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Technology and life with Eyvonne Sharp

The Wonderful Life Problem (TWLP): Dealing with Disappointments in our Work Lives

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In the classic Christmas film “It’s a Wonderful Life”, the iconic Jimmy Steward plays George Bailey, a struggling businessman and father who sacrifices his own ambitions for the good of his family and their small town of Bedford Falls. In deep despair because of his perceived failures, George contemplates suicide. Through a series of flashbacks prompted by the hapless angel Clarence, George glimpses the world absent his influence. He sees how his actions – from saving his younger brother to helping his neighbors – dramatically alter the world for the better. Realizing his impact, George chooses to live. It’s the feel-good Christmas movie by which all other Christmas movies are judged.

For the evidence based technologist, our individual careers present an interesting challenge.  While we can make educated plans for our careers by reading and studying others, we have no way to re-run the experiment of our lives.  Unlike George Bailey, we never get to see the outcome of our road not taken.  Likewise, we cannot see the collective impact of our presence day-to-day.

There are some things we can measure.  We can measure projects completed, pull requests submitted, presentations made, and tickets closed.   Yet, there are times that our best efforts don’t accomplish all that we want them to.  Maybe we complete the migration, but with more downtime than expected.  Or the startup we join and toil for doesn’t survive.  Or the technology we expect to become industry standard is subsumed by a similar but less elegant competitor.  We do all that we can, yet there are outages, bugs, inefficiencies, organizational changes, and economic realities.  The world is subject to entropy and decay and we feel like the proverbial Sysiphus forever pushing the boulder up a hill.  

I once had a leader say that technologists are eternal optimists.  When I looked at him with disbelief, he explained:  For the most part, we believe that the fix for the current outage is just around the corner,  that we’re a few lines of code away from completing the project, or that the implementation will go smoothly and be done within a tiny outage window.  He chose to frame the technologist’s tendency to underestimate time and difficulty as optimism.  The more I observe incredible technical talent, the more I agree with his assessment.  

Our frustrations come not because we lack impact, or because we didn’t apply significant effort or skill, but because we cannot seem to realize the perfect outcomes we envision:  the reality of the result of our efforts does not align with the imagined outcomes we expect.  Or even worse, the technology we thought was going to change the world does – with many unintended negative consequences.  

Most of our careers, and indeed our lives, exist not in magical high-functioning times, or in the deep despair of failure,  but in the liminal mundane day-to-day.  Here the project almost works, we make progress in the midst of setbacks, we move forward but not quickly enough.  Our best efforts often fall short of the perfect outcome we imagine.  We lament the imperfection around us while at the same time we cannot accurately gauge the impact our efforts are having.  I’ve come to think of this as “The Wonderful Life” problem.  

What then, is the remedy?  How do we move forward when the most certain outcome, at best, falls short of what we envision?

First, make note of the great things.  I have experienced times when my professional life seemed like magic: the team was functioning at a high level, we were accomplishing goals, having fun, and making profound and incredible progress.  During those times, take note.  Remember them and know they are precious and fleeting.  At best, you can create the conditions in which magic can happen.  You cannot force it to happen.  Enjoy great times with gratitude.  They won’t last forever.

Second, learn from the challenging times.  Are there things you could have done differently?  Were there circumstances, technical, organizational, or cultural, you did not see at the time?  Was it merely bad timing?  Were circumstances beyond your control?  Learn from the things you could have done differently, accept realities outside of your control.  Improve and adjust as you learn.  Remember, challenging times won’t last forever.

Lastly, understand the mindset of those who’ve demonstrated greatness in their own careers.  Michael Jordan famously said, “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life.  And that is why I succeed.”  Even at the pinnacle of success, the greats experience failure.  Likewise, we will survey our work and see missteps, outages, and breeches.     

Most of us will have times when we experience “The Wonderful Life Problem” –  we’ll look around in moments of disappointment and difficulty and wonder if our work has mattered.  Ultimately, though, our introspective questions affirm our impact.  Those who desire to do great work, do great work.   We’ll go further, faster, as we accept TWLP as a natural consequence of caring about our work, and as evidence of our meaningful contribution.   

The work we want

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I’ve observed a trend in technical people.

