Bosses

Okay, so yesterday I had to have lunch with the boss.  Not just my boss, but the president of the company.

Sounds awesome, doesn't it?

Well, yes and no.  It's great that I have visibility up to that level of management in an IT organization, but it also sucks because he was wanting to tell me about how I'm not living up to my potential.

Now, I will be honest here with some facts:

1.  Yes, I have an IQ of over 150.

2.  Yes, I have been told "I have potential" in EVERY career, EVERY class I've ever had.

3.  Me having "potential" doesn't mean that I have "motivation" or "desire" to do something.

It is very difficult - I'm the type of person who loves a challenge and I obsess over that new venture until I've mastered it (however long or short that is) and then I'm bored with it.  In the IT world, I make a great consultant because I walk into some new chaotic landscape and come up to speed quickly with their problem.  However, in about 3 months after I've started somewhere, I've learned what their systems are, learned what they want to achieve, and also learned that THERE IS NO WAY THAT THEY WILL EVER ACHIEVE THEIR GOALS IN THEIR TIMELINE.  This is mostly because there are unreasonable people on the team.  Developers who refuse to code requirements from business owners.  (ah, a topic for a different blog)  Project Managers that think they can maintain an unreasonable timeline because it will look great for their success rate if we finish on time.  And then there's me, trying to point that they have process holes and defects that are so astronomical, it will take at least twice as long as the project will last just to fix the defects!  This is, by the way, why I'm no longer in "QA"/"QC"- talk about a job from hell.

Anyway...

I'm having lunch with the boss and he's telling me that I am not a good communicator.  I'm hoping that you're reading this blog and thinking he's on crack.  Because that's how I was feeling the whole time.  No examples, no suggestions on improvement, just the "You're not living up to your potential and you should be" type of bullying, depressing, demeaning comments.

Now, I know that I take things SUPER sensitively.  Yup, as a matter of fact the SENG organization has proven that this is because of point #1 above and, unfortunately for me, I will always be super sensitive.  There's no "stop taking it so personally" for me ever in my life.  It's all personal- guess it's almost like a handicap.  Hmmmm.  Yet another topic....So, when the boss says that I'm not living up to my potential, I have to ask myself, what is my true potential?   Should I be planning world domination like a certain lab mouse?  Should I be working my ass off in some thankless job instead of spending time with my family?  Or is there something else that I could be doing to make the world a better place.  I am a nature spirit, if you will, and I feel that it IS my responsibility to leave this Eden in the same or better state as when I got here, though there are several physics jokes that are popping into my head about electrical potentials that only a few people out there would really appreciate.

So, after a ton of soul searching over the past few months, I feel that my best "potential" is a teacher and a mother.  And if that's the case, I guess I'll never be able to "live up to my potential" as long as there are stupid people in the world who are my boss and make blanket statements about my potential but make me come into an office every day instead of raising my daughter. 

Thoughts, anyone?