It's only week 2 and I'm trying to figure out what to write about and how I'm going to stay motivated to continue for three whole months. My daily routine doesn't quite seem interesting enough to captivate anyone's attention, but I'm going to continue to try because maybe someone out there is actually reading :-)
Rundown
Over the past week I made quite a few large strides. I arranged 1-on-1 meetings with team members and began to dig deeper into what is needed by those that I work with on a daily basis. Unfortunately, I also began to explore the aspects of the job that have been built around a budding monster and how I'm going to tackle this will be an ongoing challenge.
1-on-1 Meetings
Being the youngest member of my team (in both age and tenure) I feel very privileged to have the opportunity to sit down and meet with those around me with so much experience. I gain constant feedback and insight into what it means to be a part of the team and it's great to feel like everyone has something important to teach me. There are so many new concepts and everyone seems to have an opinion that is slightly different from the last so I pick up each section of advice and add to it as I go. It's great to have so much personality because it creates a new step in learning how to manage and communicate in my weekly meetings.
However, being the youngest also means that I have a lot to prove, and often times, I feel looked down upon. Not that I'm disrespected as a person, but more that my opinions are so new, young and probably uneducated. I need to constantly keep in mind that I am still learning, so my opinions and ideas are always open for change. I'm sure this will adapt as I grow into the new role, but I really want to make an impact today, and that's hard when I'm not yet a respected leader. So, I really need to become that leader and prove that I can take charge and value every single opinion and aspect of my new role.
The Monster
This week I also learned about what I'm going to call 'The Monster'. Basically, this is the deep chasm of information that has been scattered across all teams from a previous member. The specific person is no longer with the company, but the remnants of past work remain, and it's partly my job to bottle them up into an organized and well managed location.
The Monster grew as a result of what teams needed. Scripting was created and given for each new aspect that was necessary, but the scripting was very poorly managed and was by no means done professionally. More specifically, most code is entirely un-commented and I am left to sort through it all, learning as I go. I can see, in some sense, that this made the job invaluable because no one truly understood how deep the scripting went. As a result the old process has now become the way of today.
The problem is that team members put together the pieces on their own, and afterwards, more scripting is tacked onto the older scripts to keep the work routine moving. If any of the parts is broken, then new hack jobs are implemented to continue on. This adds to the monster and it continues to grow. I'm not sure how to stop it and it might take a doomsday collapse to start from scratch and do it the right way. Until then, I am left to sweep around the grenades, hoping that nothing explodes.
Results
I know that all of this is just a recap, and unfortunately, I don't have any answers to the issues at this time. Part of my goal is to create the picture and add descriptions of resolutions over time. I just hope that you don't get to bored in the meantime :-)
Cheers!
-Dingle
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