The Seventh and Deadliest Sin

I guess I'm allowed to swell with pride every once in a while.

I had the chance today to catch up with one of my former direct reports. He was laid off at the same time as me. Although nobody could ever actually prove this in a court of law, anyone considered to be loyal to my former manager was excised as part of the layoffs. This former direct report was one such person. We'd worked together for about 10 years. I'd in fact played a strong hand in hiring him back in 1998. He's good guy.

For Rocko—as we'll call him—luck appears to be swinging his way. After wandering for seven months in the unemployment wilderness he's throw himself at the depressed and depressing job market only to find that he's got a potential taker: Adult Friend Finder. It's basically a prostitution service with a bit of an extramarital twist thrown in for good measure. The good news is that they're hiring and Rocko's due to front up for an interview on Tuesday. He asked me to provide a reference and I'll be geniuinely honoured to do it.

You see, I get a kick out of doing that sort of thing. Another one of my former direct reports, who for identification purposes shall be referred to as Carne Asada, recently landed a web analyst position with the 9th Circuit Court in San Francisco. Carne Asada was assigned to my corporate care back in about 2002. With no college degree under his belt he'd been performing what amounted to clerical duties at the old company. He was a blank slate but he showed aptitude and enthusiasm and those characteristics are what I think really count.

Did he want to go down the path of becoming a back-end developer? Not really. How about front-end? No, not particularly. Ultimately Carne Asada took the path of web usability analysis and the kid's pretty darn good at it. He led the charge at the old company, shoving the web interface kicking and screaming out of the nineties and into the not-so-nineties. But let's not get ahead of ourselves, the site still needed a lot more work.

At any rate he was pretty good, but he had no college degree. The lack of a degree was always going to present a professional barrier, so I urged him to undertake a certification program offered by Human Factors International. He nailed the exam and got the cert.

Like the rest of us he got the chop back in June and I was kind of worried about how things might work out for him. I needn't have been too concerned. I provided a reference for him with the 9th Circuit and he's just wrapped up his first week. It makes me proud; proud in a kind of paternal sort of way. I had a long-term impact on someone else's life and that gives me the warm fuzzies. I'll gladly do the same for Rocko. Sure, he wasn't as much of a protege of mine as Carne Asada—I started managing Rocko much later in the game—but I derive an immense sense of pleasure from helping other people succeed. In light of that management's probably the right game for me.

Moreover, what goes around comes around. Even though I'm still thrashing in the open waters of unemployment, there might soon come a time when one of the people whom I helped to find work is in a position to return the favour. Should it come I won't refuse it. It's a tired old cliché, but you really do reap what you sow.

Wish me luck in my operations mid-term tomorrow.