I can’t really get into too many details here, because I don’t know who reads my blog, and what is public, and blah blah blah. But I find myself in a very uncomfortable position here at work lately. To the best of my knowledge, I haven’t done anything on purpose to put myself in this situation. It has sort of just found me, but that doesn’t make it any better.
Some background. I’m working on this project that is separate from the group that I work in usually. It is part of a research grant that the History department is working on, along with an architect from outside the University. It is an interesting project, but I came on board 2/3rds of the way through, and it was my job to fix up some old code, something that I could definitely do.
But some people, notably people who aren’t doing any programming, decided that it would make sense to use technologies that I am unfamiliar with. That’s fine. I can learn them. Except they don’t want to give me the time to learn them. Instead they want me to “learn as I go”, which isn’t really applicable to the technologies that they have decided on. They didn’t listen to me when I told them this would be very difficult, and basically decided for me that I would do things this way.
Now they are getting very snippy with me because things are taking so long. Not only am I having to learn several new technologies, but I’m also having to do so in a framework already written by someone else who does things in a very inscrutable way. So I’m stuck, and getting pressure to do tasks that are very difficult given the situation.
But on top of that, people are now saying different things to different people. One person says “Yeah, person A is off the project.” Another says “Person A is still on the project, just less so.” And Person A says that he is still on the project full go. But I’m the only person who all of these things seem to be said to, and so I’m in a very uncomfortable place.
Why can’t I just sit in my office and look out the window?