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May. 11th, 2007 10:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kirkcudbrightMy work day began while I was still driving to work, being patched in to a conference call with my manager and a disembodied voice (soft-spoken, heavily accented, on a line that kept cutting out) that turned out to be the Vice President of Engineering (of a 1200-ish person company, so 3 layers above me in the management cloud). Anyway, at the time I was being injected into the middle of a conversation, and I thought he was a random sales guy, so I was more off-the-cuff and less...edited that I might have been. But I've never been a big believer in advancement through kissing ass, so maybe not a big diff.
Anyway, the VP was personally involving himself in a Major Deal with a Major Defense Contractor, and wanted to know if a Major Upgrade to the code I'm working on could be accomplished in the customer's time frame, with or without extra bodies. Because we needed to present a proposal to the Defense Contractor in...oh, about 2 hours.
I suppose I should mention that my collaborator on this project is a Principal Technologist, which is two job titles above me in our corporate hierarchy. Still, I'm just not used to dealing with all of this Layer 8 stuff. I keep a low profile, I don't volunteer for anything, I don't publish white papers or apply for patents, but this stuff keeps finding me. It's really messing with my self-image.
Anyway, the VP was personally involving himself in a Major Deal with a Major Defense Contractor, and wanted to know if a Major Upgrade to the code I'm working on could be accomplished in the customer's time frame, with or without extra bodies. Because we needed to present a proposal to the Defense Contractor in...oh, about 2 hours.
I suppose I should mention that my collaborator on this project is a Principal Technologist, which is two job titles above me in our corporate hierarchy. Still, I'm just not used to dealing with all of this Layer 8 stuff. I keep a low profile, I don't volunteer for anything, I don't publish white papers or apply for patents, but this stuff keeps finding me. It's really messing with my self-image.
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no subject
Date: 2007-05-13 10:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-14 04:16 am (UTC)On the Individual Contributor track at WR, I'm a Member of Technical Staff, which is actually a fairly senior position, being above Senior Engineer. (Which is ironic, considering what Member of Technical Staff meant, or didn't mean, at FTP.) There are two widely-spaced rungs above this - Senior MTS, and Principal Technologist. It's not that I'd refuse a promotion that allowed me to continue doing the sort of work I'm doing, but it would require more dedication to promoting the company and/or the technology than I feel inspired to give. (Or maybe that's my own bias, to justify my lack of ambition.)
Anyway, the point is that I'm not motivated by titles, or exposure, or even the desire to drive the technology (seriously, I'm currently implementing sockets, again). I do what I do (and I do it fairly well) because it's the easiest way to support the lifestyle to which I've become accustomed.