Looking Back on Your Work
by Paul McGoldrick
Those of us who take their work seriously develop an ownership in it that
is an essential and major part of our lives. When you grow something to
full term, whether it is a semiconductor part, a consumer product, a piece
of art, or even another human being there is a pride of ownership which
carries with it a responsibility to nurture and protect. It s in-built in
us as civilized humans. Nor do we go about destroying or hurting others'
work because we understand their pride of ownership. We are not the Taliban
willing to destroy invaluable artwork because we have nowhere to go between
black and white; we are not corporate leaders willing to plunder from stockholders.
It has even been shown that taggers - those strange people who dwell in the dark of night with their spraycans of paint - will not damage the artwork of others. They regard their own work as art and will generally not damage others' works. When we create things your pride is your reward (and many employers seem to be able to take advantage of that.)
When you leave those creations - or they leave you - there is an empty-nest feeling that is difficult to shed. I miss most of the career jobs that I have had, with more or less feeling in different cases, and it is very easy to recall the things that gave pleasure during my performance in each of them. I won't bore you with my (rather long) list. You have your own and they are just as satisfying to you as mine are to me. But there were some uncompleted jobs in my career, and those I regret rather than look back on with pride.
The two that come to mind are more recent than others and it may be that other jobs were completed - and then "prided" - because I was able to take more rather than less BS when I was younger. The first of the two was as VP of Sales & Marketing at a start-up; we were doing really well but the VCs were getting antsy about collecting their expected rewards: It's scary for a lot of VCs to spend time - particularly company Board time - on an investment that is doing only moderately well; they either want you to die or go for an IPO, in between is unacceptable.
Throw the ego of a self-made CEO against a group of VCs and something will break…it did. So, when the ego fought back and won I was the guy who got canned - by voice mail no less - as too supporting of change. That company is now a shell of what it was, and what it could have been. I see it as a failure for me because the work was incomplete.
The second disappointment was when I had to leave an information venture that was being built with care into a real community, by a man who was gifted in understanding the medium we were in. But it was not to continue to be so: New owners did not understand the value of information as against peddling and the walls were riddled with cracks. That venture is now recycling our creations and that is a deathwish.
The analogy could be made with plastic surgery and the Hollywood starlet: You can keep rebuilding the outside but inside the body will still, sooner or later, fail. Or, the vintage car can be waxed every day but if the motor is left without oil it will fail. It is very sad for me to have this second failure on my report sheet.
But this is the raison d'être of analogZONE: To produce community that is solid and nurturing. We think we are the friendliest information site on the planet and as we grow the information database the reader will always get what is as new and as accurate as we can make it. I cannot see a time when I would be looking back at this work and seeing a completed venture to take pride in…because each new posting of the ZONEs creates new pride in what we are achieving