Today

6:15am: Wake abruptly, having realized what was bugging me about that request-for-proposal I got yesterday.


6:18am: Lie in bed, figuring out what to do about it and designing the presentation slides to explain it to others.

7:15am: Get up and draw the slides on some scrap paper.

8:50am: Breakfast

9:45am: Get lost on way to doctor appointment.

10:05am: Doctor appointment.

10:50am: Stop for a cupcake. I *need* a cupcake.

11am: Accidentally (ie, due to cupcake stop) miss my team’s daily standup meeting.

11:30am: Realize that *this* meeting can be cancelled. Aha! Reply to email instead.

12noon: Meeting about taxes.

1pm: Meeting about ... I’ve forgotten.

2pm: Training session about how to be a better Product Manager.

3:30pm: Meeting about whether this thing I’m designing will also work for somebody else’s team.

4pm: Meeting about the overlap between that presentation I started this morning and R’s designs.

5pm: Start getting the slides off my scrap paper and into the computer.

6:30pm: Oh, right, I needed to pay those bills. Online bill pay. And did Fry’s actually refund me for that thing I returned? Yes? Okay, good. 

7pm: Inner monologue:

- You said you were going to leave work earlier today.

- Uh-huh.

- So. You going to get out of here and go work on your book?

- I’m tired! I’ve been up since 6:15!


7:10pm: Get up, leave desk, out to car, start driving to library. Inner monologue continues: 

- But if you don’t work on the book tonight, then when are you going to?

- But I’m tired!

- [Pause] Well, what would you rather do instead? Watch TV?

- [Sighs] There’s never anything on....

- You could go to the gym.

- [Disdainful silence]

- Or go home and vacuum. How about vacuuming?

- [More disdainful silence]

- Well, you could read.

- [Inner inner monologue] But you know, lately reading seems so flat compared to writing!

- Well, what are you going to do then? Come on, it’s only 7pm. You know you won’t go to sleep for at least a couple of hours. What would you rather do than write? There must be something.

- [Inspiration!] I could write a blog post to procrastinate!

7:47pm: Finish blog post....

Surprise!

"Hey!" said a voice to my right. Late afternoon or early evening in Palo Alto: quiet streets, the sun still high enough to cast patches of brightness and shadow on the sidewalk. I stopped and looked around. Sitting at a small table outside a newish Mexican place were two guys I used to work with. "How's it going?" said B. "Sit down, have some food!"

So I did. "How are things?" I asked. B's at a startup, his own. Two years ago I was following in his footsteps - literally, as I stepped in to take over his role at the Big Tech Company when B switched projects. Now B's life is so different from mine that I barely know what to ask about. He's happy, clearly, but it's a dream I don't understand. He has a one-room office in a VC's building, and a rooftop seating area enclosed by paintings of a beautiful marsh, and a whole lot of candy next to the desk he shares with his co-founders, and a giant model airplane in the lobby, and fifteen engineers in India. To him it's freedom. To me it's ... alien. And irrelevant. I can't imagine choosing it. But I like B, and I keep thinking that what he wants is going to start making sense to me just as soon as I figure it out.

"It's great!" B said. "Things are good!" We ate chips and ordered: mole, tostadas, soup. "How about you?" he asked. I thought I saw doubt in his eyes. I've been working on the same team for a long time; at the same company, even longer. It feels strange even to me. I never expected to be this stable, and in many ways I don't like it at all. And yet....

"Things are good!" I said. "I'm working on stuff I'm really happy about, things that're going to make a difference in the world."

And only once I said it did I realize it was true. I've been so focused on wondering if I was doing the right thing, wondering if I was returning to work in a sustainable way that would let me stay, wondering if I was stupid not to be chasing a startup dream or a higher salary, wondering if I had the right job and the right project and the right manager, that I haven't really stopped to think about the project at hand and whether it matters that anyone is doing it, let alone me. And yet in this case, the project does matter - or has the potential to matter, or so I believe. Conditionally, for now, at least. And apparently that's enough to make me happy.

Sometimes it's good that people ask how things are going.

