Letters to the Editor
mattwa33186
Published Letters: 432 Editor's Choice: 45
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The LW can learn much from these responses
[Read the article: My mother's dying words were, "You'll never be good enough"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Like the fact that the majority of the responders here are not unlike his co-workers and bosses. There is even a response from a supervisor who believes that fucking things up her way is preferable to doing them right in another way. And we wonder why we can't make things any more.
Yes, it is possible to be hated for doing your job too well. It is even possible to be fired for doing your job too well, if you have the right boss. If you are really as good as you say you are, your path is clear - start your own company doing whatever it is you do, or if that is impractical become a consultant and start helping your company's competitors win those awards.
You are already an outsider, and as you have probably learned by now your refusal to accept mediocrity means you will remain an outsider forever unless you create an environment as dedicated to excellence as you are. If your company is winning the highest honors in your industry every year that means such an environment does not currently exist, so you have to build it for yourself.
Stop seeking the approval of people who are only there to collect a check. They are not your mother, so it won't help anyway. Evaluate your bosses and co-workers honestly and objectively, determine if their opinion would matter to you under any other circumstances, and value them accordingly.
Stop being a victim. Take what you know and turn it into a life you can be happy with.
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@Kitchengirl, @AnnieW
[Read the article: My mother's dying words were, "You'll never be good enough"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What the supervisor was complaining about was a subordinate saying "We don't do it that way." Not "I know a better way" or "That's not a good way" or "I want to do it my way."
- We indicates that there are already established procedures and methodologies in place.
- The employee's objection indicates that the supervisor is deviating from those without explanation.
- The supervisor's reaction to that objection and her expectation that smart, hard working, caring employees will simply obey her without explanation or discussion or they are no good shows that she is a symptom of pretty much everything that has gone wrong with American business and industry.
- The supervisor clearly indicated that an appropriate understanding of the relationship (you do as I say without question or comment) is more important to her than the quality of the work or the outcome of the project.
I'm sure that by her own reckoning she is quite successful, since she probably carries the same subservient attitude in her dealings with her own bosses, and so gets many promotions and attaboys. The problem is that so many of our companies are riding these kinds of internally defined, purely imaginary success measures straight into bankruptcy. I have seen too many of these types of managers who are happy with saying "we did what we agreed to and met all the requirements" instead of "we created a kick ass product and no one could have done it better." The difference is one is purely focused on personal success, and the other is more concerned with creating and maintaining excellence.
Our country and its workers were much better off when doing the best job possible was more important than having the best job possible.
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Is California where you want to be?
[Read the article: Now my mother's gone, what do I do?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You imply that it was a great sacrifice to leave there and move back to Boston, but you never really say. Did you spend alot of (or any) time missing California, or wishing you were there? Is that the place you feel you can go and build a life?
I don't know your situation, but if you are able to travel or if your work lets you go from place to place, that's what you should do. For me, home has always been the place I miss the most, the place that just feels right. Maybe you need to spend some time figuring out where that is. Who knows, it may turn out that you hate being away from Boston now.
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Related? Or not?
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I started flying as a young kid (passenger, not pilot). We always flew Eastern, which hired military pilots almost exclusively, and I have been told that military pilots have a reputation for being hard on passengers. But what I remember is that you could sit a drink on the arm of your seat before takeoff and you wouldn't spill a drop if you left it there until you reached your arrival gate (an exageration, I know, but the flights were very smooth).
What I experience now is what seems like fairly radical takeoffs and sudden, large course corrections on approach. The landings themselves are pretty smooth, though.
Is this because of relative inexperience among the flight crews? Or does it have more to do with trying to save fuel, or possibly limited airspace around the airports? While my frame of reference is more related to ground and water based transportation, in my experience if you know exactly where you are going then failure to get there smoothly means either something unexpected crossed your path or you just aren't very good.
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IE isn't standards compliant
[Read the article: Opera's misguided antitrust charges against Microsoft]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Niether is FireFox. Niether is Safari. Niether is... Opera. Or Konqueror, or any browser with any significant market share. This is the same stupid lawsuit that has been kicking around for years. You either are standards compliant, or you are not. This constant sniping that IE isn't as standards compliant as browser X is whiny bullshit. We will have a standards compliant browser the day Google releases their version of Mozilla, and not one second before.
What this reminds me of is the Sun Java lawsuit. Right in the middle of that, I build a website and decided to get it certified as compliant by Sun. The Java applet they sent me worked perfectly in IE4, not at all in Netscape. But of course Netscape wasn't getting sued, were they?