Moving Out

I intended to post about this on Friday, but really didn't have the will or the energy. I still don't really, so it'll probably end up a little undirected and rambly.

The completely pointless office move, that I was promised wouldn't be happening, is. I found out about it in the best way possible - a new seating arrangement on my keyboard when I got to work on Friday, effective Monday. The fact is, this makes things worse for me in every possible way (with the exception that the new office is about a minute closer to the station that the old one). I'll be further away from my team (I'm the only permanent member of staff being moved), I'll be further away from the chief architect of my project, and I'll be a lot closer to the people who make it hard for me to do my job, without the protection of my line manager (which, I think, is part of the whole point... apparently there was a huge amount of pressure to move me, enough for both B and R to be completely overruled and told it basically wasn't up to them any more. I think that’s partially because the annoying project-people don't feel they have any control over me - they don't - but I'm not going to start pandering to their misconceptions and headless-chicken panic attacks just because they've told me I have to sit somewhere else. I'm going to try to avoid being rude - but I'm not going to change anything about the way I work. It's currently delivering quite a complicated project on time, and with no substantial bugs, so "if it's not broke, don't fix it")

The whole thing is hugely political, which I think it what annoys me. If there was a valid, work-based reason I could see, or even one they'd told me (nobody has given me a good reason for why this is happening yet), if everyone I needed access to was going to be there, if I thought there was even a small chance I could deliver the work, quicker, better or whatever with this new arrangement, I would accept it, despite the fact it moves me away from all my friends and my team for a while. (I still wouldn't like it, not least because I feel it's important for me to be around at the moment, while the team has a couple of new starters who need supporting by people like me with a little experience of how things work, and ideas on how to improve them in the future). But it's all stupid power games and political manoeuvring, which just makes things difficult, and I've never been a fan of "projectitics", which often boils down to lots of people getting in my way while trying to grab some power or glory for themselves.


So Monday morning I'll be in the office to clear my desk and make sure I've uploaded stuff from my hard-drive, then I'll be "out of the office" for a couple of months.