If you get a chance to try red Oaxacan mole, you really should. That's good, too.

Facebook: slightly less evil than previously assumed

They switched back to their previous terms of service: http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=54746167130

So I suppose I'll re-enable my account. Facebook is a convenient way to make myself findable. But ... will I ever upload very much info? Photos? Status updates? Comments on other people's messages? 

Probably not. And I'm starting to create backup methods to achieve the "make myself findable" goal. I've got a nicely-linked LinkedIn profile, and a brand-new blog on myname.blogspot.com where I'm planning to post just enough info to make it clear to anyone looking for me that they've found the right person, plus a way to contact me.... It turns out that no one owns myname.com, for crying out loud. Real Soon Now I'll get hold of it myself. 

Because given the economy, I want to be findable. I've already gotten a couple of emails from people asking about job leads, and if it all goes to pieces ("hope for the best, plan for the worst" - no, I'm not worried, just prepared) I might even want to send some of my own. 

Interesting times. 

Good enough

“It’s ... pleasant,” said S. 

We sat, half-turned toward each other, on a deep couch in the back of the wine bar. The wine bar is like something out of a movie, although a movie I haven’t seen, something about the tech industry and hedonism and the valley and the magnetic attraction everybody around here feels for things that are “cute.” The wine bar is in an old adobe building, and the ceilings are low, and the waiters use phrases like “not too heavy on the fruit” without thinking much about it, and the upholstery is vaguely mahogany-colored. In the back room, where S and I sat, there’s a fireplace with a semi-sculptured mural above it and, at least tonight, a Real Fire burning in the grate.

“Me too,” I said, and sighed. “It’s pleasant.” 

We’d been talking about all the things that aren’t quite right, from work to geography to relationships. We’d agreed that it was hard to complain, because things are ... pleasant.

“We cook dinner,” one of us said, and the other nodded.

“It’s nice. Domestic.”

“I’ve been working out a lot.”

“Work’s okay.”

“I think I’m in line for promotion,” one of us said, and the one who hadn’t said it nodded in turn.

A while later, we paid the tab, hugged goodbye, and went our separate ways. I drove the short distance home, pulled into my usual parking place, and walked down the red-painted path to my front door. I slipped the key in the lock, turned it, and went inside: home. It felt good to be here.

And yet I wonder: is this underlying something the famous, originally unvoiced female complaint? Is this what fifties and sixties feminism was about, this lurking feeling that there’s something ... more ... out there, that “pleasant” isn’t quite enough? Don’t get me wrong, I know this is 2009; I know S and I have it better, far better, than did our forebears. I know that.

And yet. Things are ... pleasant.

And pleasant isn’t quite enough.

The Big Important Meeting (fiction)

In honor of Joshua Ferris’ Then We Came To The End, I’ve written a short piece of office-set fiction:

Here’s how it began:

We were all - four from my team and four from our partner team, plus our Sponsor, and the Legend, and the Dragon, and the Grownup, and someone’s Admin, sitting around the table in the Room for Important Meetings.

My hands were shaking. I’d never presented to the Legend before. I had never even met the Dragon - and she was known to make grown programmers cry, much less very junior Planners like me.

The Dragon took a pen out of the plastic coffee mug in the center of the table and rapped it loudly on the table. She took out another pen and stacked it on top of the first. Very rapidly, using all the pens in the mug, she began to build a log-cabin type of structure out of ballpoints and softgels. As she did this, she glanced pointedly at the Legend.

“What’s with the pens?” asked our Sponsor.

“Oh!” said the Dragon. “Earlier on, my Junior lost a pen. The Legend thinks we’re stealing them.”

“You need a personal stash. A locked cabinet or a helicopter delivery,” said our Sponsor to the Legend.

The Legend nodded. Those of us who were there to present waited for some signal that the meeting should begin. We had handed out our handouts; my counterpart had his computer all set to display the Flowcharts, and I had my printed notes laid out in front of me, marked with red pen, ready to explain the Plan.

