’d formulated the main points of my speech over the endless weekend, and needed a few hours to work on my nerves, so I didn’t immediately seek him out for a meeting. Later on, I emailed him and we agreed to meet at 10.

At the appointed hour, I went to his office, and we snagged a small conference table in one of the partners’ offices for neutral ground and some privacy.

My first goal was to make it plainly clear that I wasn’t drawing any joy from the situation. Though some high-powered career types probably get off on having their employer over a barrel, that isn’t a position I’ve ever wanted. He understood, and apologized for making this so much harder on me–a slight understatement. If he’d just wished me well and sent me on my way, I’d have had a weekend devoted to enjoyable pursuits, not ruminating over the decision facing me.

Then I laid out my bottom line. I’d accept the salary they’ve offered upon three conditions. First, in 9 months, the company would agree to renegotiate my salary based upon my performance with the new responsibilities I’ll be taking on–a mid-year raise. Second, I’d be sent out for a specific kind of training, and the sooner the better. And last, that I’d be sent to the major GIS user’s conference in San Diego next year, with no restrictions upon how many days I could attend. My previous manager just couldn’t abide the thought of me being gone for an entire week, and put so many caveats on my attendance that he killed my motivation to go.

The look of relief on my manager’s face…well, it won’t be soon wiped from memory. He honestly believed I’d chase the money, that the company never had a chance of retaining me. And he confessed that he’d been worrying about some of my same concerns. Those worries came from a friend hoping to see me in a good career, not from a manager hoping to retain me. He shared my fears over the economy and the “too good to be true” salary, over the potential loss of workload and billable hours which, in consulting, are everything. He’d have laid claim to none of those fears if he were acting completely on the best interests of the company. He was worried I’d be stuck and unhappy, or perhaps worse.

And I confided in him some of the reasons I decided to stay. In addition to the fears we shared, I told him my concerns about the honesty and integrity of the woman under whom I’d be working, concerns I don’t have with this company. The fact that our minds both reached the same conclusion independently has me feeling completely at ease with my decision. He agreed to everything I asked for, and it will be in writing tomorrow.

Not half an hour later, one of the project mangers ducked into my cubicle and said “A little bird told me a rumor you just made my year!” and then ducked out to a meeting before I could respond. Our IT manager found me later and said “I’m glad you’re staying.” So far, everyone’s been supportive, and I’ve gained the knowledge that I have some rather powerful allies in my corner. All I can hope for now is that in the coming months, I can look back on this and grok the rightness of my choices.

I can’t adequately thank everyone who provided advice to me. The folks who chose to comment, my friends M., B., and T. who suffered through my one-track mind over the weekend, and my family–all your advice, patience, and thoughtful responses were all part of my decision-making process and cannot be overvalued!

Now, in this moment, I have the unrivaled clarity and calm I was so sorely lacking over the past week. Perhaps now a sound, dreamless sleep will grace me with her presence.

Internal conflict seems to be the order of the day, lately.

On the one hand, I have an incredibly lucrative job offer from a reputable firm, a firm that sought me out to recruit. On the other, I have my current employer who is putting up a fight for me to remain. I am now, unhappily, the rope in a difficult, tense game of tug-o-war.

The new offer with Company A comes with a greater salary (and future salary potential) and more paid time off. It’s in a field I’m slightly less enthusiastic about, but I’m giving it serious consideration because of the doors it would open for me financially. I’d be able to work from home more often, and in the next year would be moving to an office that would give me a third of the commute I have now.

But (again, you knew that was coming), there are potential pitfalls, too. The EFC is the one offering the job and under whom I’d be working, which is sending up “too good to be true” flags. She is the glass ceiling staring me in the face: I’ll never get above her while we’re at the same company. I have less of a feel for their workload, both current and future, and its swings, which worries me–I get bored and start hating my job when I’m not busy. Though my last job change was for several very specific reasons and goals, I’ve been something of a drifter, and it’s starting to get dangerous to put that all on my resume. It makes me look flaky. And finally, it might be unwise to start over with no seniority and no one who can verify the value and quality of my work with the economy in such a questionable state of flux.

And then there’s Company B. Company B is by far the best place I’ve ever worked. I like most of the people, the work is challenging and interesting, and they’ve really worked to preserve a great atmosphere despite a recent spate of somewhat alarming growth. My manager is by far the best person I’ve ever reported to. He’s straight up and honest, and a fierce advocate for those of us under him. Were it not for the money, I’d never have even considered leaving.

