The punchline is that because of the turmoil in the industry, she will not receive a raise or a bonus this year, and because she’s been working non-stop, she is going to lose a considerable amount of paid vacation time when the new year comes.

I’ve pleaded with her: Sam, this is not your fault. You have the right to require adequate resources and training to do your job. This situation exists because people who were supposed to be responsible let the ball drop. You’re the fall girl. When you’ve completed this assignment, someone several layers up the chain will get a pat on the back and probably a promotion. Just say no!

Invitation

Still, she persists. She says she wants more freedom. She says she wants more money. But what is she actually inviting? She’s inviting long hours and unacceptable compensation by the way she acts.

And she’s not alone.

How many people do you know who bellyache about their lives? The long hours? The shit pay?

How many people do you know who do something about it?

Do something!

Here’s how to get what you want. It’s not easy, but it is simple.

1. Stop making Excuses. Sam has a lot of excuses. She’s concerned about job security. She likes that she has more vacation time than usual. Like many excuses that we carry around with us, Sam’s excuses are obviously unfounded: job security in the financial sector? Seriously? Vacation time? Looks good on paper, but when’s the last time you actually took a break?

   There is always a litany of reasons you “can’t” do whatever it is you want to do. Forget all of those excuses, and just do it.

2. Define your Goals. Maybe part of Sam’s problem is that she doesn’t have a clear idea of exactly what she wants. Most people want more money, but how much exactly will allow her the breathing room to pay for her son’s private school, fix things around her house, and give her the freedom to take long vacations?

   Successful people know how to measure success. You want more money? Figure out how much you want, and make it your goal to get that. Want more time? Figure out how much time, and make it your goal to get that much.

3. Create a Plan. Make a plan to get from where you are, to where you want to be. Make the plan explicit and detailed. Be prepared to modify the plan as you go along.

   Goal mapping is a great way to create a detailed plan, and it has a side effect that brings me to my next point:

4. Stick to it. This should go without saying, but I know it doesn’t. People with the best intentions do all the ground work to achieve their goals, but they falter at the most important part: actually following through on the plan!

   The trick to following through is to create milestones for yourself, which will be automatically built in if you use a goal map. Each node in your map is a milestone.

   

   Mountainous goals loom overhead like an ominous cloud, blotting out the sun. They are intimidating. It may be impossible to change careers, but it’s not so bad to just spend a couple hours updating your resume, is it? Once that’s done, it’s not so terrible to just spend some time on the internet collecting information about an industry or company, is it? Why, you have this information, you might as well submit your resume! Oh an interview? I suppose you could make time during lunch sometime this week. And so it goes.

   It’s worth mentioning that you may stall on a milestone. It happens, don’t sweat it:

   1. You have a milestone on your list that you keep looking at and ignoring. You see it there, but you can’t bring yourself to do it. You want to do it, but as soon as you put the slightest effort into thinking about it, you are instantly demotivated. This is a case where the milestone is too broad or vague. You simply need to break that milestone into smaller steps.

      “Write Resume” may be daunting. “Write Employment Dates in a list” is not daunting. Neither is “write a list of duties for last employer.” “Write a list of technical skills.” Once you have the raw material, “Edit the list into a document” isn’t so bad. Once the information is there, looking for a nice resume template isn’t so hard. When all that is over, it’s no big deal to polish and send it to friends to help edit.

      That’s it, just break down the milestone into mini-milestones.

   2. On the other hand, you have a milestone that you are working on. You throw yourself at it every day, but the goal for that milestone isn’t happening. You’re an artist, and your goal is to get your art into a gallery. “Get Art into Gallery” seems like a nice milestone, but try as you might, no gallery will take you. In this situation, simply back up.

      

      You expected the previous step in your plan to lead to this step, but you’ve simply overlooked a step or two in between. To figure out the steps in between you can try to work backwards. You’re in the gallery. How did you get here? Who did you talk to? What was luck and what did you control? Based on their counter-factual narrative, create the steps you need to achieve your goal.

      Alternatively, you might try overwhelming force. In some situations milestones will seem unreachable, but if you imagine an absurd scenario in which you can literally anything to achieve the goal, then you will probably think of a (silly) solution.

      Your goal is to lose weight, but you can’t seem to get the last 5 pounds off. You’ve tried “everything.” Then you imagine sitting on an exercise bike for 5 hours a day for a week, and consuming nothing but extremely healthy juice blends of veggies and fruit. A person who does that will lose 5 pounds. Then you just ask yourself: why not? Sometimes doing outlandish things is the right way to break through the slump.