It was a Plan not unrelated to Plans that other junior Planners had presented before me. These previous Plans had all more or less gone down in flames. My ambitions for success were pretty much limited to avoiding derision and the sort of embarrassing screw-ups that lead to multiple nights of insomnia. If I came away with a good story, that would be a golden success. If no one asked how I’d gotten hired and no one said, “It sucks, go away and come back when you have your heads out of your asses,” I would be ecstatic.

The Legend got up and left the room. The rest of us waited. In most meetings, we would have opened our laptops and started checking our email or sending instant messages to one another. In this meeting, we sat quiet, our hands folded. We waited.

After a while the Legend came back and sat down.

“Let’s get started,” said our Sponsor. She reminded everyone of why were here, what we were here to talk about, and what we wanted from the Titled in the room.

“Thanks,” said the Senior on our team. He gave a followup introduction, explaining in a little more detail why we were here. He introduced those of us the Legend hadn’t met.

And then it began. My counterpart gave the first section, brought up the first Flowchart on the projector screen, and then nodded at me. I explained the Flowchart, what we wanted to do and why. My counterpart and I had carefully laid out the rhythm of the presentation: he would lead in; I would explain the What, which was the longest section and most prone to questions; he would explain the Why; he would close and I would support. Our Seniors were there for backup. Our Engineers would take any technical questions.

I got about halfway into my section.

“We get it,” said the Legend. “But why not....” and explained what he wanted.

“Oh, sure,” said the Dragon derisively. “We could just....” and spun out her own idea.

“We need to consider the revenue from...” said our Sponsor.

My counterpart and I sat quiet. Every now and then I asked a question or ventured a statement; every now and then my counterpart attempted to bring the conversation back to our presentation. He didn’t have much luck. Once one of our engineers raised a point about data flow. The Legend answered, and the conversation returned to its previous track of possibilities.

About an hour later, our Sponsor asked the Grownup for his opinion. “It sounds okay,” the Grownup said.

My team, and our partner team, and the Dragon, and our Sponsor, all nodded, stood up, and left. The Legend and the Grownup and the Admin stayed behind. Already there was another junior Planner waiting to present. We were two and a half hours late.

We went to the room next door and Debriefed. What was the outcome? What were our next steps? Who would drive? An hour and a half later we had made our way through a Thought Experiment and were on to Deliverables.

Outside the window we could see it was growing dark.

“Okay,” we said to one another, “okay.” We wished each other good weekends and good Friday nights. We wished these things sincerely. One person who knew I still had to pack a bunch of stuff before the movers came wished me good luck.

We picked up our laptops and car keys and notebooks and pens and empty recyclable coffee cups. We gathered our jackets in our arms, balancing everything carefully (but some of us would drop things anyway).

“Later,” we said, as we left the room. We did not specify what would happen later, or what we were referring to. Tired, exhausted, with a sense of the week having drawn finally - gratefully! - to a close, we followed one another out into the darkened hallway, and dispersed into Friday Night, and the Weekend.

My first official launch!

When I switched into my new job role, I also took over a couple of projects from other people. 

And one of those projects recently launched! There's even an offical product blog post about it: search for my name with the name of my company and it should come up. 

It's pretty cool to see my name online in a non-social-networking kind of way, I have to say. In this case, I came late to the project, so I can't take credit for a lot of the design work - but I handled the launch, made sure it happened, enforced various small decisions...and it's out there in the world!

And on top of all that ...

... I'm super happy with my first official project. Woo-hoo!

Finally!!! Good news!!!

On vacation last week I got a cryptic email with the subject "All set!!!" 

Yesterday I got a phone call to say, "We're just finishing up the paperwork!"

Today I got the paperwork. And I signed it and sent it back and ... 

As of next Monday I'll officially have transferred to a role of Business Product Manager!

I'm so excited I can hardly type. 

And every time I get a chat that says something like, "sanity prevailed! Congratulations!" my grin gets a little wider.

One interview down, X to go

I wish I didn't have this nagging feeling that the value of X depends on how the first interview went. I mean, it seemed OK, but who can really tell from the interviewee's chair?

I might actually interview sometime ...