There’s the work that we’re good at. Then, there’s the work that we love. In a world that is fair and beautiful, the Venn diagrams of these two categories complete a perfect circle.

Alas, we do not live in a perfect world.

For the driven, early career goals focus on expanding our competence circle. Engineers need skills, they need to demonstrate those skills, they need to earn their spot on the team, and they need to establish themselves. For a long time, a decade or two even, the acquisition of competence provides enough positive feedback to adequately satisfy both circles, competence leads to fulfillment. For some, this dynamic never shifts. They continue to dive deep, grow, learn ever-deepening skills, branch into new tech, and find satisfaction in this stream of work.

For others, technical competence follows a law of diminishing returns. They acquire skills such that they can do work in minutes and hours that take others days and weeks. At the same time, the work loses its fascination. It becomes, dare I say, boring. These skilled engineers work with such efficiency they become the de-facto owner of the work. They find themselves being the unenviable do-er of work they no longer find interesting.

Some accept their fate, they lean into their skills, continue to make quick work of tasks that are hard for everyone else, and become the “person” for that skill. For many, this is the path of least resistance. The work comes easily, they can do it in their sleep, they receive accolades, and they’re generally admired by junior people. The risks here are, at first, subtle but become more pronounced over time. First, there’s the boredom. The work isn’t interesting anymore. There’s also the risk that, over time, the particular skills have less value. The longer one identifies with a particular skillset — without substantive growth — the more difficult it becomes to change. One can find themselves in command of very specialized skills that have diminishing market value.

There are other options. For example, as an engineer you can resist the urge to become the de-facto owner of anything. As you develop deep skills, refuse to be the only person who owns that skill. The next time you get a request to “do your thing”, refuse to do it alone. Invite someone along by saying something like, “I think Michelle can help with this one. Why don’t we let her own the deliverable and I’ll be there to support her the whole time?” Note, that you’re not saying no to the request. Assuming Michelle is a bit junior, needs to learn the skills you have, and has the resources to work alongside you, it’s a win for everyone.

You’ll no longer be the only person who can complete the task, Michelle grows in her skills, and the business is no longer single-threaded. This takes discipline. The first time you bring along a peer, it will be more work for you. You’ll have to improve your processes and your documentation. You’ll have to iron out some of your personal quirks. In the long run, you’ll get to accomplish more and won’t be shackled to a particular skill.

To grow in your career, you will eventually reach the point at which individual improvement is no longer enough. Even if you remain an individual contributor, you must learn to make the people and systems around you better. Anyone who’s read “The Phoenix Project” knows the peril a Brent — the smart condescending, information-hoarding engineer — brings to an organization. It feels good to be the one with all the answers, until it doesn’t.

As you get better at enabling your peers, you’ll have opportunities to do more interesting things. Once you develop a pattern for learning hard things and teaching hard things, you will be more valuable — not less. You’ll have opportunities to explore and broaden your horizons. You won’t get trapped underneath the weight of your own competence.

The world of tech has no end. The depth and breadth are unquantifiable in every direction. The opportunities for gainful employment, however, are more nuanced. We each approach a unique confluence of technical, economic, business, geographic, and personal factors. For me, the clarifying question of my career has always been, “How can I help?” This personality trait has been fortuitous for me for a few reasons. First, it’s caused me to pursue work that has objective value to my employer and my team — for work to be helpful, it must be valuable. Also, when I know I’ve been helpful, the work feels meaningful. It’s made me more willing to shift my technical focus over time as the needs of my team, my employer, and the industry continue to change.

Your clarifying question may be different. Regardless, it’s important to understand what motivates you, what work you are great at, what work fulfills you, and what work will be needed in the future.

Work and Values: Why it matters

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A few weeks ago, my team had our first in-person offsite. It’s inexplicably wonderful to meet people in three dimensions whom you’ve come to know in two. Some people closely matched the model I had constructed for them in my imagination. Others were surprising, taller or shorter than expected, unique in their profile, or warmer in person than at a distance.

Before coming together, our manager asked us to complete a Values Exercise from the wonderful Brené Brown. The accompanying podcast is helpful. On its face, the exercise sounds simple: review the list of common values on page 3 and circle the ones that resonate with you. Then, narrow the list down to two core values, the qualities you lean on when life gets hard — the source from which all your other values flow.

