I happen to know senior professionals from several domains. They all complain about having difficult projects or challenging roles. Have you noticed that as you earn more experience, your job doesn’t seem to get easier? And comfort zone is a far away land? Well, the answer is in the question itself: it’s because you have experience.
Troubled projects and difficult situations, they all call for experienced people to rise them above water level and get them floating again. That’s not easy, is it? There’s a general sense of frustration deriving from this, because you’ll be constantly pulled out of your comfort zone.
Why?
Called in too late
Experts are expensive, so they are brought in when there’s a whole mess that needs to be cleaned. Sometimes, from a budgeting perspective it makes sense. Trust me, it really does – you don’t bring in the fire fighters for a little spark. Unless the project is critical for business and then you don’t want anyone playing with a lighter on a ten-mile radius. Fact is a project needs to have a reduced run cost, labour included. Trouble starts when the RFP was won with an underestimated, non-realistic cost and you’re on the critical path from day 1.
FOAK vs NOAK
As a senior professional you don’t get to do the repetitive work (which is good), but you might see a lot of FOAK (first of a kind) projects. That means there’s no manual to read or reference to go back to. The “N-th of a kind” works are for people with junior and medium experience.
A poor sense of achievement
No matter how much experience you have, you can’t do wonders. But bringing in the big guns (people who know their stuff), gives the project a fighting chance. Sometimes you get stripped of the tools you want or the tools you need. You have to overcome bureaucracy and cut through red tape to get a license, a server up and running or a firewall rule change, so it’s hard to be successful. It’s not always a happy end movie, so you need to develop a sense of worth early on.
You’ll be faced with arrogance
Sometimes you are facing such a mess that “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put Humpty Dumpty together again”. Some clients may be dismissive of your experience, because of that. It takes around 3 to 4 experts in a row to tell a client they went FUBAR before they accept it. I’ve seen everywhere people trying to adorn medals on their chest (certifications and formal titles), worse than army generals, with titles in their signatures that can’t fit a mobile screen, while they can barely tell what their project is doing. I usually introduce myself as “the guy with the working team” – it’s better for everyone.
Ways to preserve your mental health
My hands-on experience says that as you advance in your career you need to learn two things: contracting and detachment. I’m not saying you need to go to Law school and learn Commercial law. As you gain experience, you learn to document your recommendations and you are able to provide auditable written evidence, if needed. Ex: architectural decisions, metrics, escalations. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to have a good contract at hand, but more often than not, that’s something you can’t control. Since I mentioned audit, that’s a typical reaction in corporations: when a project goes astray first response is to add one more layer of management, second is to send in an audit. Last, some seniors are brought in to do the hands-on work.
Next thing you can learn is detachment. Keep your feelings for your significant other, familly and friends. Don’t get emotional over work decisions or change requests – that’s just business. As a professional, you bring in arguments, pro-s and con-s and recommendations. Then you allow management to take an informed decision. That’s it. It’s not personal. It never was.
