The never ending ladder...

My day began with yet another frustrating 7:30 am corporate meeting, which almost seems like a reminder of my helplessness - the voracious urge to cope with the challenge of an early morning rise to make it to the meeting on time, just for once in my life, but yet realize that even if I did wake up early, it is possible only for the previleged few who live in a 10 mile vicinity to our company's office building in Olympia, WA - unlike me who is atleast 45 miles away (well, I think it's 50, but I tell myself it is just 45 miles).

So having given up on the hope to be there in person, I called into the bridge line that I carefully made a note of in my PDA phone the previous night. My phone connected into the meeting, and I said "hello!". My voice got totally absorbed in the usual cacophony of the early morning meeting, lots of hungry stomachs and sleepless minds trying to ignore their problems by joining the steady noise like discussion, with a couple of very young children furiously playing with their Dads' cordless phones, one singing rhymes into it while the other was learning words. I think by the end of the meeting he even managed to say "papa" or something similar to that.

The meeting coordinator - the young project manager, finally broke through the shackles of hesitation and borderlining the boundaries of social courtesy, said out firmly but being as polite as he could, "If you are not talking in the meeting at the moment, and if you have a mute option on the phone, would you please use it because I am hearing all kinds of sounds?". It was received promptly by most of the people on the call with a cell phone, suddenly the noise fell by about 10 decibels. But there was this father of a young kid who did not have a mute button, but does not want to tell that he does not have it, because then everyone would know who it is to begin with. So he chose anonymity ....Understandable I guess.

There wasn't a lot for me in that meeting, so wasn't for some other participants - it was meant for project wide awareness, a typical corporate meeting during a project crisis. Then I started slipping into my thoughts everytime I detect an unfamiliar topic being spoken about. First thing that struck my mind, why the hell was I trying to be here in person? I am struggling to get some facetime, but seems impossible given the agenda. I like technical stuff, talk about network protocols, infrastructures and database solutions and I love to participate, but not so much about a project progress report out of a dully designed excel spreadsheet or even worse a Microsoft Project plan... I say "No, Thank you". But then the career path of a successful individual is up the corporate ladder, right? As we climb higher and higher, all we are left with is pretty much Excel spreadsheets and Project plans. I began to think if that is probably why they are generally paid better than the lower level technicians - to survive the pressure, routine, boredom and the resultant physical ailments like hypertension, diabetes etc.

But hey c'mon it's not all that bad... there is some good to it. You get to lead a few people, contribute for the bigger cause etc. "Bigger Cause", hmm.. what is it? What cause is so big, that it needs a huge team of people to work their asses off, put in days and nights and weekends, sacrifice any bit of personal lifes they have left, be subject to their spouse's wrath one too many times.... what is that "big cause". Oh, I know - that big cause is a major shareholder of the company making major profits. And the funny thing is, what I just said is not a big secret - every random Joe completely realizes this. Then, what is really the motivation for a person to work hard.

There are several theories about motivations, but I like this one the most. This is the theory of a famous psychologist called Maslow. He has developed a theory of heirarchical needs. It goes something like:

• Self-Actualization
• Esteem
• Love\Belonging
• Safety
• Physiological

It is pretty self-explanatory that a person will have his actions motivated by those factors in a given situation. In other words, the least common denominator for an average IT personnel (given he\she does not have to worry about Phsyiological, Safety and Love issues in their job) is that working hard makes you HAPPY about your accomplishments in one way or another. You probably get a raise, promotion for this or you get recognized at the least, which will result in happiness. This makes sense, right? Well, I am not so sure about that.

Actually, I observed my own level of happiness for sometime and I realized that when I get the next milestone accomplished in my life, I feel happy and stay happy for about a day at the maximum and then it doesn't mean much anymore. I am already looking forward to the next big thing that I can and invariably should accomplish to feel good. When I am working hard to get there, I am feeling good only because I am feeling closer to my next milestone. See where I am going with this? Happiness is not constantly there, but it's there only when something good happens to you. And then it gradually dies out.

So, does it matter how high you climb up the ladder? Does it really make you happier? Actually, I think it is the other way around. Meaning, when you are an important person, for you to be even slightly happy something big must have been accomplished. There won't be too many of those, compared to smaller and more easy achievements when you are a small time Developer, for example.

Not to be a total geek, but when I try to analyze my happiness pattern it appears like below:


The "equally happy" line means that you have steady supply of good things that are happening to you and so you are just as happy through out the timeline. You could have more and more good things happening for you (which is a bit unlikely for anyone) and then you would have the green ascending line pattern going for you and the other way around is to have less and less good things happening for you and that means you are less and less happy (very easy to happen if you take it easy for a briefl while). I think if you keep working hard, then there is a good chance of good things happening to you at a steady rate and which is why there are always those "hard workers" at every place.


So that is probably why some of us like to work hard, so as to stay happy at work place. But the real observation is that it won't make your life much more better just because you're at the top. Infact, you are giving enough rope to hang yourself doing that. But it does not seem very logical if you are not thinking with such a mathematical mindset.


What do you think?


:`)

-Sridhar