Photo Credit: CCO Pexels

If you want to know more about the exercise, listen to the podcast or read Brené’s Book, Dare to Lead. I won’t attempt to improve on her explanations. Instead, I want to talk about the impact of this work, both on me personally and on our team.

The act of thinking through your personal values is powerful enough. It causes you to ask hard questions. Why do I do what I do? What drives me? When I’m offended or wounded, when one of my core values is being disregarded? For example, competence, love, integrity, trust, and excellence are all important values to me. But are they core? Which values most deeply influence my decisions and behaviors? Ultimately, I concluded my core values are wisdom and faith. I love books because I deeply desire wisdom. I talk about books because great wisdom demands to be shared.

Most of the other values I hold roll up under faith. This value has been through the wringer in the last few years but even as institutions and people have disappointed me, I cannot escape the centrality of faith to my values and actions. Your values most certainly will be different, and may come from a different place. The power of the exercise stems from understanding your values and how you live them out.

Brené dives into what it means to live into your values followed by the challenges that arise when we live outside of them. We may sense that something is off, feel deflated or tired, lose our motivation, or dread daily activities. Through this exercise I realized pandemic life changed my routines which impacted how I was living into my values. I was no longer dedicating the time to prayer, meditation, and journaling as I once had. The loss of those reflective moments not only affected my connection with my faith, they removed the opportunity for the wisdom of the day to settle and crystallize in my mind.

Up until now, this sounds more like personal self reflection and therapy than a work exercise. What do our values have to do with our day jobs? It’s a good and important question. When we understand and lean into our values we’re more energized in our work. Our boundaries give us built-in guardrails to help us define the work that matters most.

What does this have to do with our work lives?

Knowing our own values does indeed help us navigate our careers. If you value helping, you will likely gravitate toward projects you believe will benefit a large number of people. When you know your values and chose work that supports them, you will be energized and intrinsically motivated. Conversely, if you have the opportunity to work on a project that doesn’t seem to help anyone, you may decline. It’s not a judgement of the project, it’s an expression of your values.

Don’t mistake me here. Our work often includes tasks that are not energizing. Boring work must be done and every tasks will not fulfill our deepest personal goals. However, when we get the chance, we can look for opportunities that fuel us, lean into them, and decline ones that don’t. Over time, we will develop a portfolio of meaningful work which aligns with our values and can become a true expression of ourselves.

 How does this help a team

If you’re engaged in any kind of knowledge work, your job requires a degree of creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration. Typically, this also requires you work well with a team. The more you know your team’s values, the more you can lean into their strengths and energize them at the same time.

Consider a situation in which one of your team members values curiosity. As you work on a problem, you discover a system that isn’t working as intended. You’ve checked documentation, you’ve run a few tests and the output makes no sense. Instead of solving it alone, you share your observations with your curious coworker. Their eyes light up, their words come quickly, and they rattle off a series of tests that could be run to explore more deeply. Because they’re energized by curiosity, you have a willing ally in solving your problem. You are not burdening your coworker, you’re providing an opportunity for them to express what they most deeply value.

In conclusion

The last few years have been a struggle on a global scale. We’ve all been required to adjust. Some of those adjustments became permanent, others continue to morph and change with our world. It’s entirely possible that, for many of us, our values have shifted as our world has changed around us. As the dust settles, and we work to build a new way forward, defining our values can help shape our decisions and actions. We are all building our lives, our careers, our futures. We all ought to build in the direction we ultimately want to go.

Change – Personal, Professional, Organizational

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Over the past several years, my career has undergone a metamorphosis. In the early days, I was convinced that my best contributions to work would be learning to solve hard problems, making things work, being helpful and understanding the systems everyone needed to do their jobs, making them better, and solving technical puzzles. I built an identity around solving problems, around understanding technology, around filling gaps in capabilities and knowledge and finding ways to make myself valuable. In many ways, I still do these things, but it manifests differently now.

Photo Credit: CCO Pexels

Several years ago, I made a job change. The divisional leader had big dreams. He was leading change at his organization, he wanted to do things differently and he had a clearly articulated vision for where he wanted to go. I was excited.

