This working life

You know, every time you think you’ve reached the absolute pinnacle of management dysfunction, you find you’ve only made it to the base camp & you have another 8000 feet to go.

In this case that translates to my corporate group changing “strategy”, again (it happens on average every nine months), with all hands to the enterprise clinical systems pump. Meaning they’ve turned their backs on consumer applications. Understand: they’ve blown hot & cold about them for as long as I’ve been here, but still.

&since there are three product management groups—one already in the enterprise space & one with applications that lie on clinical systems—that leaves the consumer-only one out in the cold. Especially since my own manager has managed to get up the noses of engineering, program management & the group VP.

At the hastily-called all-hands meeting last Thursday, they cheerily announced that a new loosely defined product management & marketing department would be under the direction of two people.

Yeah, because co-emperors are always so successful.

But there wasn’t any information about who sits in which organization. & our previous GM (now one of the co-GMs) assured us that they’d work out the details “over the next two weeks”.

Anyway, truth be told, this hasn’t turned out the be the best match for my skills. I’m not comfortable with committing to building products based on someone shooting from the hip (or blowing through their butt) about what the market needs. I like to do some actual, you know, research to scope out the real need, the competition, etc. My mantra is: is it real; can we make it; can we make a profit with it?

That is not the group way here.

I don’t know how much time we’ve got, so I’ve been scoping out the job boards, pinging my network (such as it is in these parts). Found an opportunity that practically shrieked, “Bas Bleu, come on down!”—product manager for a telecoms-facing CRM service. Seven minutes after I sent the recruiter my CV he replied asking to talk that afternoon. & that went well. He sent me the full JD & a link to the client company so I could customize a new version.

& then the next morning (before I sent the new one) he emailed me to say the client really wanted someone with carrier experience & “handset manufacturing isn’t relevant to their business.”

Excuse me? Handsets? Alcatel built the switches, routers, pipes & network management software for carrier-grade networks. Our customers were all the big boys—BT, SW Bell, Telus, Deutsche Telekom, etc. & it was my job to know what carriers needed & how to pitch to them. (Okay, they did make some handsets for the mobile market; they looked cool but had lousy UX.)

I did push back on the recruiter, & sent my new CV. I also plan to call him & ask him to schedule a meet with the client; because if I have to get out the sock puppets, I’m going to need face time.

& I’m trying not to let fear drive me, although it’s a challenge. I was laid off once before, also in a crap economy, & it’s not pleasant.

So perhaps now’s the time for me to think about a complete career change. Like becoming a torch singer. Now that most indoor spaces are non-smoking, I could really get into drinking more whisky than is entirely good for me & crooning about the pain of loving bad men & wearing high heels.

As far as stability goes, it would certainly be three steps up from where I am now.

Movie truth

I’m feeling in need of some amusement these days, and this came via the marketing star at Soapbox Marketing.

I have to say, these are pretty much spot on. But I could add a couple:

Valkyrie: “Yet Another Vanity Vehicle for a Vertically-Challenged Legend-in-his-own-Mind to Perform Histrionics”

(Okay, probably too long to fit on a poster. How about “Gott strafe Cruise”?

Sherlock Holmes (2009): “Mindlessness over Matter”

Avatar: “Not for the Color-Blind”

What are your nominations?