Tech Snafu

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In order to give you some context, I want to start off with a little introduction.  I was born and raised in the great state of Texas.  I have been living here all my life, over 40 years now.  I come from a hard working family of four.  My childhood was pleasant.  My mother and father worked hard to give me and my sister the best life possible.  They gave us every chance to succeed.  Over those 40+ years, I have seen many things change, from the advent of the VCR, to the compact disc, to the personal computer, to the nano technology handheld devices we all use today.  I was introduced to technology at a very early age. My father was always the first one to have anything new in the gizmo world.  He was an audiophile by heart.  We had a pair of Bose speakers back in 1975.  We had one of the very first gaming consoles for the tv, the Magnavox Odyssey.  Pong baby! Yeah!  That was the stuff man.  I remember my dad telling us to make sure we turn it off or the tv would get screen burn.  Needless to say, it was inevitable.  We had a VCord video player way before BetaMax was popular and were recording those great old Saturday Night Live skits like Roseanna Roseannadanna and the infamous Land Shark.  I'm not telling you all this to brag, but to let you know that I grew up being surrounded by and loving technology. 

Today I have a wonderful family of my own.  I have a beautiful wife, 2 wonderful kids and rather well-to-do lifestyle.  I am living the American dream.  I work for one of the largest computer companies in the world.  Let's just call it the big H.  I am an IT consultant.  I've been into IT consulting for over 17 years now.  I live and breathe tech on a daily basis.  To say the least, I have been a fan of technology all my life, that is, until now.

My problem started about 1 year ago, when the big H acquired the big E (my prior employer) and started changing company policy.  The big H and big E were similar in many ways, but the big E seemed to be more traditional in its business practices.  The big E had a traditional big business mentality that many people hate but I enjoyed at some level.  The big E always stressed meeting face to face with my clients and fellow employees on a daily basis.   A very costly way of doing business these days.  In this tough economy, cutting costs is the name of the game.  Cut costs at all costs.  It's funny how management always sees the cheapest monetary alternative as the best one.  They only seem to perceive the bottom line.  They are blind to the impacts these decisions have on quality, not to mention the intangible impacts on the workplace and the people who work there.  The big H in its cost cutting mode, mandated that everyone work from home.  You might be saying, wow aren't you lucky, and for some, you are right, but for me it is the start of something I see as very  frightening. 

Being a technology company, all of our meetings are now virtual, making use of virtual rooms, instant messaging (IM) and desktop sharing applications.  Days are spent answering IM notifications of fellow employees.  Often I find myself trying to answer 5 people at once, all pertaining to different topics meanwhile my inbox is filling with long threaded topics of drastic confusion.  I spend hours a day buried in the email cyclone trying to catch up on topics that have been forwarded 20 times or more.  Each time, the topic slightly changed.  Sometimes it takes me 5 minutes or more to decipher an email in order to figure out what somebody is asking of me.  I often find myself reaching for the phone to stop the madness from continuing.  The hell if I'm going to add another forward to that forsaken email chain.  Stop the insanity! It amazes me how quickly answers to complex problems can be resolved by just picking up the phone.  I can convey ideas by conversation 100x faster than trying to correspond by email.  Email is good for one thing only, documentation.  If you ever want to cover your yourself for a decision that you do not agree with, make sure you get an email for archival purposes.  Above and beyond that, I prefer to pick up the phone or go converse with someone in their cube if at all possible.

I believe there is nothing better than true face-to-face human interaction when it comes down to getting to know someone or coming up with solutions to a problem.  I believe that one of the keys to any successful business is the ability to create and build relationships.  You have to gain people's trust before they open up to you, and that trust and open relationship is the key to getting things done.   In today's world, it's becoming harder and harder to build that true relationship.  Today everyone is just a name and an address, nothing more.  All the beauty behind the human element is disappearing at an alarming rate.  Today we have facades to personality.  Behind these facades, the real person is hidden from reality.  It's up to us to formulate who the person is based on perceptions of an email, picture or IM message, not who they really are, which makes it difficult to gain that trust that I think is so important.  Maybe I'm just getting older.  Maybe it's just a generational thing.  However, I love the days when I get to go into the office, interact with my peers and have a good laugh over a beer.  The human element, it's a beautiful thing.