"So a shrewd prince should adopt a middle way. choosing wise men for his government and allowing only those the freedom to speak the truth to him, and then only concerning matters on which he asks their opinion, and nothing else But he should also question them thoroughly and listen to what they say; then he should make up his own mind, by himself. And his attitude towards his councils and towards each one of his advisers should be such that they will recognize that the more freely they speak out the more acceptable they will be.

...

"I want to give a modern illustration of this argument. Bishop Luca, in the service of Maximilian the present emperor, said of his majesty that he never consulted anybody and never did things as he wanted to; this happened because he did the opposite of what I said above. The emperor is a secretive man, he does not tell anyone of his plans, and he accepts no advice. But as soon as he puts his plans into effect, and they come to be known, they meet with opposition from those around him; and then he is only too easily diverted from his purposes. The result is that whatever he does one day is undone the next, and what he wants or plans to do is never clear, and no reliance can be placed on his deliberations.

"A prince must, therefore, always seek advise. But he must do so when he wants to, not when others want him to; indeed he must discourage everyone from tendering advice about anything unless it is asked for. At the same time, he should be a constant questioner, and he must listen patiently to truth regarding what he has inquired about. Moreover if he finds that anyone for some reason holds the truth back he must show his wrath."

--The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli

Have you seen this thing that people say now? "FML"? It's a clever little acronym for "fuck my life," a sentiment apparently so common among the internet community that it requires shorthand.

There are so many delightful aspects to those three little letters. Right off the bat, the phrase absolves you of all responsibility for the whatever predicament you happen to be in. After all, you are powerless in these matters. A helpless pawn to the forces of fate that brought you here.

And what forces! Oh abused internet masses! Huddled together in chat rooms, catching what streaming content you can muster, room lit by the cold glare of your macbook. Indeed, how could you be expected to be an active player in your own existence, when the only power you have at your disposal is the most advanced technology that has ever existed and all of the knowledge of mankind at your fingertips?

The only recourse left to you is to take out your iphone, and instantly communicate your grievances to audiences all over the world.

Yes. Fuck your life indeed.

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Over the years, I have worked at many companies that were awesome to all appearances, but were home to a bunch of miserable employees---almost always in spite of the best intentions of the management.  As is my habit, I spent a lot of time pondering why this tends to happen and I've identified some common threads.

As an employer, there are a few things for which, if you get them right you can get just about everything else wrong and get away with it--even come out of it with your employees loving you. On the other hand, I've worked at companies where I spent a huge amount of time enjoying free food and booze while commiserating with my co-workers about our terrible working conditions.  That may sound ungrateful, but the truth is no amount of perks can make up for the things that really count.

aligned values

Feeling like the people you work with, or worse the people you work for, don't care about same things you do is a discouraging prospect.  If you are a person who cares deeply about user experience and work for a company that doesn't understand what is wrong with pop ups and banner ads, you are never going to be happy there.  If you care about best practices and standards compliance, but your boss doesn't get why it takes you such a long time to write code, you're going to be pretty frustrated. 

A mismatch of core values like these leave you with a couple of unappealing choices.  Either give up on the things you are passionate about and treat your work as an unpleasant chore, or spend your time and energy alternately fighting or sneaking around to do a good job.  I've come to recognize that feeling as a sign that it is time to move on.

feeling empowered

This is one of those things that sounds obvious once articulated, but often escapes notice otherwise. People are happy when they have the power to do their job well. When they are unable to fill their role effectively, they are not.

There are a million and one things that could stand in the way of being able to do your job and do it well, ranging from bad process to simple incompetence.  Some common problems I have seen are lack of good information flow, wasteful and non-productive process, and ownership that is not aligned to responsibility, inclination and aptitude.  Whatever the reason, the feeling that you are not providing value leads to the kind of demoralization that extends beyond the work day.
 

feeling appreciated

There are some obvious ways to let people know they are appreciated, and these are too often neglected. Appropriate salaries and titles, regular performance reviews, even just saying "thank you" can make a big difference. But I've found that far more often the things that are really devastating are more subtle.  Things like failing to consult someone about decisions that affect their area of expertise, leaving them to find out incidentally about major and relevant events, or giving tasks within their domain to an outside party--these things leave a person feeling pretty crappy.  When you've taken ownership and killed yourself for your job, feeling as though you've been disregarded makes you wonder why you bother.



