| Topic Name: |
How do you deal with stress? Help? |
| Message Name: |
On your thoughts |
| Date Posted: |
01/21/2002 |
| In Reply To: |
I just got back from a long day of work at 10 PM on a public holiday when the office was supposed to be closed... I know how you feel. However, I don't get your sick-to-the-stomach feeling on Sunday night, as I'm usually still at the office.
We all feel like you do at some point or another. We all get shitty work, more often than not in our first couple years. We all get frustrated by our higher-ups who want to know how hard they can push us before we snap.
My advice is to calmly discuss this matter with your case team manager in a casual manner, such as over lunch. Keep in mind that lots of work is usually good because work = responsibility = ability to drive change = ability to get promoted. You can't make this a bitch session about how you hate your supervisor. Don't even mention him or her. Make it about your skill plan and what you need to do to develop into a better consultant. Make a list of all the tasks you've done and think about how you can expand your responsibilities to other types of work to build your skills elsewhere. Your skill plan is a contract with your manager: you need to develop certain skills and your manager needs to see that you get stimulating work with which to develop those skills. (This sort of work would presumably be different from what you're doing right now.)
You also have to be proactive in suggesting the direction of the work you do. The easiest way to get burned out as a new consultant is to allow yourself to become a data monkey without also analysing the data and making recommendations on that data. If you are proactive, your supervisor will be grateful that you saved him from having to do all the thinking and you'll stop getting micromanaged while you do crappy grunt work.
Insane hours are part of consulting, but hating your job ought not to be. But your career is now in your hands... good luck! |
| Message: |
Thanks for the input DemiSec.
I like to consider myself a fairly logical and reasonable person. I know better than to jump the gun and start blasting away at the first sign of adversity or a bad experience. I've been through the mental exercise of "giving it time", "being patient", and "not being impulsive", etc.
Since I started a year ago, things have only gotten worse. My difficulties with my supervisor were somewhat validated when I found out a couple of my co-workers had a deep dislike for him as well. The difference is that I am on his project team and was specifically hired to be on his team.
I couldn't agree more when you suggest utilizing the work to my advantage by molding it into something that can develop my skills. Unfortunately this is hard to do with grunt work.
I am reluctant to bring up my difficulties with my direct supervisor to my manager. But I believe I have a legitimate gripe with the assignments that I've been given over the last year.
Luckily my office manager is a fair and respectable guy. He's not the easiest person to talk to but he has shown that he has integrity and I know he'll at least listen to me.
As this night wears on, I get more and more bitter. My supervisor should be here helping me with this work so that it would go twice as fast and we'd meet our deadline tomorrow, but of course he conveniently left at 5pm and he just had to remind me that I must stay all night to finish this work if that's what it takes to make the deadline tomorrow.
This isn't even my work, it was his assignment to begin with!!!
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