The guy on the right is Microsoft. He looks happy. He should.
The guy on the left is Nokia. He looks like he really, really wants to be happy. He should. He isn't. He won't be.
Until today my jobs focused, when they could focus, on enabling Nokia's next superphone running MeeGo, which is sort of Android-like and is a joint venture with us. They're backing off now -- not quitting, but shifting focus -- and we're suddenly stumbling about in the halls like ants whose queen has disappeared. We have other irons in the fire, and this one isn't coming out, but still it's a big redirection, and we will have to react by shifting resources around, and that'll create a long string of big pains in the ass for all of us. As it happens, one of those irons is targeted at Microsoft -- obviously that's no surprise. But it was a minor effort for me, perhaps my third job. My problem is it's now going to become a higher priority -- a much higher priority -- while the other jobs will not become lower priorities. That makes three jobs. I don't want three jobs. I want one job. I've no interest in becoming good at doing more than one job.
Whine whine whine. Now I don't remember what my point was.
Oh yeah. So, as the article says, Nokia was and still is the pre-eminent mobile phone provider, but they are losing market share fast. This leap to Microsoft smacks to me of desperation. I hope it isn't, cause I like those guys. But the marketplace churns red of tooth and claw without mercy and if this alliance doesn't quite work out, well.
Well, our architecture supports Android too. That's not job number four, is it? Fuck. And I still don't know what my point was.
5 comments:
It hit me what was bothering me. My performance isn't based on the quality of my work. It depends on making and meeting deadlines. So long as I get X and Y done in February and Z done in March, and there were no errors so egregious they prevented shipment of product, I'm good.
And the trouble is a) I don't think that way and b) I always pick up work from people who do. So I end up spending extra hours correcting and updating shit and ranking lower than the guys who can claim to have been on time.
After all, apart from internal review no one has time to participate in, no one really finds our errors except the poor schmuck customer engineer debugging shit late at night and on weekends.
Bah. This weekend is not arriving too soon for me, I tell you WUT.
I love tech-biz geekery when it concerns mobile device stuff.
Your comment makes sense as a cause for irritation. You're not content with schlepping stuff out just to meet a milestone; you want the stuff with your name associated with it to reflect good quality. We engineers are like that. Project managers are taught that the schedule takes priority. I have to fight that.
Frankly, I'm thinking Nokia's Meego strategy constituted a bit of wishful thinking. Palm/HP kind of learned that since their WebOS is a distant player in the market and it's all iOS and Android. If Nokia gives Mickysoft a boost with their WinMo7, that's a better direction. Microsoft has some strength behind it. Nokia still has clout. A good match.
But. Sorry that you have to scramble to reprioritize and it makes your work life more miserable!
A project manager is a project manager is a project manager, no matter the industry, it seems.
And a corporate job is a corporate job is a corporate job, no matter the industry. Everyone just has their own version of the TPS report.
@Nancy: "Microsoft has some strength behind it. Nokia still has clout."
And MickeySoft has money to buy the market to go with the clout plus the demonstrated inability to build hardware that anyone actually, well, buys. Maybe Nokia brings that.
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