... because I just got approval to do interviews. This is the next to the last step on the transfer process (the last step being all the relevant people agreeing that the interviews plus resume etc look good enough for it all to go through). Keep your fingers crossed for me. 

And no, of course I don't know the timeframe! Why would I know a wacky thing like that? 

For all those who are wondering if this means I'm leaving my current Big Tech Company: nope, not at the moment. I've got lots of reasons to stay, the main one being that I like it here. All the talk of recruiters and resumes and interviews is just what our internal transfer process looks like. Makes you want to apply from outside, doesn't it? 

Money shock

My guy and I did some financial planning this weekend (reallocating a 401k: such an exciting way to spend a Saturday morning!).

This morning, my brain still wrapped in numbers, I plugged some data into the crazy rent vs buy modeling spreadsheet one of the guys at work created and helpfully shared.

And for the very first time, the model shows that it might make sense to buy.

Wait, what?

I have no idea what to do with that. I've been happily using "it makes no financial sense to buy a house!!!" as the unassailable justification for my geographic commitment-phobia. If that's no longer the case, then [gasp] might it actually be time to think about where I want to live?

I dunno if I'm ready for that. Maybe AMT will make all the numbers change again, and I can procrastinate a little longer.

Starting to seem real

For the past week or so the whole "new job" (albeit at the same company) prospect has been sneaking up on me: a conversation here, an email there, a "how's it going?" or a "good luck!" spoken with particular intent.

But it didn't really seem real until I started putting together my resume. I've got mixed feelings about this: creating a resume is a lot less emotionally scary than it used to be. If there's one thing I know how to do, it's gather & format data. On the the other hand, there's so much data involved that I started a stack of sticky-notes just to keep track of all the places I should look. Imagine: I've been here for almost 5 years. I've worked on 2 teams in 11 buildings and when I made a list of everything I did last quarter it was a full page long. I've been gathering information - just gathering it, not thinking about whether I should include it or how to present or format it or anything like that - for the past two hours.

I have no idea what to think about this. I'm kind of amazed. And I'm kind of excited. And I'm kind of curious to see how it all turns out.

Up to bat

This morning I met again with the head of the team I want to join. "Is there any news on my transferring in?" I asked. "Sorry to push; it keeps coming up."

"I know I know!" he said. "There's some good news, and some things I still don't know. I got my boss to write a recommendation for you, which may help but I don't know how much. It has worked at least once in the past. I should let you know you shouldn't get your hopes up. I put your name in for the first step, but ... wait a second, we may be able to get some real-time feedback." He paused to type something into a chat window. I fiddled with a sticky note.

"Right!" he said. "As of ... twenty-five seconds ago, you're officially in the process. Start thinking about who you want your internal references to be."

And then we went back to business as usual: what's launching, and what's planned, and why, and what we need to do about it.

Victory lap

"What's on the agenda?" asked our tech lead. I paused, waiting for someone else to speak. It wasn't my meeting, and I'd only attended three times. They must have agenda items already.

Our tech lead looked at me. "I'd like to look at our list of projects and assign owners," I said.

"Great," said our tech lead. So we did. One person even volunteered. The meeting ran overtime because we started talking about exactly how to implement changes, and what kind of data we need to get back from the experiments we're running.

Toward the end of the meeting, I asked whether we needed to meet once a week or once every two weeks. "Once a week should be fine," said our project manager.

"You know who the individual engineers are," said our tech lead, "so you can talk individually about the specific projects."

"Sounds good," I said. "I'm sorry I sit so far away." It's a side-effect of my unofficial role: my office is with my current team, rather than with the team I'm aiming to join.

"We have some visitor desks," said the engineer who'd volunteered for my pet project. "You know, where the UI designer sits." I walked back with them, so they could show me where the visitor desks are.

"If you don't mind working on your laptop...." said the tech lead. A couple of the other engineers nodded.

"Sure," I said. "I can spend some time here."

Maybe it's going to work out after all.

Unintentional Poem

In my email today:

Reminder: send feedback by EOD
If we're all agreed, I'll start ASAP.

I tweaked only three words to make the meter scan....

