El Dorado Part 3 – Returning to Normal
I was working at El Dorado County and had just, with help, completed converting and enhancing the county's Welfare and Child Services systems on to a new IBM mainframe system. It had been over a 9 month process, one where I had been working long days non-stop. There was now a rather long list of issues that needed fixing. There were also new ones cropping up pretty much daily. In fact new issues were being discovered faster than we could resolve the existing list of issues so the issue list was growing. This went on for a few weeks before we were able to turn a corner where our fixes were finally outnumbering the new issues being found. I distinctly remember when this happened. I had been working closely with the Social Services Admin manager, Lila, and was meeting with her and others multiple times a week. Occasionally the Department head would also join us. The Social Services Department Head was an appointed position at the county. When he attended he would mostly express his displeasure about the situation, rarely having anything constructive or positive to say. He happened to attend the morning I reported that we finally had some good news in that we were now moving in a positive direction. He criticized my message wanting to focus solely on the number of remaining problems. I could see that the rest of the staff was a little uncomfortable with his comments. Part of that was they had been working closely with me during all of this which resulted in us sort of bonding together and they were feeling bad for me. Usually I just listened to what he had to say. I then would attempt to assure him we were working as hard as we could and it would all be OK eventually. This time, however, I just couldn't do it. It had been a very difficult month for all of us. For a few weeks the news just seemed to keep getting worse and worse. Now it finally seemed we'd turned a corner. This was positive news, the first really big positive news we had. We all needed this. So I spoke up. I said something like “This is not just about me and my staff. Your staff have also been highly impacted and together we have all been working very hard. Putting a damper on this likely hurts them more than me. They need encouragement not more negativity. I'm in a position to know where we are at. I understand your criticism and I personally don't need your encouragement, but your staff does and frankly they deserve it as they have been working under difficult conditions. The issues are not just mine. This is your system. It's for aiding your staffs' work. I am in reality only the repairman. I understand that you may feel I am, or my department is to blame for all you problems and certainly much of that is on us. However, all of us in this room have been impacted and have been working hard together to resolve all the issues. Dwelling on our problems is not doing much to help us as everyone in this room is all too aware of them. For the first time in weeks there is something positive to report and everyone here needs to hear that. I am not saying there are not more problems and it certainly does not mean we get to relax but this shows we are making progress.”
I shouldn't have mouthed-off. I am generally very good at just listening and moving on in these situations but it had been a long haul and my patience was not where it should have been. To my surprise the director backed off and he never complained to me at one of our meetings again. Maybe I should have popped off at him weeks ago... I found that sometimes firmly standing your ground with top officials had its advantages. For the most part my experience has been that once I did they generally took me more seriously. I sometimes felt like it was a test to see if I really knew what I was doing since the result was usually they would back off and leave me alone.
Things were looking up. Just a couple of weeks after that we were able to resolve all the important outstanding issues. At one time our issues list had over 50 items. It was now under 20 and those were all either minor problems or requests for new enhancements. John (my boss) came by to tell me Rex, the contractor who had been working with me, had only two weeks left on his contract. John suggested I take some time off before Rex left.
Kris had been waiting for me to be able to take some time off so she booked us a trip to Hawaii. We spent the entire time on the island of Kauai. We had a great time but even in the super chill of Hawaii I was still so wound up it took a me full week to really calm down and relax. It made me realize just how wound up I had become. When I got back I felt refreshed and ready to get back at it. Everything was now settled down and I was able to go back to working normal hours. Rex left that week. I was on my own again.
A result of this massive conversion of all the County's systems to a new IBM mainframe many of us bonded, especially those of us who had worked more closely with John. That group consisted of Wilma, Linda, Mike V, and myself from the programming staff. A trust had been created among us. As a result we started socializing outside of work, which only added to our connection. We went to ball games, went camping, and even had parties at Wilma and Linda's house.
Mike V soon left as he and his wife decided to move back to the mid-west where they were from. Wilma also left as her position had always been temporary. She took a contracting position at Intel in Folsom. With the pressure now off, John was able to fill the empty Programming Supervisor position. Mike K came in. Mike wasn't super technical but he had managing experience and was very much a people person. We all liked him but he came into a tough situation because Linda and I who were two of his four leads were tight with John, his new boss. We all got along but I don't think Mike ever got completely comfortable with that situation. Linda and I were careful about what we shared with John but I could tell Mike was always a little careful with us. With all the contractors gone John was able to work with the CAO to get us fully funded and this resulted in us being able to fill additional positions. We hired 5 new programmers and two of them, Kathy and Norma, were for me. Linda and I were initially both on the interview panel. When we all met to evaluate the applicants not only did Linda and I have very similar comments but some of our reasoning was a little too, shall we say “touchy-feely”, for Mike. We both would pick out things that were not directly tied to their experience. We both were leery of applicants who were a little too slick with their answers. We would also say things like I get a feeling or my gut tells me we should pass on this one. After that Mike decided we should not be on the same interview panel again. My experience was that IT people who talk a lot tended to be less productive and so I would tend to not favor them as did Linda. Mike, on the other hand, was more drawn to them. I have to say that the programmers hired from the panel that included both Linda and myself turned out to be better than those from the subsequent panels so maybe Mike should have listened to us more....
We were now fully staffed. I was working normal hours with the exception of when the operators had a problem with the nigh time batch programs which sometimes was just due to an operator error. When there were problems I would need to go in and resolve the issue if I couldn't do so over the phone. In these situations I never blamed the operations staff. I always supported them because I knew they had a tough job. They would get blamed for all the problems whether it was their fault or not, sometimes things that they had no control over. I never got on their case. I would occasionally bring them pizza or donuts to show appreciation. As a resulted they were very accommodating to any of my needs. I learned a long time ago that it paid to be nice to all support staff such as operators and administrative people. They tend to get blamed for stuff and rarely get the credit they deserved. Making friends with them can be very beneficial. Everyone knows it's important to impress your boss, but I have found it equally important to impress those in the other positions as well. I always consulted both the operations and admin staff when doing my evaluations of both Norma and Kathy and I factored it into their evaluations. I would soon find myself in a management position where I continued the practice. Not everyone was fond of that but it got their attention.
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