However, when I joined the organization, it became clear that the behaviors inside the company did not align with the vision the leader espoused. The disconnect between the stated vision and the team’s behavior clearly signaled impending failure. One fateful day, I met with my leader and tried to discuss the ways in which lower level leaders were thwarting the vision. For example, one cannot say they want a “self-healing network” (whatever that means) and continue to demand the deployment of static routes (I digress).

My feedback was not well received. My divisional leader never spoke to me again and I found new opportunities and moved on.

We often don’t realize we’re in the middle of a sea change as it’s happening. Personal transformation becomes more clear in hindsight and we understand the narrative of our lives more as we look back. My toxic work experience birthed a new realization in me. While technical problems are often challenging and require tremendous skill and focus, toxic cultures and organizational structures will thwart even the most skilled engineers. I came to see I was wholly unprepared to address the cultural, organizational, and human components that were larger barriers to success.

As I struggled to make sense of my work world and find a better way, I discovered Westrum’s typology and began reading about effectives teams and organizational change. I became more concerned about influence and relational leadership and how I could effect change — for the good of my organization — without positional authority. I came to see that, in many circumstances, enterprise leaders listen to their vendors more than their employees.

I made the shift from enterprise network engineering to vendor customer engineering — leaning on over a decade solving real problems with technology in the enterprise. I observed the different personalities of enterprise organizations, what makes some relatively healthy and what makes others relatively sick. And, I continued to ask the question, how can I help?

These days, I find myself less enamored with the latest technical implementation details. These are important. But I find my thinking drifts toward business problems. How do we gain clarity and agreement across an organization around what problems we are trying to solve? How do we most clearly articulate what we’re trying to accomplish to reduce confusion, rework, unneeded expense, and ultimate failure? How do we marry technology to business problems and solve them in better ways? What barriers, technical and non-technical, inhibit success?

Earlier in my career, these questions and answers seemed obvious, simple, and not nearly engaging enough. Now, I believe ignoring them, or assuming they’re obvious, is the single greatest reason for technology failure.

Where does all of this leave me? I came into my own as a network engineer and the network engineering community has been good to me. At my core, I still view IT infrastructure through a lens shaped by networking and infrastructure. At the same time, I’m more comfortable focusing less on deeply technical implementation details and more on the larger organizational barriers the impede progress. I’m concerned about healthy teams and psychological safety and how we, as fully embodied humans, work in sustainable and effective ways to solve real problems.

Working from Home, 2021 Edition: SheShed Retrospective

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It started when we had COVID. It was October 2020, and I was tired of all the moving.

As the pandemic disrupted the entire world in early 2020, our home was no exception. Our two college-aged kids came home for spring break and didn’t go back to campus. Our elementary-aged son and daughter were growing to need individual bedrooms instead of the shared space that worked when they were little. My 21-year-old son and 19-year-old daughter shared a bedroom for a time. My office space moved between four rooms in our house over the course of six months.

By fall, my oldest had his own apartment and a job 3 hours away. My second was back in a dorm on campus but frequently visited and slept in the same room as my desk. When either of them were home, I would have to invade their space, start my conference call, and shoo them away. I started looking at real estate listings and wondering what a house with room for all of us — and a few extras — would cost. The hassle, cost, and commitment of a new place, combined with some unique advantages of our current living arrangement, became my justification.

We could have managed without the shed and did for a long time, but I wanted a dedicated space. My new role at GCP is permanently remote, and I no longer wanted my workspace to be an afterthought. We started planning the shed.

Before I go further, I need to acknowledge all the work my husband has done. I did a lot of planning and dreaming, and he did most of the coordination and all of the hard work. I can’t remember a thing I wanted he declined or a task hec was unwilling to undertake. In many ways, my office is his labor of love — a mini Taj Mahal that is a tangible reminder of all he is and does for our family. A couple of decisions I made inadvertently made his job harder (like the number of outlets spread around the building). He didn’t complain and worked right on.

My approach to the budget was pretty open; I had a general idea of what it would cost but made a commitment to myself. I was not going to nickel and dime my way through this project. I wanted the space to be something I would enjoy. I did not want to look around the room and see areas of regret, places where I wished I would’ve spent another $100 to make life and work consistently easier. At the same time, I didn’t want to overindulge on items that wouldn’t matter. I think we struck the right balance.

