Post by supine on Sept 29, 2013 8:39:25 GMT
I'm starting to face a difficult decision in my new job.
I'm absolutely loving it and the people are just great, but since I started I have been racing to catch up with all the background knowledge I require to become fully useful to the team. However this always has a drawback in that people then see you as some kind of super-worker when in reality you are just hyper-focussing the nuts out of your brain to get up to speed and then you know it will taper off, but people will have this increased expectation of you. It's been my downfall in several jobs.
Since I like this job so much, I decided to push back a bit on Friday when too many things outside my comfort zone landed at once and I started getting confused as to what I should be doing and when, resulting in me not doing much at all.
I'm facing the problem of trying to explain to someone how to get the best out of me, without being a liability to the team, and I want to do it without mentioning that I have a medical condition.
Everybody works differently, but for me I work better if I have a routine that I can stick to, know what's coming up and when it's needed by. I can handle autonomy when I have a thorough understanding of the overall priorities my bosses place on things. Without this guidance I struggle to know what is the most important thing to do.
So, when I am faced with learning a new customer network environment, new technology, and new job environment (i.e. management systems) it's struggle to get to know everything I need at once. Couple that with 2 days notice for working between 1am and 3am to support a network migration where I'm not familiar with the migration plan nor the network nor what is being migrated, in a group of 20 people on a conference call for a large company (that you all will have heard of) and it starts to get a bit difficult. I looked like a tit on that call because I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing and created a couple of false alarms - not good.
So I sent a letter to my manager explaining that I needed more notice for things so I can plan for them better - but it could provoke a follow up conversation, so I'm looking for ideas. I have a couple, but I need a fresh perspective.
My current thinking is along the lines of (this will be a bit technical - I apologise, but bear with me since I need non-technical input here)..
Imagine you have two computers.
One computer has a quad-core CPU with each processor clocking in at 2GHz, and is optimised for multi-threading (multi-tasking) - It has a good speed hard drive which is fairly quick and can store lots of data.
The other computer only has a single core CPU, but it runs at 8 GHz. It is optimised for single thread processing, which means it can do multi-tasking, but is not efficient at it. It also requires a stable environment since the CPU runs a bit hot due to its speed. It doesn't have a good hard drive but it has excellent RAM which means it can process things very quickly on the fly, but if it's turned off it basically has to start again.
Which of these computers is better? It's clear to me that they are both good at different things. There are more of the first type of computer around, and considerably less of the second, which I think makes it more valuable - but it needs to be used correctly to get the most out of it.
I definitely have a brain that works like computer #2, it amazes me sometimes, but it can't do mundane things for long before overheating. It needs new input all the time and it needs routine so it can be stable at all the fancy stuff it can do.
Can anyone help me put this into English?
I'm absolutely loving it and the people are just great, but since I started I have been racing to catch up with all the background knowledge I require to become fully useful to the team. However this always has a drawback in that people then see you as some kind of super-worker when in reality you are just hyper-focussing the nuts out of your brain to get up to speed and then you know it will taper off, but people will have this increased expectation of you. It's been my downfall in several jobs.
Since I like this job so much, I decided to push back a bit on Friday when too many things outside my comfort zone landed at once and I started getting confused as to what I should be doing and when, resulting in me not doing much at all.
I'm facing the problem of trying to explain to someone how to get the best out of me, without being a liability to the team, and I want to do it without mentioning that I have a medical condition.
Everybody works differently, but for me I work better if I have a routine that I can stick to, know what's coming up and when it's needed by. I can handle autonomy when I have a thorough understanding of the overall priorities my bosses place on things. Without this guidance I struggle to know what is the most important thing to do.
So, when I am faced with learning a new customer network environment, new technology, and new job environment (i.e. management systems) it's struggle to get to know everything I need at once. Couple that with 2 days notice for working between 1am and 3am to support a network migration where I'm not familiar with the migration plan nor the network nor what is being migrated, in a group of 20 people on a conference call for a large company (that you all will have heard of) and it starts to get a bit difficult. I looked like a tit on that call because I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing and created a couple of false alarms - not good.
So I sent a letter to my manager explaining that I needed more notice for things so I can plan for them better - but it could provoke a follow up conversation, so I'm looking for ideas. I have a couple, but I need a fresh perspective.
My current thinking is along the lines of (this will be a bit technical - I apologise, but bear with me since I need non-technical input here)..
Imagine you have two computers.
One computer has a quad-core CPU with each processor clocking in at 2GHz, and is optimised for multi-threading (multi-tasking) - It has a good speed hard drive which is fairly quick and can store lots of data.
The other computer only has a single core CPU, but it runs at 8 GHz. It is optimised for single thread processing, which means it can do multi-tasking, but is not efficient at it. It also requires a stable environment since the CPU runs a bit hot due to its speed. It doesn't have a good hard drive but it has excellent RAM which means it can process things very quickly on the fly, but if it's turned off it basically has to start again.
Which of these computers is better? It's clear to me that they are both good at different things. There are more of the first type of computer around, and considerably less of the second, which I think makes it more valuable - but it needs to be used correctly to get the most out of it.
I definitely have a brain that works like computer #2, it amazes me sometimes, but it can't do mundane things for long before overheating. It needs new input all the time and it needs routine so it can be stable at all the fancy stuff it can do.
Can anyone help me put this into English?