Published on 2017-08-22
There are a great deal of things I wish I had known when I was younger. What's worse is when I forget lessons I've already learned...
Manners cost you nothing but ignorance will cost you everything.
-- Ryan Swain
Being polite to others is easy when you prioritize it. Rudeness ruins me if I am not mentally present, when I let my brain stem take over my reactions, and this has hurt me ever since I thought I was free to act without thinking.
Somewhere around the time I went off to college, I thought I had "found my people," that I was able to relax and "just be myself." The truth is, I hadn't. I had found people who weren't willing to hold me to a higher standard of interaction, and expected me to relate at their level. So I did.
Years passed before reality was shoved in my face: my emotions, my unthinking actions, the inertia I was carrying from those college years forward was getting in my way. I was too concerned with what I thought was right, with "following the rules," and ignored the truth of customer service, which caused me to be passed over for a promotion. After wrestling with the source of my failure, I firmly sat on my ego and made my focus the customer - damn the rules. Not long after that I was rapidly, suddenly successful -- I had my promotion, with top marks from customers, and was regarded as an expert in my specialty. I would repeat this kind of mistake whenever I thought my main contributions were technical and not social.
I moved on to another company where they had significant technical challenges, but where I delivered was when I provided work which a customer needed badly. I'll never forget the day I reworked an otherwise neglected script and turned over the result to our account manager, with instructions on how the script could be adapted for other clients -- last I heard, it was in use two years later by every one of the top 20 clients.
Moving on to yet another company, I was thrown in the deep end with technology I had never worked with or seen. After six months of focused work on Kubernetes and our use-cases, I had nearly every technical aspect dialed-in and backed by research. Yet my role fell apart in relating to others.
I delivered some changes by fiat, argued emotionally, vilified any opposition to my plans, and refused to examine those across the table from me… These were not my proudest moments and I was at least partly aware of how bad the situation was. So, I took opportunities to attend Meetups, to deliver presentations, and share stories of our success, thinking that would force a better change in myself. It didn't, but I wouldn't be aware of that until my next job.
Today, I am in a position where my job is, unofficially, an experiment. This role has no power unto itself. I don't even work on the same Operations tickets as my peers, despite being an SRE in title. I'm basically Switzerland, mediating between and negotiating with two groups that sometimes treat each other aggressively, and sometimes don't even agree on the same use of language.
Here is where the social aspects are always apparent. Here is where my standout contributions are, again, social rather than technical. I cannot forget how important that is.
Businesses are inherently social. The solitary, asocial Creator-Person is a myth and the mythology is powerful in the tech sector. We have been misled by the mythology by perpetuating it, and I have forgotten, repeatedly, that the technical parts are the least of what we have to contribute.
I am never free to act without thinking. Manners, politeness, and a helping of tactical empathy make the impossible possible. I must remember the lessons of the past, think before I speak or act, and focus on what works.