I'm retiring due to health reasons. AMA

[BigRedChief]

I have short term memory loss. The doctors can’t seem to find the root cause. This isn’t some forgetfulness, it’s serious. They tell me I have about 10 years before I will lose all short-term memory. I will retain all long-term memories. So that post you make about me in 2006 is still going to be up there in my noggin.

I have previously shared this diagnosis with the mods. I asked them to keep this information confined to the mod lounge. Which they did and I appreciated their consideration. They encouraged me to share this information with the rest of the Planet. It’s time to come clean.

I also have CLL (Chronic Lymphatic Leukemia). Its only put me in the hospital once and it usually does not kill people these days.

Would not be a BRC post without bragging so…. Last 10 years of my career, I architected, designed, and implemented the first cloud at Bank of America, the largest private cloud in the world for the military and for IBM, the world’s largest serverless IT infrastructure services provider with thousands of enterprise customers, thousands of applications in more than 60 countries.

You cannot do that kind of work without a functioning short-term memory, so I have no choice but to retire.

I’m 65. I’m being forced to retire a little early but only losing a couple of years anyway. I’ll have a comfortable retirement alongside my wife of 34 years.

AMA

[ptlyon]

Originally Posted by GloryDayz

Yep, and I'll add that being at the office offers WAAAAAAAAAAY too many opportunities to keep your best and brightest from staying focused. Not that email and applications like Teams isn't a concentration killer, but people interrupting your day is just silly.

There's always the Jerry springer show caveat tho

[BigRedChief]

Originally Posted by GloryDayz

Yep, and I'll add that being at the office offers WAAAAAAAAAAY too many opportunities to keep your best and brightest from staying focused. Not that email and applications like Teams isn't a concentration killer, but people interrupting your day is just silly.

I've always helped the more junior techs with issues and advice. Even when it wasn't in my role. Techs helped me on the way up, so its my time to give back. Many on here reached out to me over the years for advice or help.

I would get involved in their issue, if needed. I'd get focused and turn around and half the day was gone but got the issue resolved. My bosses noticed for sure. It was on on every yearly evaluation. When I asked do you want to change? A quick no was always the response, just be aware. they have to put something negative on those evaluations.

[Mosbonian]

Originally Posted by GloryDayz

Yep, and I'll add that being at the office offers WAAAAAAAAAAY too many opportunities to keep your best and brightest from staying focused. Not that email and applications like Teams isn't a concentration killer, but people interrupting your day is just silly.

I am going to disagree for some jobs in the market...less of an IT thing than back office jobs.

There were some people who became less focused and less productive when working at home. I had one of my team members who was working another job during the day while she was supposed to be working for our company. Her work suffered and when I would have discussions about her drop in performance she would blame everyone and everything else.

All in all it really is based on the associates work habits...most who work hard at work will also work hard at home. But not in every case

[BigRedChief]

Originally Posted by Mosbonian

I am going to disagree for some jobs in the market...less of an IT thing than back office jobs.

There were some people who became less focused and less productive when working at home. I had one of my team members who was working another job during the day while she was supposed to be working for our company. Her work suffered and when I would have discussions about her drop in performance she would blame everyone and everything else.

All in all it really is based on the associates work habits...most who work hard at work will also work hard at home. But not in every case

Ohh I agree. I was mainly talking about the upper level I.T. guys are self-motivated. That's how they got there and stay there. It's an inert trait to be successful at that level.

Your average office worker probably needs to be watched for performance issues. They can get demotivated for so many reasons. Employees can slack off from time to time and a supervisor talk usually clears it up. Or puts them on notice of unsatisfactory performance.

[GloryDayz]

Originally Posted by BigRedChief

I've always helped the more junior techs with issues and advice. Even when it wasn't in my role. Techs helped me on the way up, so its my time to give back. Many on here reached out to me over the years for advice or help.

I would get involved in their issue, if needed. I'd get focused and turn around and half the day was gone but got the issue resolved. My bosses noticed for sure. It was on on every yearly evaluation. When I asked do you want to change? A quick no was always the response, just be aware. they have to put something negative on those evaluations.

And that's another wonderful thing about Telework, it makes those things much less difficult to do. Granted it can get abused, and sometimes does, but on balance it's easy to perform after hours work when all you have to do, or my people did, is walk back down to the home office.

And the pretty-much 24x7 availability network engineers seem to have (and get paid well for) makes easy of "getting in" much less stressful.

[GloryDayz]

Originally Posted by Mosbonian

I am going to disagree for some jobs in the market...less of an IT thing than back office jobs.

There were some people who became less focused and less productive when working at home. I had one of my team members who was working another job during the day while she was supposed to be working for our company. Her work suffered and when I would have discussions about her drop in performance she would blame everyone and everything else.

All in all it really is based on the associates work habits...most who work hard at work will also work hard at home. But not in every case

I know the scenario well, but I used to tell the bosses and supervisors under me that it's partly up to them to find these issues and solve them by assigning work. It's never that easy, but the bosses know who's slacking and who's not, and in our case we let people know that work was going to assigned fairly, documented, quality reviews performed, and people below the curve would be remediated - to include terminating Telework.

But I was lucky, network engineers, especially the WAN folks, aren't usually too much of a problem when it comes to these sorts of things.

[PatMahomesIsGod]

Have you developed a tattoo system yet, and how will you avoid the pitfalls that Guy Pierce encountered?

[BigOlChiefsfan]

Enjoy your retirement. As someone who fights memory issues as well - reviewing Google Calendar a few times a day helps remind me of stuff that needs doing.

[BigRedChief]

Originally Posted by BigOlChiefsfan

Enjoy your retirement. As someone who fights memory issues as well - reviewing Google Calendar a few times a day helps remind me of stuff that needs doing.