One step at a time. That’s the real secret to getting what you want. We have this idea from entertainment media that lives change instantly and with little effort. One day a normal person is “discovered” and thrust into fame and fortune. Average Joe works hard until the day he wins the lotto and lives happily ever after. This is wrong. The way it really works is that people make a choice to plod, one step at a time, toward a goal, and then they are diligent about taking the steps.

I’ve been busy this month. I said I was talking to a company with the goal of working fewer hours and doing it from home, in order to have time to work on my own side projects. That particular company has fallen on hard times, and the owner may have to let people go. He can’t consider hiring right now. So, I embarked on my normal “job search procedure”:

How to conduct a Job Search

1. Write an awesome resume. This topic has been beaten to death, so I’m sure you can find specific advice on it elsewhere. Write a resume that’s really punchy, and shows off your talents.
3. Call your Network. Call up everyone you know and invite them to lunch. You should be booked for lunch for a couple weeks. Talk to them about what they’ve been doing. Let them know you’re looking for your next opportunity.
4. Post on Monster. Put that awesome resume of yours on Monster.com. Then apply for 4 or 5 jobs that you know are listed by recruiters–do this so that all of the major recruitment firms in your area get your resume.
5. Look around the “real” job boards. Monster.com isn’t really a great place to find work. The jobs there are low to mid level corporate gigs that tend not to pay well, and most are listed by agencies. Look on boards that are relevant to your particular industry. For developers, try 37signals or JoelonSoftware. There are others as well. Look everywhere! Apply to those jobs with a nice cover letter and a follow up call.

The Method in the Madness

So why spam the resume out to recruiters for soulless corporate gigs that you don’t want? Practice and Leverage.

You will land several interviews through recruiters. They are rabid about placements. There’s an off-chance that you could be impressed by one of these, but that’s not the point. These are warm up interviews — these are the ones you can afford to screw up. Answer questions the wrong way. Take some risks in what you ask for.

Make sure to schedule these interviews to take place before the ones you get from your network and the “real” job boards.

The idea is to get your bearings and get sharp again before you go in for the interviews that matter. I always do better at the third and fourth interview of the week than I do at the first one.

Because you’ll have several interviews, you’re bound to get an offer or two. This is the leverage you need. Use the first offers to get better offers from other companies.

I interviewed at a corporate office and got an offer $25,000 more than the offer I got from the job I wanted. I used that difference as leverage, so the other company was motivated to hook me. Now I’m working from home, on my own schedule, 4 days a week.

I’ll tell you about the gig itself in the next post, but just remember: if there’s a job you want, don’t act like they are doing you a favor by offering it. I would have taken the job I took without the concessions, for other reasons, but now I have a much more flexible schedule because I played it smart by practicing, and getting leverage.

I dusted off an old computer that wasn’t being used, and I installed Ubuntu on it. I placed this old computer on a book shelf across the room from my desk. It’s not a convenient place for a computer to sit because I have to stand to use it.

I have a router that allows my family’s computers to all be connected to the internet. Normally on a home network the router will assign a dynamic IP address to any computer that tries to connect. That’s how mine was until I set up my main computer with a static address — that means the address never changes, and is always reversed for that one computer.

Once I created a static IP address, I was able to tell the router: Do not allow the computer at that address to access this list of sites, between 6:00am and 6:00pm.

So now I have a main computer which is free to search for, say, code snippets, or stock photography, but cannot go to my rss feed, my e-mail, or any forums I frequent during business hours. To go there, I have to walk across the room, get on my linux desktop, and stand up while I access any of those.

I’ve created a barrier between my wandering brain and the work I need to get done! Take that, ADD!

I’ve spent a lot of time with my loved ones, been able to attend political events in my area, write letters I’ve been putting off, read books I’ve intended to read.

It’s been a good time. Then there’s the part about the money.

Strapped

I’m doing fine really, because I live well below my means, but it does make me nervous to burn more than I bring in. I’ve also had to put off certain “nice to have” things, like some cosmetic dental work I’ve planned. No big deal, I’m a patient person.

