A BWErking man sings the blues / BWE

In which our Hero is thinking that after the last entry, posting a Boring Work Entry is just asking for people to stop reading him… and yet…

The last piece of old business that I can think of is to try to catch up on my work “sitch” as the kids call it. (snerk) Does anybody call it that? That we don’t want to punch?

At the end of last year, later than I’m entirely pleased with, I got renewed for another year. And I’m hard at work in the middle this program I’ve been nursing along for the last two years and I discovered something.

I’m uncomfortable with my title.

We were kicking off the various projects that had been stagnating over the holidays and as we went around the table introducing ourselves, I realized that I know what I’d call myself and equally that I’m hugely reluctant to claim it.

What I am is aFreelance Genius, it says so on my card Canadian Program Architect. Basically, the entire national solution for the major new business offering for the Canadian arm of a large multinational is my brainchild. Which is not to discount the tremendous work by a huge team, but when they had questions, they came to me. I taught the business how to think about it, I taught the technical people how to architect it, and sure, it’s a monstrosity cobbled together from the rotting parts of other systems but, if I can be frankenstein, my monster’s a mighty fine one.

So I’m entitled to call myself that. I’ve got a cast of dozens, in multiple projects, all dancing to my carefully unarticulated vision, and we’re building a better world (we’re making them *all* *better* *worlds*… Always thought his emphasis was very thoughtful in that movie) and by golly, why shouldn’t I be proud of it and take credit for it?

Because I’m a contractor. And I’m uneasy calling attention to that fact. Or for that matter, to myself.

Curious.

On the other hand, the unarticulated vision is causing some very funny conversations. See, right now I sit at the confluence of about four complicated programs. Some of them are very old, some of them are still gleams in a salesdroid’s blood spattered terminator-eye, and some of them are things that I’ve already sold and built.

But someone working on one of the new projects came over to talk me and was talking about trying to get a sense of the scale of the work.

“Look, I know that we can’t get anything going till mid 2013, but do you have any sense of how much effort it’ll be to make the system do [x], [y], [ξ]?”

Actually I put those in the design for the current phase. Should be ready in about 4 months.

“But I was told that this functionality didn’t exist!”

It doesn’t. But between projects 1, 2, 3 and 4, it seemed inevitable that we’d get there. So I snuck in some extra pieces and didn’t tell anybody about it because if someone asks for it, then I’m a hero. Otherwise, it looks like I’m completely out of control and not caring about business requirements.

“No, I was asking around. We can’t get anything till mid-2013.”

Yeah, but you didn’t ask me.

“But I talked to your manager.”

Yeah, but he didn’t ask me.

“So you’re saying that we can go live after this phase?”

No. Nobody’s defined what “live” means, yet. But based on my understanding of your project, we’ve already built it.

“…”

He broke out laughing. Because he understands it too, we can’t really tell anybody yet. And I know that’s weird but basically, until the question is formally asked, having the formal answer is kind of a problem and will cause trouble. The future is unknown so anticipating it makes no sense in a quarterly-report focused environment.

But they pay me to see patterns. I saw one. I responded to it. And they won’t see that I saved them a year and dumptruck full of money. (What’s the electronic age equivalent to this?) Later, it’ll just work and they’ll think that they’re clever for making things so easy to do.

Well. Okay. Not less boring. But still. Less… nerdy.

Yeah.