When I dropped the bomb on my manager, the shock on his face was so palpable I couldn’t stop shaking–not from fear, but from guilt. I don’t handle confrontation particularly well (that secondary Amiable characteristic coming out), and I actually broke into tears when I returned to the blissful sanctuary of my cubicle (at least I held it together until I could retreat). I’ve spent the last 36 hours beating and berating myself for both what feels like a betrayal and for crying at all. Why does emotion, having nowhere else to go, leak out my eyes instead?

It was painfully clear that he never, not for one instant, saw this coming. After a stunned silence and some regrouping, he leveled with me that wheels were in motion to adjust my salary upwards, even before my news hit. And then he asked if I’d be willing to entertain a counteroffer. He then emailed the internal management team, the partners, and any project managers with whom I work regularly who weren’t already on either of the first two lists–basically an all-hands alert to the powers within the company.

Later, one of the partners with whom I work regularly came up and said he’d heard a rumor that I was leaving. I eventually told him yes, but I think my countenance betrayed me even before I said it. He, too, expressed shock, and said they were working on a counteroffer because they’d hate to lose me. Funny how advocates can crawl out of the woodwork, smoked out by the pheromones of crisis…

Today, they countered, and it’s sadly not what I was really hoping for. In truth, it was like pleading with a lover you hope is going to give you a reason to stay, only to have them dash your hopes by telling you that they can’t mount a decent fight for you. They’ve thrown money at me, sure, but only about half the raise from Company A. (Company B’s salary offer is more than my manager makes now.) And more vacation is politically sticky. But they’ve given me a generously wide range of career options that are worth considering, all of which involve advancement and more authority. And all this at a company whose future and workload in which I have more trust… they’re the devil I know.

Part of their fear–justifiably, if I look at this from their position–is that they don’t want to give me too much of a raise BEFORE I take on all these additional responsibilities. And I think that’s fair. My mom had the brilliant idea of staying on with the provision that after a year, we renegotiate my salary based on performance, and they’re open to that.

So, is money everything, or does happiness count even though it doesn’t pay the bills? If I have to slow headway on my financial goals in order to stay where I am, is that foolish? If I stay, will they think me a pushover who can’t pull the trigger on an opportunity? If I leave, will I constantly be looking back to see if I made the wrong choice? Do I take the means to an end, or the thing that makes me happier?

My head is swirling with an interminable sea of questions, none of which have answers. I can’t eat, and sleep comes only in 2-hour windows. I feel like every corner of my brain is stuck in endless compute cycles of agony over having to make a choice I never had really mentally prepared to face. Nothing else matters right now.

My manager knows how tough this is on me, and I think he regrets that. When we talked this evening, he asked if I needed anything else, and I jokingly said I needed someone to make the decision for me. He, without any hesitation, responded “I’ll do it!” Grateful for even a little humor, I laughed and said that no, I need someone impartial and that he doesn’t qualify.

What do you guys think? Money first, happiness second, or vice versa? What would you do?

After several busy weeks, I can happily announce that I’m nearing the end of my work with the Evil Former Coworker. While it wasn’t as horrific as I was dreading, it reaffirmed that she’s essentially the same since we parted ways over two years ago, and I was wise to brace myself for impact, and even wiser to escape her clutches in the first place.

The files she sent me were mostly organized, with a few glaring exceptions and omissions. As my project manager was reviewing my analysis, he kept finding instances where her maps didn’t match the data in the files they sent to us. None of that was surprising to me, given my knowledge of her past performance. But overall it was relatively painless, and she and I didn’t interact as much as I was dreading we might.

But the highlight in all this came late last week after the PM had finished comparing our work against the maps from her group and one other firm. His comment went a little something like this: “Overall I’m not impressed with the maps from ‘X Company’. They’re hard to read, they chose poor colors, and they didn’t even bother to put a base map on them.” I merely shrugged and nodded, though that little voice inside my head was alternating between laughing its ass off and gloating. At no time did I have to point out any of these errors. Throughout the process, they presented themselves without any prodding from me.

So now I can let out a sigh of relief. I didn’t have to bad-mouth her, which wouldn’t reflect well on me, no matter how well-deserved it might have been. I wasn’t forced to converse with her for long periods on end, and the only personal update I’ve been forced to endure during this time was a brief email about their family’s new kitten. My work and effiency on the project have been receiving excellent reviews, and as someone who, for better or worse, still derives a significant amount of self-worth from her job, that’s always appreciated. And because my work isn’t travelling back to her firm, she doesn’t have another opportunity to stab me (and my career) in the back.