I mentioned talking to mentors about real estate in a previous post. One said to focus for this 3 to 6 months on the flood of short sales going on. The other said simply to keep any purchases cash flow positive. That means the payments I make, including mortgage, taxes, repairs, and any other expenses have to be covered by the rent I can bring in. Seems like a no-brainer, but some people don’t do it that way — that’s outside the scope of this blog, send me a note and I’ll explain it!

I’ve been looking at rental properties in my area, and I’m optimistic. The places I’m looking at would have mortgages significantly below what the rental market would fetch. I’m very well-positioned because these are places other buyers would run screaming from — they need work. I don’t mind though, I know how to do all the work. I can install the new kitchens, or repair the roof, or rewire, or hang new drywall, and I can do it all very cheaply, which gives me a competitive advantage. The issue now is finding a lender, because I don’t have enough cash to buy up enough properties to live from. If I do something creative with that, I’ll post about it.

Meanwhile, I’m well into an interview process at the small company I mentioned before. They are quite far away from me, but I’ve spoken with the owner and the next step is to fly out there for a final interview (number three, roughly).

Hold on, Mister “Investment Opportunity”

Why would Ken Sharpe, contrarian extraordinaire, want to act like a chump, and again throw himself into traditional, gainful employment? A few reasons:

• Living below my means only carries so far — I have to cover my cash flow needs for the short term, and I can only go at this burn rate for a few months.
• This particular company is a paragon of excellence. The work they produce has inspired me for years. I’m honestly a little star struck to be considered for their team. I feel like their commitment to top quality output will push me to new heights as well.
• This company wants to create a development department that produces consumer products with their own revenue streams, so I have a chance to mold, and be on the ground floor of excellent projects that receive significant press. They are willing to give up equity for this to happen.
• Working from home will give me the freedom I need to develop my own products, or work on my real estate projects.

So, like I said in the investment opportunity post, don’t just fall into a job because it’s the default thing to do — if you get a job, make sure there are genuinely good reasons for doing so. I think there are really good reasons for getting this job, so I’m going to try to get it, and prospects are looking up.

Davy Brion: Career Advice for Young Developers

The first is employment at a company that I’m not prepared to make public yet. The job pays substantially less than what I made at Ideal, but it’s a telecommuting position, and I plan during an upcoming negotiation to ask for a 4 day work week. That will keep me afloat and leave me almost half the week to build other projects.

The product or suite of products I’m researching the market for right now is in the medical services industry, possibly targeting veterinary practices. I’ll talk in much more detail about that later if it turns out to be worthwhile. I might also do a post about where to start with this sort of market research.

My other option is real estate. I am qualified (although not licensed at this time) to be a general contractor. I have the skills to build a complete and functional home using my hands and the tools I own (with a couple of rented pieces), including structure, plumbing, electric, and finish work. I also have two wealthy people in my network who are both self-made real estate millionaires. I have no substantial assets, but I could put in perhaps $40,000 to a project. My plan– whether I decide to accept employment with the company I mentioned before or not– is to call both of these people and ask them, based on their expertise: Where is the money in this market? If you were my age, in my situation, what you would be doing?

The answers I get will determine where I focus my strategic efforts. Based on their feedback, I’ll come up with a plan, lay the ground work, then go back to one or both of them, and pitch them to fund whatever project I create.

As an aside, I have a few contracts coming up to fill in the gaps. I’m doing security consulting for a component vendor whose licensing scheme is weak, and I’ll be building a neato little web application.

I’ve really enjoyed this past week or so, it’s been relaxing to do some work around the house, research, program my side projects, and spend time with my wife. What a world we live in– I’m lucky to be here, and I’ll try not to waste that.

The Lead Up

Jesper never liked David. He agreed to take David on board in order to get the cash from an investor who (rightly) didn’t trust Jesper to grow the business. I think Jesper’s plan was always to sabotage David and get him canned. He succeeded.

Jesper never approved of David’s expenditures — Jesper simply doesn’t believe in long term investment. It’s like that portion of his brain was extracted surgically. If it doesn’t produce cash in Jesper’s hand that day — that moment — then it was bullshit, period.

He didn’t like David spending money on my infrastructure project, or on me for that matter. He wasn’t on board with renovations. He didn’t like bonuses, hiring needed administrative staff, or spending time on documentation. Everything I stand for at Ideal is bullshit to Jesper.

