Who/What Am I?
A weird question to start with, to be sure, and although I talk to myself an awful lot (possibly more than is healthy) I wouldn’t ever need to ask myself that question. So now, I’m not suddenly suffereing from Gender disassociativeness nor have I become separted from my racial/special (is that a word?) roots like the mental/medical condition where people ‘disown’ parts of their body and occasionally even amptutate the alien part (I wish I could remember the name of it). No, I’ll leave the body mutilation for another week, I really asked this question after a recent conversation with a work mate.
It was one morning this week and said colleague had been asked by the big wigs over at Ché Le Corporate to get a list of all employees and their accompanying Job Titles from the Nike Wallet Processing Plant (that is, my office). The conversation went a little like this:
“Hey, what do you want your job title to be, I’ve been asked to get a list of everyone and their job titles. I’ve put down System Administrator for you for the time being”
Hearing this stopped me dead in my tracks, “System Administrator I thought, What have I got myself into?”. By no fault of my colleague at all, he’d pointed out something that was now blatently clear to me. My recent change in jobs has changed me from a budding developer (working on a relatively deadend project, but still a developer nonetheless), to kind of a Network/Tech/Administrator guy.
Now, the Network and Tech part of that, I don’t mind, the server hardware & network and linux setup part of the computer world is something I’ve always been interested in. But the Systems and Administrator part is what scares me, for no one worth their grain of salt (I hope thats me) aspires to be a System Administrator, it really is a glorified helpdesk position, and now I have to watch my step carefully, so as not to fall into the role that is the scorn of the whole IT profession. I continue down this parth, and soon enough, I’ll be the general office go to guy:
- the guy who handles helpdesk and support requests
- the guy who manages such petty things as network and email accounts
- the guy who answers the phone… often; and worst of all
- the guy who is expected to order stationary, water and toilet paper
Thankfully, none of these things can or will ever apply to me, I’d sooner quit my job, move back to Australia and hammer my tongue/foot/penis flat enough to fit into a standard paper shredder if only for the joy of it.
So now everyone, I am on a journey of rediscovery, to make sure I still continue on the path to greatness, despite my sudden change in job descriptions. Thus, once again, I’ll ask:
Who/What Am I?
This has me really thinking about exactly what I want from career, as even though I’m still relatively new in this game, I can already see that what I wanted 5 years ago (a job…) is far different than the goal I have now. But thats the way life should be, if I’d had it the way I wanted it when I was 5 I’d be a cop, an astronaut or a gynaecoligist (ech…) right now, and all three I am not.
But really, whats in a title? It’s what you make of it, and if I don’t want to be the Bastard Operator From Hell, I won’t be, despite how much fun it could be. So I’ll make what I can of this period, see how it goes.
Tags: Work