Sorry to hear, it sucks as we both know.

I've been putting everything in the calendar on the I-Phone. Making notes etc.

[Mosbonian]

Originally Posted by GloryDayz

I know the scenario well, but I used to tell the bosses and supervisors under me that it's partly up to them to find these issues and solve them by assigning work. It's never that easy, but the bosses know who's slacking and who's not, and in our case we let people know that work was going to assigned fairly, documented, quality reviews performed, and people below the curve would be remediated - to include terminating Telework.

But I was lucky, network engineers, especially the WAN folks, aren't usually too much of a problem when it comes to these sorts of things.

Yep...those are all the "cures" for issues with those who work from home, but the issues that make it hard for some Managers is lack of support from HR. I actually had an HR rep when I asked for some assistance from their team with an individual that I needed to adjust my view of what HR is for these days. Her response is that HR was there to solely support/advocate for the associate.

Managing a team of IT associates for the most part is easier than back office associates. I think one of the things that makes me glad I am retiring now is that I found myself playing referee than Manager

[ptlyon]

Originally Posted by BigRedChief

Sorry to hear, it sucks as we both know.

I've been putting everything in the calendar on the I-Phone. Making notes etc.

Download an app to take notes in. I use one called inkpad. Love it and kept notes on various things for years. Things I wouldn't remember, like how to shut off the fridge in our camper when we close down for the year.

[GloryDayz]

Originally Posted by Mosbonian

Yep...those are all the "cures" for issues with those who work from home, but the issues that make it hard for some Managers is lack of support from HR. I actually had an HR rep when I asked for some assistance from their team with an individual that I needed to adjust my view of what HR is for these days. Her response is that HR was there to solely support/advocate for the associate.

Managing a team of IT associates for the most part is easier than back office associates. I think one of the things that makes me glad I am retiring now is that I found myself playing referee than Manager

In an "employees" market I agree, but the tide will shift. Bit even then I was very clear that management is exactly that, management. Treat everybody with respect and equality, make performance expectations very clear and very transparent, get signatures on documents that show they've read and discussed the expectations, document/document/document (the one thing that kills a manager's chance of removing a bad employee), and than follow up with little emotion. I agree that the HR folks sometimes seem to be as much of a challenge as any problematic employees that the DEI process places on you, or the RA process assigns to you, but HR has managers too - get to know them well.

I was very lucky across my time working my way up from engineer, to lead engineer (non-supervisory team lead), to supervisor, to department head, so senior leadership because of the nature of my work. We had the occasional bad apple make their way into our ranks, but knowing the rules and how the game is played, and playing that game from the very beginning, really helped us when we needed to remove an employee who couldn't hack the kind of work that network engineers have to do.

That said, I LOVE being retired and I don't miss I.T. even a little bit...

[BigRedChief]

Originally Posted by GloryDayz

In an "employees" market I agree, but the tide will shift. Bit even then I was very clear that management is exactly that, management. Treat everybody with respect and equality, make performance expectations very clear and very transparent, get signatures on documents that show they've read and discussed the expectations, document/document/document (the one thing that kills a manager's chance of removing a bad employee), and than follow up with little emotion. I agree that the HR folks sometimes seem to be as much of a challenge as any problematic employees that the DEI process places on you, or the RA process assigns to you, but HR has managers too - get to know them well.

I was very lucky across my time working my way up from engineer, to lead engineer (non-supervisory team lead), to supervisor, to department head, so senior leadership because of the nature of my work. We had the occasional bad apple make their way into our ranks, but knowing the rules and how the game is played, and playing that game from the very beginning, really helped us when we needed to remove an employee who couldn't hack the kind of work that network engineers have to do.

That said, I LOVE being retired and I don't miss I.T. even a little bit...

you sound like a hard ass boss.
I loved my freedom most of my career. I had to produce, give progress updates to management and the C-suites but most times they just left me alone to go do my thing. I always brought it home on time.

[GloryDayz]

Originally Posted by BigRedChief

you sound like a hard ass boss.
I loved my freedom most of my career. I had to produce, give progress updates to management and the C-suites but most times they just left me alone to go do my thing. I always brought it home on time.

Detail oriented and hard-ass aren't the same. The biggest challenge for engineers becoming leaders (beyond team leads) is the understanding of things that math can't define. The math formula called "HR" is one of those inexplicable things, and most engineers suffer for a while before they realize that you can't deal with the HR problem with simple physics and higher education, it's an enigma, you have to feed the beast that drools stupid and learn to tame that flea-infested beast. HR doesn't get logic, they get emotion, saving money on staff, and agendas (and staff reduction), so you have to deal with their BoD-directed reerunation without consulting the time honored text books that were used at university.

[BryanBusby]

Originally Posted by BigRedChief

I've always helped the more junior techs with issues and advice. Even when it wasn't in my role. Techs helped me on the way up, so its my time to give back. Many on here reached out to me over the years for advice or help.

I would get involved in their issue, if needed. I'd get focused and turn around and half the day was gone but got the issue resolved. My bosses noticed for sure. It was on on every yearly evaluation. When I asked do you want to change? A quick no was always the response, just be aware. they have to put something negative on those evaluations.

That's the focus I have even though I did a lot of the heavy lifting myself to move up.

We onboarded a Help Desk Tech last fall and he was fortunate enough to be paired with me coming in. I've always been an open book when it comes to my knowledge and techniques and processes and encourage people to steal it for themselves and run with it.

Kid was smart enough to do exactly that so it was a pleasure to see him be promoted into my old role when I got moved up into a senior position.

Never understood the ones that hoard everything.