I work for nice people… nice LUNATICS!

I suppose it had to happen… I guess. But I didn’t want it to happen so soon.

I started this new job hopeful that things would be different. And they are. The people are nice. My boss treats me well. So far, so good. Right?

But when I say things are different… there’s a dark side as well.

We’re horribly understaffed. Now, I knew this going in but I was in the same boat when I started at Linksys many years ago. We built that company and the marketing department slowly but surely. We didn’t start acting like we had a million dollar budget (the marketing department, that is) until we did. And this made sense – scary as that might sound. But after a while at my new job, I’m finding out that they want everything from our marketing department that Linksys has – with ten times the people and many more times the budget. So, what’s this mean to me? It means my workload is so astronomical that I not only have a pile of work so high I don’t know what’s in it but that I have work outside that pile that I don’t know about that is past due.

But it gets better.

I tried to talk to my boss about workflow today. My question: How do I know when something is due? Around and around we went – the final answer is that there’s no way to know when something is due. The only way I’ll find out is after the CEO finds out I didn’t do my job and comes screaming at me. (Yeah, I’ve been treated to that joy already…)

Oh, but it gets better still.

Working in high-tech shit, I’m in the fiber-optics business. For those who don’t know, fiber-optics transmit a light wave down a fiber – simplistically speaking. Well, our CEO has announced that we’re going to put all of our energy into what he has decided will be the next big thing: Power Over Fiber! There’s just one problem with this. It is impossible. Mind you, every engineer at the company told him this. Fiber-optics transmit light, not power. Power lines transmit power, you see.

So, I find myself in a place where I have an impossible workload, in a company determined to produce an product that cannot possibly work.

The difference between the new place and Linksys? Well, my boss is nice…..

(Stay tuned for the day when he quits…)