Aside from the facts that I’m blatantly ripping off borrowing from the movie Forrest Gump and also straying away from my usual technical content, I had a notion this morning that I felt like I needed to explain.  In case you missed a tweet of mine from earlier today, here it was.

http://twitter.com/BrianTJackett/status/7989659514

Now you might be saying to yourself “I know exactly what he means” or “I don’t know what the heck he means”.  Never fear, that’s why I’m here to explain.  First things first, I recently went through a break up with a girl that was a bit different than past break ups.  You see, this girl decided to give me constructive criticism about our relationship.  So naturally I’ve been thinking over what she had to say and I started to see parallels between how I approach relationships and how I approach work.  Here are a few of the big things that stood out for me (and perhaps will be relatable for you.)

Communication is a must

Open communication is necessary for any healthy relationship (work or social.)  You may have heard a phrase like “you need to tell me what’s going on, I’m not a mind reader” at some point in your life.  Being able to put thoughts, ideas, and feelings into words is how we as humans relate to others.  The same is needed with your employer.  I’m sure many of you have regular reviews with your manager or superiors, but those meetings once, twice, or however many times a year should only be affirming the communication that is continually going on between you and your employer.  Keep the lines of communication frequent and flowing.

Honesty is a must

Without honesty, all that open communication you’ve been working on can pretty much be thrown into the trash.  Honesty has major implication for relationships of all types, and it takes more forms than just telling the truth or being ethical.  In addition, sometimes dishonesty will manifest through deliberate omissions (I didn’t find any bugs in my code), to white lies (I found one minor bug that isn’t a big deal), all the way to blatant lies (there’s no way this one bug will crash the entire application, oops.)  Honesty is important for both sides of a relationship so that each side is accepting who the other person truly is.

Don’t be afraid to fluff your feathers

I’m not a zoologist by any means, but I hear that when some birds are looking for a potential mate they fluff out their feathers to make themselves appear larger and thus propagate Darwin’s theory of natural selection.  Just as we humans like to show off our positive qualities to potential significant others, so too should you show off your positive work to your employer.  I’m a consultant, so whenever I receive a praising email from a client or have a notable success I like to pass that along to my superiors.  Not only does this help my case for getting a raise or promotion at review time, it also reaffirms my employer that they made the right choice hiring me and I’m bringing positive value to the company.  As a side bonus, it also means I want them to share in my joy/celebration over a job well done.

Conclusion

This has been just a brief glimpse into what I think it means to view your employer-employee relationships like your relationships with a significant other.  Glad to see my psychology minor getting put to a little bit of use.  If any of you are interested in singularity type ideas (seeing the relatedness of everything) then I highly recommend you read The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse.  It is one of my favorite books of all time and really digs into that “everything is connected” notion in a science fiction / mathematics type of ways.  So enjoy this short break from my technical posts and expect me to return to my usual types of posts next time.

-Frog Out

Updated 2010/1/6 – added Android Development

    In the past few days I’ve been catching up on various blogs and ran across a few listing goals for 2010 (notably Matt Nowack and Jeremiah Peschka.)  As in years past I’ve made goals for myself, but this year I’d like to formalize them and revisit this at the conclusion of this year to see how well my grit and determination stood up.  Similar to Jeremiah I have a PDP (personal development plan) that contains work related goals I work towards and update throughout the year.  Here’s an expansion of my current list of goals broken up by relevant areas.

Professional

• Blog – I can’t believe it’s been just over 6 months since I started blogging.  When I started I tried to set a few ground rules for myself.  I wanted to keep my posts mostly tech-related focusing on “how-to” or “here’s where I messed up and you can learn from my mistakes” types of articles.  I also wanted to write at least 2 posts a month, closer to 4 or more if my schedule allowed.  All of these goals I still want to keep, perhaps expanding article topics to also include “hey check out this cool new feature I’m researching at the moment.”
• Speaking – Last year I was graced with the opportunity to speak at a number of events both at my company and in the community (notably COSPUG and SharePoint Saturday Cleveland.)  I hope to have the opportunity to speak at more events this year, but that won’t be a huge focus for me.  I feel like my efforts can be better utilized with the next item and spending more time on research and learning new technologies.
• Volunteering – Ever since a very young age I have always been a big proponent of volunteering time to the community at large.  In the past few months I volunteered to help out with the COSPUG steering committee and the Stir Trek Conference volunteer board for 2010 (and beyond if possible.)  I greatly look forward to helping out with these in an official role as well as other events such as Columbus Give Camp, all of which have been very worthwhile endeavors in my experience.
• Android Development – About 2 months ago I made the leap from my old served-my-limited-needs phone to the new hotness Droid.  (You can tell my old phone is old because it’s on the “discontinued” page from LG 🙂 )  In addition to getting all the nice features of GPS, web access, and Google Marketplace apps, the Droid also runs Android 2.0 which offers open development.  I’d like to test the water of mobile development by creating a very simple app or two, perhaps something related to some of the groups I’m working with (thinking Stir Trek schedule app at the moment.)  This would also give me a chance to brush up on my Java as I spent half of my college classes in it, got my current job at Sogeti in large part due to my Java knowledge, and later got certified in Java development.

Personal

• Getting in Shape – In general I’d say I’m a fairly healthy guy, but when I recently started playing indoor soccer with some coworkers in a league I noticed how badly I got out of breath after just a few minutes of running on the field.  I’m going to continue playing on multiple softball and volleyball leagues throughout the year, but also work in some cardio and light running to get my wind back.
• Volunteering – Yes, I can hear you through your monitor saying “Brian you already listed this one.”  This is a different form of volunteering.  For the past 2 years I’ve been helping out at my local parish’s high school youth group with weekly meetings and chaperoning special events.  In addition to continuing that I would like to get back to working with Habitat for Humanity.  Throughout my 5 years in college (I had a co-op, wasn’t because I was slow or anything) I worked with our college chapter of Habitat building houses and leading the group in some fashion.  I’d like to help with house builds or events at least every other month this year.
• House/Condo – I’ve been living in an apartment close to 2 years now.  I really love my place and all the benefits it offers (free hot chocolate/coffee machine, pool, rentable movie theater, and others) but I’d also like a little more space and an area where I can have a work bench.  Back to the Habitat mention above, I love working with my hands on carpentry projects and the like, but haven’t really been able to since moving into my apartment due to the space limitations.  I’ll be looking around in the summer when my lease comes up.  If you know any great places in the northern Columbus area let me know.

    So that wraps up my current goals.  I’ll be checking back in with these periodically throughout the year to measure how I’m stacking up.  If any of the following people are reading this, consider yourselves tagged because I’d love to see you post your goals for 2010: Kelly Jones, Dan Luciano, Don Zielke, Jennifer Mason, and Sean McDonough.  Here’s to the start of a great 2010 🙂

     -Frog Out