This of course is why everything from shipping to accounting was haphazard, and why any competent professionals still working at Ideal are always frustrated — they would try to design the systems that would allow the business to scale, but Jesper would undermine them always. For example, because no one had thought to make the various systems talk to each other (before I came along with my infrastructure project), a major portion of Nick’s job was to reconcile the accounting and customer system to make sure people who had support could get it. He spent at least a quarter of his day, every day, just verifying that people who were calling actually should have been in the system in the first place. It was a waste of his time, and a waste of the customer’s time as well. If the system was reconciled, or if they drew from the same data source to begin with, he wouldn’t ever have to do that. Instead he could do his real job, which was to sell support contracts.

I sat in more than one meeting and listened to Jesper admonish Nick: stop reconciling the system, and just make more sales calls. So it went.

Sales Tactics

There’s a common sales tactic that unethical guys like Jesper like to use that goes like this: get your target to agree to something trivial, which will make them more likely to comply with a larger request you have planned for the future. If necessary give a concession. Do not follow through on your concession — by that time the deal is made because the person has learned to comply with you, so you’ve gotten what you want by merely appearing to have conceded, even if you don’t actually hold up your end of the bargain.

So a couple weeks ago in the interest of maneuvering into a stronger negotiating position, I agreed to help Jesper. He had a problem because one of our systems had been designed very poorly, and instead of automating a fairly trivial portion, we were cutting different builds for each customer that needed this feature. Of course Jesper didn’t want to hear about the two weeks we could spend to make the problem go away forever — he just wanted it fixed right now, today.

We had a charming little heart to heart: I told him I’d help, but implored him to let us build the automation we needed. He said yes, he was totally on board with that. He wanted the company to grow, he realized we need to organize, and he wants to let us.

So I agreed for the first time in my career at Ideal to do some bullshit work that shouldn’t have existed in the first place, just to get to the point that the team could move on.

Case Closed

Fast forward to last week, Jesper holds a meeting with the entire development team and a couple other people. He explains that Ideal isn’t trying to grow at all, and we don’t need any darn “processes” or anything. We don’t have time for testing, we don’t have time for planning.

Further, says Jesper, he’s putting “someone” in charge of development. Of course I’m waiting for the punchline since that person is me and he knows it. Well it turns out that Jesper, who is from Croatia, likes his buddy Juka more than he likes me. Juka is also Croatian, and he works for me on the dev team. Or, I should say, he used to work for me — as of that meeting, I worked for him.

I didn’t call him out on the political move, because it was pointless. Jesper knew what he was doing, and pointing out that he had just handed me a demotion wouldn’t have been news. I did voice my concern about his direction. I tried to pitch the case for process, and planning, but he wasn’t having it.

Another team member piped up. What about the documentation?, he asked. We needed it for our regulatory requirements, and we had been working on it despite Jesper’s insistence that we not. That’s because I wanted it. I wanted it because Walter and David needed it, and because we as a team needed to organize our knowledge and workload by documenting it anyway. Now that I wasn’t in charge, what was to become of the documentation?

No more documentation, Jesper says, dismissively. The same team member: Ok…? Prompting Jesper for more information. With a wave of the hand, Jesper says we’ll hire a consultant next quarter when money’s not so tight.

I’m darkly amused — I know that Jesper is pulling a fast one to get my guy to shut up. His “concession” doesn’t even address the real issues, but it sounds nice, I suppose. This is what he does, he’s a sales guy. Many people at the company are variously aware that Jesper does this, and no one actually believes he will ever follow through. I don’t plan to say anything, but another developer is stifling laughter, and I can’t help it. I laugh.

Jesper shoots me a withering look. What’s funny?

Nothing, I’m fine, go on.

No, what’s funny? He wants a fight.

I give it to him.

Jesper, it’s bullshit. You say that stuff all the time, we’ll get a consultant. We’ll have a feature freeze. We’ll all get bonuses. It’s nonsense, you’re just saying it to get Kyle to shut up. Just like two weeks ago we talked about the company growing and getting serious with development, now that’s out the window. There isn’t going to be a consultant to do the documentation — when you realize you need it, you’ll tell us two days before it’s due and we’ll print out a bunch of bullshit like the last time we skated on this stuff, and then we’ll pray.

Jesper didn’t really like that so much. Jesper is a big guy — 6′6” perhaps. His face flushed. He looked like he was going to jump up and take a swing. He swaggered, telling me he could hire anyone he wanted. He had been doing it since he was 19, he said.