I'm going to make a bold (and probably wrong) statement and say that if you are unhappy at your job--the deep seeded, soul crushing kind of unhappy--the reason falls into one of these three categories.  Figure out which one, and tell someone about it.  Your boss probably really wants to understand what they are doing wrong, and it may be something that can be solved with frank communication.  And if not--move on, find a better fit.  There are precious few jobs worth the cost of your soul.  I'm willing to bet this isn't one of them.


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He set up the apparatus to "reward" the pigeon from time to time no matter what the bird did. Now all the birds actually needed to do was sit back and wait for the reward. But in fact... in six out of eight cases they built up--exactly as if they thought they were learning a reward habit--what Skinner called "superstitious" behavior. Precisely what this consisted of varied from pigeon to pigeon. One bird spun itself around like a top, two or three turns anticlockwise, between "rewards". Another bird repeatedly thrust it's head towards one particular upper corner of the box. A third bird showed "tossing" behavior, as if lifting an invisible curtain with ts head. Two birds independently developed a habt of rhythmic, side-to-side "pendulum swinging" of the head and body. ...

It was the pigeon equilivant of a rain dance.

--Unweaving the Rainbow by Richard Dawkins

5-0-3-#

Insects, despite their highly evolved mechanisms of detoxification, are as vulnerable to alcohol as the rest of us. Many insects attack wine grapes and rapidly destroy vineyards, becoming accidentally intoxicated on the odd fermenting grape. In 1545 a legal complaint against the insects was made by the wine growers of St. Julen, a small hamlet in France. The insects were actually brought to trial. The prosecution argued that lower animals should be subject to the laws of man. The insects were appointed an advocate who argued that they were only exercising their biblical rights to be fruitful and multiply, thereby obeying a divine law. The archival recorded indicate that a judge deliberated for a long period, but the final decision is unknown--the last page of the surviving records was destroyed by weevils!

--Intoxication by Ronald K Siegel

"Cortisol is used in virtually every system in the body, a hormone that literally integrates the body and the mind by altering the configuration of the brain. Cortisol interferes with the immune system, changes the sensitivity of the ears, nose and eyes, and alters various bodily functions. When you have a lot of cortisol coursing through your veins, you are--by definition--under stress. Cortisol and stress are virtually synonymous.

...

In white blood cells cortisol is almost certainly involved in switching on a gene called TCF, also on chromosone IO, thus enabling TCF to make its own protein, whose job is to suppress the expression of another protein called interleukin 2, and interlukin 2 is a chemical that puts whte blood cells on alert to be especially vigilant for germs. So, cortisol supresses the immune alertness of white blood cells and makes you more susceptible to disease."
--Genome by Matt Ridley

whatimeantosay prompted me to tell her about my shitty day in haiku form. I thought I'd share.

My computer? Sucked.
Project finished... then delayed.
Abundant drama.

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Minx: "You know, one of the most powerful things, I thought, from the facilitated part, from the workshop part, was teaching people to say 'no' and then having them practice that. Because so many people in this world cannot just say 'no'.

"I love that you said 'No is a complete sentence.' It doesn't have to be 'No, but...' or 'No, well...' or 'No, I'm sorry...'. Just 'No.'"

Marsha: "Yeah, it's been really interesting I think for myself, the work I'm moving into from Cuddle Party is particularly working with women around communication, and particularly around 'No'. And learning how to ask for what you want. And one of the biggest things, it's really hard to ask for what you want if you feel like you can't say 'no'. Because why would you want to put somebody else into that situation? So I've noticed that there's a parallel between: if I can say no to someone without drama ensuing, then I can also ask for things without drama ensuing."

--Poly Weekly Episode
#177