It’s a certainty I won’t ever look back on this and wish I’d done it all differently with that awful woman. Taking the high road was a worthwhile journey. In addition to everything else, that knowledge gives me much peace.

And I’m happy to say chewing my own arm off wasn’t necessary; besides, that would have made typing this a little too difficult.

Last week, my professional life was dealt a rather unpleasant blow, and in a manner that caught me completely off-guard. Because I’ve been so stunned and so unprepared, it’s taken me days to even feel like discussing it at all; I haven’t told a soul. It turns out a person with whom I used to work, and who was, for a brief-yet-still-too-long period, my supervisor, is suddenly going to be thrown back together with me on a project. After I made a concerted effort to sever all ties between us.

This woman is what I consider to be the worst coworker I’ve ever had. She spent hours on personal phone calls. She worked only four days a week, yet never managed to book any appointments on her day off. In fact, about every other week she left work early for a “dentist appointment” for her or her daughter. She took two hours in the middle of the day to work out, and still managed to come in late and leave early. Most of this, while it grated on my nerves, I was able to work around.

But the shit really started when she was made my supervisor. Promoted not because of work performance, because I’m not certain she did any work, but because of close personal relationships with a couple of key higher-ups. During those few months, she took credit for my work. She put herself in line for training that had been previously planned for me when the right project came along. And she got a big, fat bonus for all of it.

All this time, it was clear to me (and many others) she had no technical abilities whatsoever. She talked a good game, but when it came down to doing the work, the products were always of highly questionable quality. When someone whose job description includes a significant amount of quality control doesn’t understand the definition of “quality”, the ramifications of her poor work rain down upon the rest of us. Any attempts - some subtle, some not - to point these inconvenient facts out to management fell on deaf ears.

After a few months, she was removed as supervisor, but the damage was irreparable. I started the job hunt, and six LONG months later, I quit and moved two states away. My chosen profession is the proverbial small world, but I figured with the difference in the types and locations of projects our respective companies pursued, we shouldn’t cross paths again. For about a year, this proved true, and I settled into a work pattern free of her bullshit.

Well, she stunned her company support network by quitting, and found another job (if only they’d have called ME for a reference), about a year after I escaped. And then the calls and emails started again. After some brief and reserved correspondence back and forth, I stopped replying. As her former supervisor has since figured out, this woman maintains contact with people if and only if they have something to offer. The last email I received from her about 7 months ago informed me that her new firm had a job for me if I needed one, and that her cat had died. Again, I didn’t respond. Rarely is anything she offers worth all the strings attached to it, and truthfully, I had nothing pleasant to say.

So just how did she reenter my life last week? By calling me - at work. It turns out our companies are two of many players on a large, large project. Each firm has named one person to head up a particular set of tasks, and she and I were named for our respective companies.

A little warning would have helped immensely. She knew we’d be working together, but I had no idea - when I was named for the project, her firm hadn’t yet announced their representative. A cold call from the penultimate person on earth I’d like to hear from (an ex of mine still holds the title of “Last Person on Earth I’d Like to Hear From”)… it was the Shock and Awe of my professional life, and the campaign is still being waged.

So now how do I brace myself for working with this leech? I can’t hope the quality of her work has improved; given our roles, it would be unwise to plan on it. I certainly can’t run around bad-mouthing her - it would reflect poorly on my firm and on me, and I might turn out to be wrong. And, there’s always the off-chance that while she’s heading up this aspect of her firm’s efforts, she won’t actually be providing the products.

But I’ve never been skilled at maintaining a pretense of friendship, and she makes pretending even more difficult than most. So many conversations with her are ABOUT HER that I am often nearly overwhelmed with the urge to chew my own arm off rather than continue holding the phone. The thought of feigning interest in her life while plastering on a fake smile for the next four months depresses me.

Dammit. Just how am I supposed to do this without any snide commentary to get me through? And how am I supposed to manage if the quality of her work makes MY job that much harder? In the name of all things holy, how???

Maybe I should chew my arm off. Worker’s comp and a few months of disability sound infinitely more appealing right now.

A scary thing happened to me today.

There aren’t words to describe how much I detest updating my resumé, either the external version used on a personal job search, or the internal copy my company sends out on project proposals.