I replied that he could hire anyone he wanted to, but he wouldn’t hire anyone to do the documentation. There’s no money in documentation, right?

What have you done that I can sell? He says to me, asking me for an example of a working product that’s in customers’ hands. I don’t do that, I say.

Exactly. Maybe I’ll just stop paying you, eh? He accent gets thicker as he froths at the mouth.

Are we done here? He asks the room, daring the silent crowd to speak up. Hearing nothing, he storms out, and everyone files out the room, sort of dazed.

Lack of Work

If one were to call Ideal, and ask about my time there, you’d get Ben, our CFO and my friend. Ben would say two things. First he’d say, Ken was laid off due to “lack of work.” That’s the standard line for a “general discharge” from Ideal. Then he’d say, here’s my personal number, can you call me back after business hours?

Ben knows what went on. Jesper didn’t talk to me after the meeting. Jesper talked to Ben, who convinced him to give me a severance package before canning me. It must have been really difficult for Ben to ask me into his office. I made it super easy for him: I told him that I couldn’t continue working there, and that I’d already lined up a couple contracts in preparation for my departure.

This made it really easy for Ben to say in a chipper voice: Sounds great! So I’ll keep you on the payroll until the 31st, and that’ll be that?

Ah, I realized at this moment by Ben had called me in. I had practically quit just now, but it was his role to fire me.

Should I come in? I ask.

Um… I don’t think Jesper wants to see you here.

Cool, three week vacation then, huh?

Looks like it. Listen, stay in touch. We’ll go out for drinks soon, and by the way… if you have any opportunities keep me in mind.

My New Direction

So The last six months have been somewhat of a waste. I learned a lot, but I didn’t achieve any of my major goals. I said there would be bumps!

I have to say in all honesty though, I felt fantastic walking out the building that day. My guys helped me clear out my office after I told them, and I was gone. I had the goofiest looking grin ever on my smug little face. I lost to Jesper the bulldozer, but I didn’t mind. I’m not competitive in that sense. I sometimes wonder if that puts me at a disadvantage.

I’ve been caught off guard once or twice during this last week as I mentioned the end of my employment in passing: of course most of the time it’s a bad thing when a person says “So, I lost my job the other day…” but what I mean is “I don’t have that crap clogging my days anymore, I feel
great!” So that’s why I’m hesitant to tell people now — I don’t want consolations when congratulations are in order!

I’ve had a productive couple weeks, looking for contracts and possibly employment to keep my cash flow in hand.

I’ve been entertaining an offer from a company across the country from me. I would be making substantially less than I made at Ideal, but I would be telecommuting, and I’m going to negotiate for a four day work week. That way I can work on my side projects in order to monetize them, which is more stable than full time contracting, I think.

That’s one possibility, but I plan to do a real goal map tomorrow to generate new ideas. In any case, nothing is lost, just clarified — I’m not sorry I made the jump from Acme to Ideal, and although I’m disappointed that I couldn’t accomplish more there, I’m confident that I’m more savvy now than when I started, and that much closer to winning big.

It’s been clear to me since day one that I am not really achieving my goal of an unbiased account of my way toward the top. Instead, I am relating lessons I’ve learned previously and had the chance to digest and reflect upon in the form of allegory. My intention has been to write until I find my stride, and maybe in this uncertain moment, I have.

I think that allegorical style of writing is very useful for its intended purpose, but not necessarily for my purpose.

At this point I’m in the woods. I’ve run out of insight, and I am playing it by my gut. This is where I’ve wanted my writing to come from all along, but it’s different than what you’ve read in the past, I think. There is no call to action, and no prepackaged life lesson to be found.

The Time of Silence

I’ve decided to write a synopsis of the previous month or so because I’m hitting a wall with my writing. I normally like to package things in terms of the lessons I’ve taken away or practical advice I have about the goings on at Ideal or in my career generally. The issue is that this last month-plus has been intense and I can’t properly reflect upon it at this close distance. This is why I’ve been more quiet than usual.

Maybe a later post will have a full treatment of the material, but for now, let’s call this a journal entry to get my audience and my head up to date.

Five weeks ago

I was well on my way to ironing out the infrastructure project, and incidentally had stayed home from work one day due to weather. I let everyone know that I’d be working from home on the copious amount of documentation required by our industry regulatory body. This is paperwork our company has historically skimped on, but with a new line of products bringing much closer scrutiny, my goal was to have the correct documentation so that we wouldn’t have to worry about an audit.

