I just got off the phone with a good friend of mine who I worked with at my previous company; going forward, let’s call that company AWS; as well as who I worked with at the company I worked for prior to AWS, let’s call that one WXL (sure, there’s a code here. Figure it out, if you will).
He is super excited because they have some capital money approved to start automating some of their processes. He reached out to me a couple weeks ago and gave me the name of a contact, who i contacted and followed up with, but haven’t heard back from. He was really disappointed that I hadn’t heard back from him, so he’s going to approach him about it this week.
He described a relatively small project that just went through and asked me questions about some of the things that they were asking. Oye! He described the process of acceptance that they were following. I took the opportunity to explain to him where that almost agile process came from.
I explained to him a little more about what we’d proposed to AWS, as remember, he used to work for them too so is savvy on their–opportunities. Then I listened to him complain about having to explain every little detail to this development company and that even after a 2 hour meeting turned into four, they still did not get it.
I told him I get it. I mean, these little details that we deal with in my former industry, are fine details that are not complex when you do them on the daily, but are surprisingly complicated. Like, “Why do you have two completely different limits on your flows here and which one do you want to see?” “What do you mean that you want to see both of them? Do you calculate them differently?” “I clearly do not understand why these are important to you, but yes, I can absolutely calculate them for you!”
I’m sorry, i’m not trying to insult the reader or imply stupidity upon anyone. These processes are complex and, more importantly, tedious, which is where I want to come in and save the world!
This is a new opportunity to bridge the gap! And this is one that reached out to me with questions. What he has proposed that he wants done (granted it’s not sold to management yet), is a dream of a project to me (not as much as the other one, but sigh just as exciting!)! And to hear that they have already spent 6 plus hours in a room with their chosen developers for their ‘easy’ project, is music to my ears, because I understood everything he was saying the first time.
He and his team, could tell me everything that they need, and there’s no doubt that i absolutely would go back to their point of contact to confirm xyz or abc, but ultimately, because I have lived in their world I will understand their needs and won’t have to go to them for every single calc because I speak their language and can anticipate their needs.
There are so many languages! I speak 3.5 - 4 languages:
I speak chemicals (in multiple companies), i speak restaurant, I speak broken-language insurance, I speak some software, and I mildly understand toddler blurbs–that’s the hardest one for sure!
In honest curiosity, what languages do you speak?
How tonight’s blog started before I got the call from my friend:
Nothing like a toddler t-ball game to put the whole family in a terrible mood!
Rex was all excited for t-ball this afternoon, but then he was last to bat because, my mistake, i picked a high number for him, and he got, without blame, really bored waiting for his turn. Then he did spectacular running the bases. The whole time waiting though, he kept saying how he didn’t want to play any more. We tried to encourage him to finish the game (of which he has no concept).
He agreed and stood in the field knowing that the objective was the get the ball. He tried once and got knocked over and his shoe got knocked off. He cried. I fixed his shoe and the next time he got the ball, but then he was done and no longer wanted to play. I won’t go into the details of the tantrum that he threw that resulted in us removing him from the game.
This put us all in a tizzy. And ya know what? I am so torn on how to raise these kids. Am i supposed to offer positive reinforcement for all good behaviour or is there supposed to be punishment? How much am I supposed to let them be sad? He was clearly stressed in this game, and i remember that feeling as a child–it is stressful! And he was so interactive and trying to be friends and play with the other kids on his team, but they all kind of ignored him or looked down on him–they were older & bigger, so maybe he’s just too young right now. And that’s ok. We may not go again…
Honestly, he’s 3! Can you really make a 3 year old stick to a team commitment if it’s stressing him out? Even the commitment of finishing a tball game? I don’t know. On the one hand, i don’t want him to be so stressed out that he never wants to play sports again, but on the other hand, I don’t want to teach him that it’s okay to quit and leave your team hanging just because you don’t like the current circumstances. This parenting thing is hard!