Existentialism – Page 19

April 6, 2017

Zero Sum

In my prior job, I was a web developer for the company’s internal website. Specifically, this website’s purpose was to consolidate process and procedural information for the agents on the phone, presumably so that they could quickly research what to do for any given scenario, because remember: time is of the essence!

Now I’ve noticed something about big companies. An individual job will gradually acquire additional responsibilities until it reaches critical mass. Then, like a plant’s bulb, the job splits, creating a separate position, related to the parent position. That’s when the transition is mild. Sometimes it’s like a star going critical, then exploding into a supernova.

Then something interesting happens, where the plant analogy breaks down: these satellite positions as I’ll call them, remain vaguely defined for a time. Work is dispersed among them, and they gradually form solidly defined purposes. But then, a management change occurs. The new manager, eager to stand out as the new vanguard to change, decides to promote efficiency. Efficiency is the oft correlate to cost reduction (though I find that debatable), and therefore the new manager combines positions and their duties, eliminating needless processes and jobs along the way. The remnants of the supernova, having floated in their nebulous form, gradually coalescing from gravity into new celestial bodies, now collapses back into a new star–a facsimile of the original.

This new star remains as such until it again reaches critical mass, but by then the manager who created it has benefited from the transition sufficiently as to receive promotion. The manager’s replacement sees this star and, eager to stand out as the new vanguard to change, breaks it up into satellite positions. Attentive readers might be having a “Wait a minute…” moment right now.

Yes, it’s cyclic. I’ve experienced having my job redefined so many times that I now expect it as an inevitability. As a result of this dynamic, my job only consisted of developing the Collections website. Operations and Fraud had their own team of developers. Whether or not this was more efficient is an argument left to history, and only a transitory state as defined by those in charge.

Yet, to me it seemed counter-intuitive to have no communication between the teams. After all, we were doing the same thing, and using the same software. It was only expected that each of us had differing levels of knowledge which, if combined, could benefit everyone, right? Not waiting for any management sign-off, as is my way, I initiated dialogs with the other team members. We began sharing knowledge, with limited success, but eventually my own manager saw the value and started some more formal cross-team discussions.

And all I was after was the sharing of knowledge and information, and to physically sit near each other. My request for a desk near the Operations team was immediately denied. Then, as the discussions began to involve higher levels of management, they died. Some of the changes were minor, like upgrading to HTML5, or implementing RSS update feeds. But ultimately, sensing stagnation and seeing opportunity elsewhere, I took a promotion and transferred to Marketing.

Two months later, one of the publishers from the Operations team ran into me as I was taking a walk outside. She confirmed that all movement on the collective ideas had been paused indefinitely, much to her dismay. Shortly thereafter, I received a group email from higher management confirming this.

Ultimately, I’m just as guilty, for I too benefited from this system. In the process of pushing for change, I gained the experience and notoriety needed to achieve promotion, leaving my work, and any hope of meaningful lasting change, to atrophy, thus becoming part of the eternal cycle of zero sum innovation.

We are products of our time. If the right conditions do not present themselves, any idea, good or bad, will fail to achieve fruition. So it was with this story, but while we may not have seen our ideas implemented, technology forces change, and some version of them ultimately will be. I’m curious how similar to our own goals they will turn out.

–Simon

March 14, 2017

When Planets Align

Photography to me has always been functional, not artistic. I can appreciate the professionals who see a beautiful moment–adjust focus, zoom, aperture, exposure time…and capture natural perfection. For me, however, it’s an extension of words. Take X photo to capture Y content for archival reasons.

With the ever-improving iPhone camera though, on occasion, the planets will align just so and I capture magic, by some combination of coincidence and technology. I often forget about them, but as I flip through my thousands of photos, I’ll pause on some. Rather than share them out of context, I offer two such photos (taken at Cox Arboretum) with this preface, so you will know that talent played little role in their creation, while still enjoying their aesthetics:

–Simon

March 13, 2017

Dilapidation

As many from the older generation lament: they just don’t make ’em like they used to. Truth. There was indeed a point in American history when we actually had a proper manufacturing industry. And a core component of this industry was American steel. And in the height of steel’s influence, before petroleum-based plastics and outsourcing, things were created from metals whose only enemy would be rust and time, not wear and tear. Now these icons of the past stand as monuments to another era, seemingly so different from the one in which we live now.