A character that I don’t believe has been introduced properly because he’s just a bit player is Jason. Briefly: Jason is a sales guy who was originally hired to be the “development manager” but has no experience in development, nor development management. Shortly after he began at Ideal, he phased into sales full time. Be that as it may, he still believes he is a development manager and occasionally comes and shakes my tree. I always tell him “no,” which I feel sort of bad about because he doesn’t really know why I’m so difficult with him: he’s not my boss, and his role isn’t what he thinks it is.

Jason e-mailed me that day I stayed home and asked if I’d be doing any coding. I told him I wouldn’t, that I had more than enough documentation to fill my day with. He responded, chastising me by telling me I should be fixing bugs in one of our products, and CC’ed Jesper on it. I wrote a message back to him in which I outlined in detail what my job role is at Ideal, and how I’d been exceeding my goals consistently, implying that he could kindly piss off.

Before sending it, I considered how Jesper might take it, and my suspicions were confirmed when Jesper replied to the CC saying that I did not have the authority to write documentation, that I was paid to write code only, and I’d better do it. Further, I was not to interact with Ben or Walter any more because he was the head of development.

This was a blow on at least two levels: it undermined my job role, and it undermined my reporting hierarchy. I felt that I couldn’t continue at Ideal if this was to stand because I would be fundamentally incapable of achieving my goals there.

Three Weeks Ago

So I spent approximately two weeks attempting to get face time with David. I knew if I got into a pissing contest about my job role with Jesper, the frenetic bulldozer, I would lose badly. I needed to do an end run around him, and establish my place in the company on firm ground. David was the only one who could do that.

Unfortunately, David is almost impossible to get face time with. After days of nothing, I spent the next week being stood up for meetings repeatedly. I was quite stressed about my future, and David’s apparent lack of regard. I finally cornered him and got an hour.

I was unprepared for that hour. I always knew David was good — but I had no idea how good. I fancy myself a savvy sort of politician when the time comes for politics. I think I have insight into human nature. David ran such skillful circles around me that I didn’t even notice until a day later. I went into his office wanting two solid answers:

1. Why did he hire me? What is my job role exactly?
2. Who do I report to in your company?

I came away feeling uneasy, but like I had accomplished something. David had spent the hour grilling me about what I was doing and my perceptions of Ideal. He asked me many questions that were unfair, or maybe that I was simply ill-equipped to answer. He offered me no information whatsoever, only saying that I’d hear something, sometime, from someone.

And he did all this without me noticing.

This experience was nerve wracking for me in several ways:

• I had not achieved any sort of clarity or recourse from Jesper’s public outburst (did I mention me CC’ed his admonishment to half the company?).
• I was shaken by David’s apparent expectations for the infrastructure project. Just by way of example, he was surprised that it took around two hours per day from me, yet expected a detailed training and rollout plan, when I could barely muster the support to get the product functional.
• Last, my head was spinning: this meeting changed my perception of David. I viewed him afterward not as a mentor, but as a predator. I saw that he was far more savvy than I, and could manipulate me readily. I wondered to myself if I even wanted to achieve that level of skill in manipulating people. I think my nuanced answer is that I want to be good enough to recognize that sort of skill in others, but I’m afraid of the personality changes I’d have to undertake to become that manipulative.

Two Weeks Ago

I waited impatiently for a reply of some kind. Feeling put off, insecure in my role, and out of sorts from David, I spoke to Walter about the situation briefly, and discovered he had heard of it, but achieved no further clarity until later in the week. That Thursday I happened to speak to Walter again, and this time he was developing an organization chart.

This made me feel good — I realized that instead of responding by stirring up political trouble with Jesper in order to clarify “Ken Sharpe’s role at Ideal,” David had instructed Walter to develop a comprehensive org chart to solve the whole mess and prevent anything like it from happening in the future. This was good, and I was impressed with David’s forethought. I wasn’t impressed with the lack of communication, but I was satisfied that something was being done.

Shortly, I planned to alter Walter’s org chart if necessary: if clarity for my job role had already been achieved, it would be reflected in the new org chart. If not, the vacuum of the official role which I perhaps unofficially fill will be apparent, and I will slide into it easily, with a little finesse.

One Week Ago

Literally the same day I planned to work my finesse on the org chart, I heard that David had been fired. I have no real support from executive management now, and I don’t know what the future holds.