I’m notoriously bad at spatial reasoning. I struggle to understand how items fit into three-dimensional space and because of that, I used the Home Room Planner app to experiment with layouts and floor plans. I combined this with the website of the shed company, which allowed me to design the shed how I wanted. I settled on a layout, and we ordered the shed in November of 2020. We chose exterior vinyl siding instead of board siding, which delayed delivery by five weeks. It was worth the wait to get what I wanted.

After a few weeks delay, the shed was delivered and placed on February 1, 2021. Before any finish work could begin, we needed electricity and insulation. Electricians were in short supply in our small town, and it took over a month to get the electrical work done. A friend helped with the internal wiring, and we had foam insulation blown in. The foam was slightly more expensive than rolled insulation, but we were glad to avoid dealing with itchy fiberglass.

As we considered the material for the walls, we didn’t want to manage drywall with all the taping, mudding, and sanding. Instead, we chose beadboard wood paneling which, when finished, created a lovely effect and opened up design options I did not initially consider.

Of all the decisions we made, I’m most pleased with the heating and cooling system. We chose a mini-split with a wall-mount unit inside and a compressor outside. The mini-split was significantly more expensive than our other options, a dual-function window unit or a PTAC, and required professional installation. It quietly and efficiently heats and cools the space. I’m so glad we didn’t compromise here.

We made a couple of logistical decisions that made the finish work easier. We sanded and primed the ceiling boards before installation. We primed and painted all the trim work before he nailed it in place. For the flooring, we chose the same type of vinyl plank we installed in the house. It’s relatively easy to install (compared to hardwood), is water-resistant, and durable. I chose a more rustic pattern and was nervous when we started putting it down, but I’m so pleased with the look now that it’s done.

When he began to install the bead-board paneling, I seriously considered a natural wood finish instead of the paint I had initially planned. After looking at designs in my app, I decided on a dark stain for the wall behind my desk, the same stain for the overhead beams, and paint for the wall and trim. I have no regrets.

We purchased unfinished cabinets for storage and painted them white. I’d planned on a Formica countertop — not ideal, but I could not justify the expense of a granite countertop. While shopping, we noticed the butcher block countertops and decided, on the spot, to purchase one. It was more expensive than Formica but worth the extra cost. My husband cut the countertop to fit, and I stained the butcher block with the same dark walnut color. I added a couple of layers of high-gloss polyurethane; I’m so happy with how it turned out.

But what about the tech?

From a technical perspective, the SheShed is a remarkably low-tech endeavor. I didn’t install any WiFi-connected home automation devices. We ran 5 CAT-6 drops which will terminate into the cabinets. I’ve installed wall jacks but have yet to terminate them in the cabinet. WiFi from the house reaches the building just fine.

We did not install plumbing in the building. The added cost and complexity of running water were more than we wanted to undertake — especially since the building is 12 steps from my back door.

Anything I would do differently?

First, I’m thrilled with the space and our approach. If, at some point, we no longer need an office, this space can be turned into a mother-in-law suite or used to provide sleeping space for people in transition.

If I were to undertake this endeavor again, I would make a plan for storage. Except for the cabinets, there’s no built-in storage space. It would have been nice to include closet space in the design. We will mitigate this with furniture as we go along. I’ve been slow to furnish the space until I experience it. I’m taking time to adjust and settle in.

My only design regret was using a high-gloss polyurethane on the back wall. Initially, I’d used a satin finish but added the high-gloss when I stained the countertop. The high gloss adds a glare that I don’t like on my video conference calls. My husband wholeheartedly disagrees with me here. I considered sanding down the high-gloss poly and re-applying the satin finish but decided I didn’t dislike it that much.

All in all, my SheShed office has been a rewarding undertaking. My husband has decided he likes woodworking, and I suspect he will take on more projects soon. I now have a peaceful and dedicated space for work. If you’re curious about the costs, here are the highlights below. Labor for electrical and HVAC are included in these numbers.

Building $8,300
Lumber $1,750
HVAC $2,500
Insulation $1,900
Paint / Stain $500
Electrical $2,050
Flooring $1,000
Cabinets $220
Counter $350
Fridge $200
  $18,770