No secret to me, I wasn’t blessed with the gift of bullshit. I have no aptitude for throwing around the corporate-sounding verbs typically found on your average resumé. Every single sentence sounds either like the silly and contrived efforts of some puffed-up scientific bureaucrat or so boring my reader might be inclined to rip his own arm off just for a change of pace.

But today, while updating my internal resumé for some potential future work, it no longer sounded silly and contrived. What I wrote made sense. It didn’t make me sound like I was strutting about like a peacock. Yes, I really did the things I wrote down. There was no embellishment other than the use of the hallowed “action verbs” in place of the conjugations of “be” and “do”. My work was what I said it was, and I no longer felt that internal knot of embarrassment about writing it down.

But the knot of embarrassment has been replaced with a knot of fear. What frightens me is the not-so-slight possibility that I’m blending in too much with corporate culture, morphing into something I don’t want to be, especially when there’s so much I detest about the consulting world. The constant searching for new work. The billable goals. The performance reviews, project budgets, and workload projections. That knot of embarrassment meant I was still chiefly a outsider, and I can’t escape the nagging suspicion I just achieved some kind of corporate rite of passage, a milestone on the way to Stoogeville. Did I spontaneously pick up Dilbert-esque corporate jargon to the point where my resumé no longer needed to be translated into “everyday human?” I still can’t decide if my resumé is a good summary of my work experience or the toilet paper from some corporate borg resumé generator pre-programmed with phrases like “effectively utilized dynamic segmentation” or “to provide a better understanding”.

Listening to the clicking of keyboards around me, I suspect most of my fellow borgs would consider such a change an achievement. I’m thinking it might be a step backwards.

Later today, traffic in downtown Seattle is expected to be snarled beyond belief due to the second immigration protest in three weeks. And I’m extraordinarily angry about it.

First, as my political leanings go (somewhere between libertarian minarchist and anarcho-capitalist), I support their cause. On fundamental levels, I’m opposed to restrictions on movement and limits on the rights of individuals to enter consensual contracts with each other, including contracts involving employment and wages. And I truly believe that federal and state minimum wage requirements have roped the U.S. into the precarious position it currently holds.

But not a single one of these protests serves to inconvenience or punish government for its meddling, overbearing position. The biggest burdens of these protests are born by the private citizens and business owners. Businesses must scramble to adequately staff their operations. Workers, legal and illegal alike, face commutes that take hours longer than normal because of streets closed to traffic. And the taxpayers foot the bill for the traffic revisions, police presence, damage to public property, and other incidentals.

Unlike the bus boycotts of the 60s civil rights movement, these rallies strike at the heart of private enterprise, inclusively punishing those who support the rights of undocumented workers and even provide them with jobs. Government doesn’t suffer because government isn’t heavily staffed by undocumented workers in the first place. Government doesn’t care about 15,000 screaming protesters throwing a tantrum on its doorstep and the ensuing traffic problems. Government doesn’t have to scramble to meet staffing needs.

If the objective is a strong show of support numerically speaking, then rallying in a place capable of accommodating thousands is far more appropriate, and far less likely to raise the ire of those who are otherwise supportive of the motivation for protest.

The war protesters typically reserve their actions for the weekend, when more people can attend and less harm is done. It’s too bad the immigration protest organizers can’t grasp the same concept - making nice with the neighbors. And if any actions are to be successful, they must strike at the organization that benefits the most from illegal immigration - the government.

Americans commute longer, farther than ever

Dave Givens drives 370 miles to work and back every day and considers his seven-hour commute the best answer to balancing his work with his personal life.

The winner of a nationwide contest to find the commuter with the longest trek, Givens is one of millions of people who are commuting longer and farther than ever before.

Studies show Americans spend more time than ever commuting and for a growing number, getting to work takes more than an hour. In the most recent Census Bureau study, 2.8 million people have so-called extreme commutes, topping 90 minutes.

I suppose if this guy is content, then that’s all that matters, but I’ll be damned if I’d commute 7 hours each day. What’s the point of living in the country if you’re actually living in your car?

I remember seeing something on TV about a woman who actually FLEW to and from her office each day. She lived in San Marino, I think - one of those LA ‘burbs - and caught flights to and from San Jose each day. She got up at 3AM and didn’t get home until 10 or 11PM each night. She, too, said it was “balance”.

They can keep their ideas of balance. To me, that’s just a sick juggling act.