This Week

This morning, as I pulled into the parking lot a little later than I usually do (I normally open the gate and building, the first one to arrive), I saw Ben storm across the parking lot, cell phone in hand, face red, arms failing. Ben is unflappable — his motto is “Don’t sweat it.”

Later, Ben (just to remind readers, this is the CFO of the company) E-mailed me to tell me that he didn’t have the authority to enter my quarterly bonus (which is contractually guaranteed) into the system, and that I’d have to take it up with Jesper. Clearly some shit is going down here at Ideal, and nothing is certain right now.

Meanwhile…

Meanwhile, I’ve done what I promised. I have begun reaching out to my network, feeling for new opportunities. Last night I negotiated a new consulting contract for a couple months of work at $200 per hour, which is promising. Tomorrow I plan to update my resume, and begin that process. All is not lost: I do not believe my employment is directly at risk, only my growth potential at Ideal. That means I can take my time in determining whether my goals for employment there are realistic. If they aren’t, I can look forward to leisurly search for my next opportunity.

I have developed 90% of a piece of software that can automatically generate a goal map with all the advanced features I need — I’ll try to have it done by Friday so I can post about advanced goal mapping and share my plan for the future.

Things always change. I think the people who win are those who can use change to their advantage. We’ll see if I’m one of those.

Stop the presses. The CEO of Ideal, David, has officially resigned his position.

I was already generating options for my future a la goal mapping, but this changes the dynamic.

What I know is that he was ousted through some political machinations by Jesper.

The rumor is that there will be a new CEO. I haven’t spoken about this guy before, his name is Brice and he was brought into the parent company a couple months ago to start a new product line. He’s the CEO type, but I also think Jesper is too close to him.

That means that whereas David knew he hired me to shape the development group into a semi-autonomous team of professionals, Jesper wants no such thing, and there’s no reason to expect that Brice will want it either.

I think this calls for drastic action. I’m going to explore a couple options over the weekend, and yes, polish my resume — when I’m in position next week, I plan to talk to Jesper. I’ll impress upon him the importance of my role, and ask him for the technical reigns of the company. Along with those reigns, I’ll ask for a substantial raise, and an independent budget for my department. That may seem an odd or over-aggressive move, but here’s why I want each of those things:

1. Control. It is absolutely essential that Ideal has an organized and professional development team if we want the company to grow. We are at the threshold over which we will begin to lose substantial customers if we do not tighten the ship. Without this change in leadership, it is impossible to reach my goals at Ideal.
2. Raise. People value what they pay for. The raise will mark a change in Jesper’s perception of my role and authority. I’m not talking about a 5% raise — I’m talking about perhaps doubling my salary. Without this change in perception, Jesper is free to pay lip service to whatever demands I make. This will force him to put his money where his mouth is, which is a powerful psychological tool.
3. Autonomous Budget. Even if I’m nominally in charge of the development team and negotiate successfully for a large raise, I will be hamstrung without resources to execute my vision as a leader. With a separate, semi-autonomous budget over which I have full control without regard to Jesper, I will be able to make important decisions about the future of the team. For example, I might choose to move the team to a separate office, or to invest in a certain technology — as long as it falls within my budget, it will be my decision to make.

These are all essential prerequisites to success at Ideal, so as aggressive as they are, anything less would be worthless. It’s worth noting that I expect Jesper to say no to all my demands, and to never grow Ideal to the company that it could become.

I’ll post again to describe my plan to get leverage over him before I go to negotiate.

Ps. I failed to follow my own advice. Lesson 5 of the Fast Track series: Always be Looking. I haven’t shot a resume out since I started here, and now it’s put me in a weaker position. Shame on me!

• Kick ass at my job by designing superior products, and organizing my team to be efficient and productive
• Use the momentum of my success to simultaneously negotiate for options, and a larger, more visible role in the company.
• Use my role in the company to steer it toward a liquidity event in which we go public, or more likely in the current environment, we are bought by a large competitor. I exercise my options just before the event, then leave the company with at least $2 million in cash

The Goal Mapping exercise threw my grand plan into the shadow of doubt. There are too many dubious steps along this path: factors I can’t control, assumptions I can’t test, too many steps along the way to make the path very probable.

So how to recover? I need to generate more options. I need to consider alternate paths, perhaps more risky moves. I’ll try advanced goal mapping, and write about it here.