I worked a lot of different jobs in the software industry over the years. I mostly wrote code to control electro-mechanical devices, such as robots, X-ray machines, airport security scanners, and many other similar devices. At most of the places that I worked I was a direct hire, receiving a flat salary, getting benefits, and, at the end of the year, a W2 form. I also worked a number of jobs as a contractor where I would be paid by the hour, have some control over the hours that I worked, and was able to deduct expenses incurred while working. I liked working as a contractor; I felt a little less owned, and it seemed like a much fairer deal to me. If I worked a lot of hours, I was paid for a lot of hours. If I worked a few hours, I was paid for a few hours. Many people dislike contracting because they prefer the security of being a full-time employee. I never really worried about that because my skill set was fairly specialized, and I seldom had a problem getting a job.
One of the jobs that I worked at not too long before I retired was at a major medical device company. It was during the Covid era, and while I worked a bit from home, I still spent the majority of my time on-site since I needed access to the machinery to test and refine my code.
For the most part, the job was interesting and enjoyable, but it did have one problem. The company used a matrix management system. For those not familiar with it, under matrix management, you have two or more bosses. In this particular case, I had two. One was a project manager (we’ll call him Fred) and the other was the software department manager (we’ll call him Joe). The project manager was also the system architect, and I was brought in to implement his design and see if there were any problems with it before it was released to the rest of the software department for completion.
The project was on a tight schedule (aren’t they all), since they were looking to get approval from corporate before the project would be fully funded. I worked fairly closely with the PM Joe and he seemed pretty happy with the progress that I was making.
Things were going well until Fred decided that he was going to be part of the process. Fred had some ideas of his own about how things should be done and carved out a chunk of the project that he wanted to control. He then decided that I was going to implement the ideas that he came up with. I’d be working on the project, trying to get everything done on schedule, when Fred would appear and tell me he needed something done by me, and that should be my first priority.
At first, I tried to balance my time between what Joe wanted and what Fred wanted, but that just caused both schedules to slip. The project was on a limited budget, so there was no chance of getting additional hours added to my time, so it just became a headache.
When things began to slip, I told Joe why it was happening, and he confronted Fred about it. Fred promised he would back off, and at that point, I thought the problem was solved. It wasn’t. Fred continued to come to me with things he wanted done and ordered me not to tell Joe about it. Since I didn’t want to cause trouble, I once again tried to balance both sets of demands, but it clearly wasn’t working. Since, from my point of view, Joe was in the right and Fred was just being an ass, I went back to Joe and told him what had happened. He then took it to his boss, who called Fred in and told him that my time was to be spent working on what Joe wanted and that he should back off.
Joe was furious. He came down to the lab, started screaming at me, his face turning crimson red and told me that I had betrayed him. In the old days, I would have shouted back at him, but I’d hit a point in my life where I just didn’t give a damn anymore, so I just nodded my head and smiled. He went on to tell me that he was the person who signed my paychecks, and I needed to remember that.
I could have gone back to his boss and complained, and he probably would have been in serious trouble, but I decided it wasn’t worth it. As much as I disliked the guy, I didn’t want him to lose his job. He had worked for the company for years, had a family and expenses, and I didn’t want to see his life destroyed over something stupid. Instead, I continued working, eventually got the software working to the point where the corporation fully funded the project and when my contract ended and they wanted to renew it, I declined, saying that I was ready to move on.
I liked working; the jobs were usually fun, but the bullshit that accompanied them often wasn’t. In recent years, things have gotten even worse since companies seem to promote based on quotas instead of capability. I’m glad I’m now retired.