How job transitions really work

"Want my job?" My friend B sent me an IM the other evening. He's a Product Manager on my team, but about to move to a new project - he's been trying to figure out who should take his place. Problem is, all the other PMs are slammed.

"I don't want my projects to just get lost," he said.

Pause. Pause. Pause.

"I could pitch a project plan," I pinged back.

"You could totally do it!" he typed. "Transitioning to you would be great! I can throw your hat in the ring metaphorically!"

Big deep breath. I'd planned to think about a job change oh, maybe next April. I don't have the background to easily move to the PM team but try-before-you-buy deals are always a little easier. With decent luck and a push from friends, it might work. I haven't had time to figure out if I actually want to do it, but if I could try it unofficially for a couple of months.....

"OK," I typed. "I'm in!"

So here I am, 48 hours later. I've agreed to devote 30% of my time to something I've never done before & don't know how to do. My boss is on board but has his own agenda - I'm going to have to fight off his priorities in order to get my own in place, all while making sure I can still go home to my own team again in case this other thing doesn't work out because it very easily might not.

In 40 minutes, I'll be leading a meeting of people who know more than I do and who aren't expecting me to take on this role.

'Microserfs' is genius

... because it includes lines like this:

"What's truly freaky is realizing I'm vulnerable to identity changes because I'm so desperate to find a niche. I feel like Crystal Pepsi."

and

"People without lives like to hang out with other people who don't have lives. Thus they form lives."

and

"Letting go of randomness is one of the hardest decisions a person can make.... If you concoct a convincing meta-personality, ... then that personality really IS you."

This is one of the best 5 books I've read this year. Easy.

Microserfs

I am reading Microserfs, by Douglas Coupland, and it has occurred to me that there may be absolutely no difference between Microsoft in the '90s and my own Big Tech Company today.

I am not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it does give me a comforting feeling of being part of a tradition. Lately I have been thinking a lot about things lacking in the current version of my life, these being primarily 1) large sweeping vistas of scenery and 2) traditions (at least work- or geography-related traditions).

In a similar vein I had a conversation with my guy a couple of weeks ago in which we learned that a large part of my connection to Monterey relates to my sense of its history, and that that simply isn't something which he shares. Instead, he is aware of various aspects of Carmel which I had never even realized might exist.

Somewhat ironically, I think a large part of my sense of Monterey's history derives from my time doing community theater in its old buildings. I acted Shakespeare's Plantagenets cycle of history plays in the Memory Garden near the Custom House, and somehow wound up very aware of Monterey's several-hundred-years-after-Shakespeare Mexican and whaling traditions. This is where they stabled the horses, I thought, and here are the bread ovens, while I bashed enthusiastically away at various other community theater enthusiasts with a fake, badly-centered broadsword. It made sense at the time.

Work = kindergarten?

This afternoon, I left work and went to the toy store. I bought 4 Transformers die-cast action figures (two of Optimus Prime, in order to reduce the likelihood of arguments).

Later today, I will hand out said action figures as prizes (along with cash, admittedly) to team members who have successfully launched certain types of projects. There's some chance that in future I will also hand out stickers. And perhaps one of those blow-up punching bags, again Transformer-themed. I have checked this plan with several people whose opinion I respect, and they all agree it's a great idea.

I work with grown-ups, really I do! Really. Um ... yeah. I do. I think.

Then again, I always say I'm not the person to do the warm fuzzy stuff. You want to know what metrics we should reward? I'm your gal. You want to know what the actual reward should look like, what it is that will make people feel good? Nope, not my area. So wish me luck - I'm either about to crash & burn, or launch something successful, or maybe just feel mildly silly.

Quote of the day

Courtesy of the prof from my Economics of Decision Making class:

"If Alice can buy Bob's package, will she?"
--> "If she does, she's leaving with a smile!"

I'm pretty sure I would have found this at least as funny in high school as I do now, if not more so. Whether or not you think it's funny, o my three loyal readers, I suspect depends on how dirty-minded your high school classmates were.

Of course, it's all about the context ... almost anything becomes funny over the course of the third midterm-exam-related 8 a.m. breakfast meeting. It has to.