In which I complain about people who aren't as perfect as me

So which browser am I using...? You need a clue??

Wow...the browse window got so big! First impressions are good...

I don't know why I let things bother me so much but they do. People things really bother me a lot in a way that probably makes no difference my team at work but that really effects me a lot outside of the office. I'm a sociopath - I get that. But I've got feelings too...weirdo...

Did you notice that a lot of us work for companies that have the word "Solutions" in their titles or in their marketing tag lines or slogans? We're all into providing "solutions"...which is a bitch, because by implication it means that we're always surrounded by problems.

I don't mind problems. Not at all. We all have them, and to a lesser or greater extent we all make them too. Remember the addage? The person who never made a mistake never made anything. It's a good one. It's very true. The clients I deal with come to me with only one or two actual problems, we then design a bunch of systems to try to solve those problems and in the course of coming up with those systems we create dozens and dozens of engineering problems for ourselves that nobody's going to solve but us.

That's what we do (or it was when I first learned about what an engineer was supposed to do). We provide solutions to problems.

One of the important lessons any good engineer needs to learn very early on if he's going to ever get enough time to get anywhere is that a solution is a solution wherever it may come from. You can't afford the time to work it all out by yourself. Other people can help. If you need to know something go ask. If you don't know who to ask, ask someone who can help you work out who to ask. Very little ever got fixed just through somebody staring at it for days and days - and even if you might eventually discover the truth - why wait? Get someone to tell you the truth so you can take it and go out discover new truths armed with that initial truth as your guide.

Why am I so keen on this topic today? Well, because today I had to listen to a guy I believed was a good engineer tell me how it wasn't his fault that a project went over time and over budget by months because nobody offered to help him. He complained that the only people he ever saw were people asking about when the project would be complete and when could we get paid.

This guy just couldn't get his head around the fact that throughout the months during which he failed to complete what he'd been tasked to do, he continued to receive his salary. Where did that money come from, I wonder? During that time he was present at more than one team meeting at which I explained that project over-runs and over-spends hit everyone in the pocket. And yet despite all this, he failed to come ask for help, he failed to even identify who he needed to ask for help from or what help he should seek. And at the end of it all, he blames all around him for not coming to his aid...ironic when he was the most highly certified member of the team on the particular piece of equipment he couldn't get to work properly.

Look, when it all boils down, this guy does not share my core values. He and I do not see eye to eye on what constitutes getting stuff done, and that in itself means he's not right for my team. You can't afford to have a democracy when it comes to driving a company forward. Only the people who know where to go and how to get there can get to help steering the boat. Everyone else is rowing in the wrong direction and slowing the rest of us down.

Another example of my callous cold heartedness...myeh...not really. This whole incident and the last couple of weeks that have led up to this point have actually upset me a lot. I lead by example and I expect (reasonably or not) people to follow me out of respect. When people fail to do that I do not cope well. I get annoyed. I get upset. I sulk.

It was up around 45 degrees today too, which is bad weather for sulking in.