Seeking these icons has become popular enough to warrant its own term: urban exploring. But I find that one doesn’t even have to put effort into it to net results. Sometimes by sheer chance the past will emerge, demanding that it not be forgotten.

Years ago when I had purchased my first iPhone, I would check Google maps (when this was the default map), passively exploring the green belts which stretch their way through developed metropolises. I would trace the routes digitally, musing on what lay within. In the building in which I worked, beyond the parking lot, one such belt resided. No label had been applied courtesy of the map, yet it delineated a zone between the building and the residential section of old post-war houses, presumably built in a time when the nearby factory (still in operation, though I have no idea what it produces) was likely a major factor in the area’s economy. Who knows? It might have been steel.

One day, as was all too frequent in those days, I was desperately seeking an escape from my job. The allure of this mystery zone tugged at my thoughts, and so I set off on a 15-minute excursion (the mandatory minimum break time required by law, so granted unto me by my employer). I trekked to the end of the parking lot and encountered the hedgerow–an unsurprisingly impassible barrier of invasive honeysuckle, bordering a drainage ditch. I decided to trace this line to the end of the lot, and there, just as it terminated into a chain link fence, it parted. The opening was the result of an old roadway, bridging the ditch and dead-ending into a single pole in the grass by the parking lot, obscured from view by the unruly foliage.

Naturally upon this discovery, I couldn’t not continue down the path, so like a suburban Livingstone I fearlessly marched through the vegetation. On the bridge I received a view of the drainage ditch, which from above now appeared to be the remnants of a natural waterway. Below, carp circled while ducks traversed the surface, bathing. It was an idyllic scene of natural serenity in a profane expanse of asphalt, but the road continued, so I pressed on.

After crossing the short bridge, the hedgerow on the far side too disappeared, giving way to a vast expanse of grass, interspersed with groups of trees. The grass, while not meticulously manicured, had still been maintained. It was knee-high, and resembled a prairie, mixed with thistle and clover. Bees merrily conducted their business in the blossoming grassland, and I wondered why this stretch had been mowed. The only clue to this mystery was a series of gas line utility marker poles, spaced regularly throughout the stretch.

The road bent around a tree grove and there I saw it: the remains of a park. A party gazebo stood, although made of wood, still without apparent structural damage; a set of swings, or what remained, as the swings and chains themselves had been removed; and a steel slide–no doubt anchored with concrete and too much trouble to remove. And running adjacent to the road was a 7-foot chain link fence, topped with barbed wire. Yet amusingly, more drainage pipes passed beneath the road, bypassing the fence with 4-foot diameter concrete tubes. I was happy to see that neighborhood children had discovered this, as a group was playing on the dilapidated remnants of the old playground. Why was this area fenced off? Why had it been closed? Had budget cuts doomed the park? The answer could have been deduced from a notice sign, but any explanation it may have offered had been covered in spray-paint. The children, blissfully unaware of liability, had ignored the notice and all that the fence implied.

Yesterday, we were in attendance at a family function, in a Knights of Columbus charter house. They were extended family on my in-laws’ side, so any common-ground conversational points were limited. For a moment’s reprieve, I stepped outside. The entrance was no sanctuary, as two people were engaged in phone conversations, so I began a walk to circumnavigate the building.

And there, in the back, out of time and place and seemingly forgotten, remained a steel slide. No other playground equipment remained–only this slide. I pondered its existence a moment as I had the park remnants behind work. Surely people know of it, because again the grass was mowed. Why is the grass always mowed?

My daughter, having been eating cake since we arrived at the party, and no doubt needing a break of her own from social over-stimulation, was elated when I mentioned the hidden slide to her. She gleefully skipped off to partake in this forgotten joy.

wheee

Why are these things forgotten and disused? In the post-war baby boom, did we have a greater need for them, now no longer after the generation aged? Like the Giving Tree, they sit, silently waiting to give again–any joy that they might still provide.

I took a photo, partly to see my own child enjoying the slide for its intended purpose, partly to prove that the permanence of these old icons was not without merit. Whatever its future fate, proof that the slide brought a child happiness one more time will remain now in the chronicles of family photos, possibly to outlive the steel itself.

–Simon