Keeping score
I’d like to think that I’m not particularly motivated by money in order to do my best at work. I’d like to think that working hard brings reward. I’d like to think that being conscientious, dedicated and enthusiastic would mean success.
But I’m realising that just isn’t the case. I’ve just had a long conversation with my younger brother, who, admittedly is smarter than me and has a maths degree from a good university, but, is fundamentally lazy. He is proud of this, so it’s not an insult to recognise it. He acknowledges that he doesn’t have to work particularly hard, and when he goes home, work ends.
Okay, so he does a job I probably wouldn’t do, working for a company I probably wouldn’t work for, on principle. But he is appreciated and paid handsomely for his contribution, such as it is. He doesn’t work in IT.
I’m doing something wrong somewhere, and I’m not sure I like the suspicion that is dawning on me. IT is complicated, right? Thats why you have to be quite smart to do it, right? Except not. Because those that manage IT mostly have a fear of it, just like the users. In fact, at my previous employer, the IT manager is probably much less IT-literate that the majority of the users. It made me sad.
When you don’t have the ability to measure the worth of the tasks that you are asking someone to perform, how do you know what to pay them for doing it? And how do you know when they’ve done it right? It’s a difficult position to be in.
I’ve lumbered myself with a project that would be, in the words of a contractor reviewing my initial design, ‘a job for a team of 20 with a budget of £1 million’. And that was only the first draft; each iteration gets more detailed and more complex as more problems are brought to me. The husband keeps asking me why I took it on. Because I could see they needed it. Because it’s my job. And because I want to make things better. Because I believe there’s a better way. Because I’ll never have an opportunity to do so much good again. If I can only make it to the end, it will make so many things possible.
There’s so much code to write that I’ve got my husband helping me three days a week, and still it’s daunting.
But when I look at what other people do for a similar salary, I can’t helping wondering if I’m just a bit crazy. If money per difficulty of job is a way of keeping score, I lose big-time. And to my baby brother! Damn, that smarts.