Please GOD, Get Me Back to Being a Programmer.

 Please GOD, Get Me Back to Being a Programmer.

I was still the IT Applications Programming Manager at El Dorado County with a staff of 20. My manager, Ollie, while a good guy, really had no understanding of what my staff did and more importantly why what they did was even needed. Good news was he mostly left me alone but the bad news was there was a push from above to greatly reduce our staff and he was not pushing back.

Meanwhile I was having the kind of fun one can only enjoy as a manager. One of my programmers, Jeff, who had opted to work a 4/10 schedule (four ten hour days with 3 off) came into my office to complain he was being shorted because he was now only getting getting 8 breaks (2 breaks a day) a week when he used to get 10. I listened to him and made an attempt to feebly commiserate by saying hey your right I was just on vacation and I didn't get one break during that time. I think the county owes me 10 breaks... Let's just say he was not comforted. I pulled out the union contract and read him the rules on breaks (1 10 minute break for every continuous 4 hours of work) but that didn't seemed to provide much comfort either. Finally I told him he was free to go back to the 5 /8 schedule where he'd get those 2 breaks back. Jeff left but a few days later he was back in my office. I indicated that while I was not tracking the breaks I noticed the afternoon breaks generally exceeded 10 minutes, closer to 20. I did not feel the need to strictly enforce the rules but I if that's what he's looking for I would gladly do so. He was clearly still not happy so I then told him that he was always free to find other employment as no one is forcing him to work here. That seemed to do the trick or at least it stopped him from complaining to me about it.

I had a programmer who wanted a day off every time she had to work off-hours, which we all have to do at times as it was part of a programmer's job. Every programmer knows this. I explained to her that she's free to either come in late that day or the next to balance her hours but she insisted on a full day off. Unfortunately for me she was well connected politically and this was not the first time she had an issue with me. When we didn't see eye-to-eye she often got political appointed or elected people in the county to chime in on her behalf. Generally after I explained the situation to them they would back off. I had another programmer who wanted to work on something other than what her supervisor assigned her Generally after I explained the situation to them they would back off. I had another programmer who wanted to work on something other than what her supervisor assigned her and that other thing was a project in a completely different department.  Another programmer started wearing running shorts and flip-flops to work. Ollie hated that. Ollie wanted him to stop and wanted me to enforce a dress code that didn't exist but he didn't want to get involved. But the worst part was I had to spend much of my time justifying my staff to both Ollie, and the County Board of Supervisors. The fun just didn't stop.....

And then their were the annual reviews. Annual reviews are different in government. You can't give raises or promotions. So, they tend to be solely on how well the employee is performing their job with no real tools to encourage or discourage effort or behavior. I looked at them as an opportunity to connect and see if we are on the same page and if there are any lingering issues we needed to resolve. I always asked the person to review me as well. I instituted a 360 degree performance evaluation, asking their peers, those working under them, and those working over them for feedback. I asked staff in the other areas of the department they had to interact with and of course those their programming was supporting. The woman with the political connections received mostly negative reviews from nearly every area. In addition, some managers from the user community had come to me on their own to complain about how she treated their staff. When her supervisor gave me his evaluation for her review to approve I asked him to indicate she needed to improve in the communicating with others category. He said he had done that in the past but had been always told to change it. I told him about the feed back I had received and if that was different from his take we should talk about it. If not I want you just put down what you truly think. After the review she came barging into my office leaned over my desk and started screaming at me. I calmly assured her that I had personally spoken to all the areas she interacted with and in my opinion the rating she was given was in fact generous. The next couple of days the managers and supervisors who I had talked with all called me and withdrew their criticisms, even the managers who stopped me to complain about her unsolicited. The next day Ollie came to me and told me to change the review rating. I told Ollie that changing the review was up to him and that I would only do it if he directed me to do so. I left it to Ollie. Ollie met with her lead. The rating was improved but in the end neither of us (programmer and me) were happy with the result.

As the fiscal year was coming to an end we learned our budget for the next year would be significantly cut. As it stood, I might to have to cut another 6 or 7 positions from my area. I had already gone from 24 (counting myself) to 20 positions the previous year. Now I was looking to go down to at most 14. Ollie's preference was to cut the bottom positions but they were also the lowest salaried positions. I re-read the union contract on all the layoff rules and then looked at our proposed new budget and decided that since we were going to be losing so many positions that if we started cutting from the top we could save at least one person's job. I started with me. I had the highest salary. If I cut the manager position, I'd go back to my old lead position. We could then cut some lead positions. We were going to be top heavy because of less staff to lead. The net result of all this would be that we would only lose about 5 positions instead of 6 or 7. I talked with Woody and Joe to tell them of my idea. Woody was going to have to cut from his area and he said one of those was going to be Michelle who was one of our department's very best people. Everyone loved working with her. So I proposed to Woody that I'd take one of his cuts to save Michelle but then Michelle would move over and become one of my leads. I had talked with Michelle. She liked the idea and was happy to come work for me. So I ended up with a plan to lay off myself where I would return to my old lead position that I was still doing doing anyway. I would then cut 3 of my leads and 3 of my programmers after bringing over Michele as my 3rd lead, counting me. Michelle had seniority over all the people I was letting go and that's how I was able to do this. I presented my plan to Ollie. I knew I was going to have a hard time selling him but I also knew that if I pushed hard enough he would likely give in. He didn't like losing the lead positions but what he most objected to was me laying myself off. I assured him that between Linda, Michelle and myself we had plenty of leads for the 11 other positions. Having 5 leads for what would then be just 8 or 9 programmers made no sense. He bought into that but he still couldn't understand why I would lay myself off. That made no sense to him even after I explained that doing it that way resulted in saving one of our programmer positions. I reminded him that I had never officially been promoted into the manager position and had been doing both the manager and lead positions. It would still be the same only I'd be doing it from the lead position. Ollie said “So you will be taking a pay cut?” I replied “Yes, but it's not that big and we will be saving a position.” Ollie: “Why would you do that to yourself?” Me: “Is my job to do what's best for me or do what's best for the county?” Ollie looked at me as if I was a alien and then he reluctantly accepted my proposal. Somehow Woody got away with not having to layoff anyone. Joe wasn't as lucky.

The last two years were exhausting. It's always difficult telling someone they are being laid-off and this was becoming a yearly task. I had to constantly justify my staffs existence. It seemed like a never-ending battle. While Ollie was always nice to me I was not getting the support I needed from him. All in all, this job was no fun. On top of all that I had a sizable commute. When I stepped back and thought about it, this job sucked! I liked many of the people I worked with at the county and made many friends but it was clearly time for me to think about moving on.

Later that year I was hearing that I'd be cutting staff yet again. The applications staff sat at 24 when John asked me to be the manager and it was down to 14 and now they wanted 2 more. We weren't doing any development as it was. With the small staff all we could do was maintain what we already had. It was time for me to leave. I wanted to return to do actual programming again.