Ev'ry rung goes higher

I gotta tell you that this week at work scored about a 9.7 on my weird shit-o-meter, for a number of reasons. We had quite a lot to discuss at our regular team meeting yesterday, and our manager closed it out by enjoining us all to try to relax a little today, because our company has made Juneteenth a paid holiday in the U.S.

But it occurred to me as he did that that none of the people on that call had to pull themselves out of a hole of institutionalized, systemic racism to get to where we are—we’re all white, and mostly male. That’s one of the definitions of privilege: you don’t have to have a special day called out for you achieving de jure (if not de facto) release from slavery.

Juneteenth marks the day (19 June 1865) that Union general arrived in Galveston, Texas, with the news that the War Between the States was over, the Confederacy lost it and consequently human chattel slavery was at an end. Imagine what it must have been like to be in slavery all your life, and then one day some dude you've never heard of announces you're now free--just like the white people. It must have felt like being dropped in an alien world that looked like yours, but was way different. We're 155 years on and that world of de jure equality still hasn't made it to de facto.

“June Nineteenth” morphed into Juneteenth, celebrated by African Americans and ignored by white folks.

Our CEO and senior leadership—almost all white and preponderantly male—have taken concrete steps in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and subsequent international protests to champion diversity and belonging in the company. Word came down late Wednesday that we’d be getting today off, and it seems appropriate that I spend at least some of it thinking about my own privilege and what I can do to counteract the inequities I see around me.

So, even though I gave you Sweet Honey in the Rock last Friday, I’m thinking that Juneteenth is a good time to hear their version of “We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder”, recorded for the Ken Burns documentary, The Civil War.

We're 155 years on and that world of de jure equality still hasn't made it to de facto. But we can keep on climbing together. 

Thanks and games

On one of my recent perambulations around the hood I came across a couple of interesting things.

First, this sign in someone’s sidelight:

Then there was this…art? Recreational embellishment?

I dunno, but both efforts brightened my day.

Fly on the wall

It’s been on the cool side here in the environs of the District They Call Columbia. Like in the 60s and 70s, which is bizarre.

But I’m thinking that those low temps may account for a visitor I had on my patio screen throughout Monday morning.

I took that through the screen, and he didn’t move when I opened the door to get a shot from the outside in:

However, he did move around on the screen and eventually he must have warmed up enough to fly away.

At any rate, I was quite happy to see him.

Workplace blues

My employer is working through its plans to phase in opening its offices globally. No one who doesn’t want to return to working on campus has to do so (unless you’ve got a job that absolutely requires it), and I opted to continue working from home.

So Sunday I went in to retrieve the remaining personal Items I still had in my desk. This mainly consisted of a bottle of Glühwein, a bottle of Dutch beer and a bottle of ibuprofen. As long as I was there, I took a bunch of files to the burn barrel and scooped up a few yellow stickies and a couple of pens from the drawer. I'm not going to be back for a long time.

But what struck me was how different “the office” is going to be.

One-way traffic patterns:

I completely violated them, but I was by myself and I was wearing the obligatory mask.

Workstations blocked off for any kind of use:

Ditto the four-person conference rooms:

The supply cabinets:

And the kitchens emptied of snacks and beverages and all the furniture stacked:

I confess I cried a little, because so much of what made it a pleasure to commute the one mile to work was the visible comradery. No more turning around at my desk to ask my manager a crackbrained question. No more schmoozing in the kitchen. No more whiteboarding in the conference rooms.

Even the building elevator and lobby are changed:

I made the right decision by choosing not to return, but this is just so sad.

Gratitude Monday: candor and yoga

During my weekly one-to-one with my manager last week, we were discussing the user testing I’m meant to be running on a new application that has been built in paranoid secrecy for the past six months by Engineering. There’s a long, shaggy story associated with this, but essentially this whole thing has been run by a guy whose company we acquired last year; he’s been given carte blanche to develop it, and it turns out he holds no truck with either product roadmaps or product managers.

I expect he feels both things cramp his legend-in-his-own-mind style.

We—meaning product management—were first promised that we’d have a prototype for internal testing sometime in May. Then, faithfully, it was 1 June. Absolutely. On Tuesday, 2 June, at the weekly business unit meeting, our VP described the application and said internal testing would start “this week”. On Wednesday, 3 June—in reply to an email requesting some information—the engineering manager said that they were still cleaning things up and we’d move the internal testing to today, 15 June.

But on Friday, that date had changed yet again, and now we’re promised 22 June.

It’s like traveling in the desert and seeing that shimmering mirage, only to have it disappear as you get close to it.

And this is a product that’s supposed to launch the first week in August.

Well, from the beginning, Engineering as taken on Mr. Genius’s attitude that we don’t need no stinkin’ user tests (or product managers). Since March I’ve been met with deflections and delays as I try to build out a plan, accompanied by comments like, “we don’t want to put a lot of process around this.” And, as you might imagine, I find this off-putting, especially since we’ve worked well with the engineering manager for the nine months I’ve been there.

But the engineering director, whom I’ve given the epithet Foghorn Leghorn, has been a complete prick, not to put too fine a point upon it. Yes, he’s getting pressure from MG, but instead of manning up, he’s just been passing it on and amplifying it.

via GIPHY

Okay, well, back to the chat with my manager. I was quasi zoning out when I caught something I wasn’t quite sure I’d heard correctly, so I asked him to repeat it. “Your obvious anger is not helping matters.”

“It comes through on the calls?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Is it my tone or my vocabulary?” (When I get pissed off my language moves into hifalutin sesquipedalian words and long, complex sentence structure.) Eh, he couldn’t think of an instance, but he said he’d clue me in the next time it happens.

Well, crap. I did not intend for that to happen. And—as I specified to my manager—I would not want to do anything to make life difficult for the engineering manager, who’s been very patient and helpful to me. (I was notably silent about Foghorn.) Also—though I didn’t say it—I do not want to be the kind of cowboy who makes the blood drain from my manager’s face every time I unmute myself on a call as he dreads what I’m going to say next.

Look—we all have a lot of moving parts these days, what with a global pandemic, lockdown, protests and all outside of the office. And then we’ve got this incredibly chaotic nonsense at work; launch is stressful when you don’t have massive dysfunction, and our MG-driven dysfunction is off the charts. But that’s no excuse for me being a jerk.

But being aware of it is the beginning of remediating it. And I’ve also started remote yoga lessons with a friend of mine who is an exceptionally good instructor. I'm noticing greater flexibility, especially in the neck, which I'd started worrying about, and after a session I just feel more relaxed and centered. I swear, the Warrior II pose is my spirit animal, and I’ve taken to doing some poses on calls where I don’t have to take notes. It’s transformational.

So, today I’m grateful for a candid manager and a friend who can teach me career-saving coping skills. I’m truly blessed.