Have You Become A Permanent Fixture?

There’s a point with every job where you simply lose the will to leave.

We often joke in the Grand Game of Software Engineering that you’d get longer prison terms for armed robbery than those already served for a great number of permanent employees within most organisations.

After all, it’s always fun to go ‘around the room’ HR-style to see who are the longest serving individuals and see if they fit the stereotype that we’re going to describe in exquisite detail today.

With contractors anything over 12 months can be damaging to the psyche, but also the pay packet. Contractors thrive on being parachuted in, fixing stuff, and moving on with their trouser pockets stuffed full of untraceable banknotes — the way it should be — anything that slows that process down can ultimately lead to being stuck in permanent employment.

That, of course, can never be allowed to happen.

With permanent employment, however, it’s come to my notice that it’s somewhere around the 3–5 year mark where the ‘rot’ can start to set in and some potentially irreversible changes begin to take place.

I say rot, for that’s really what it is — a gradual decline in cognitive function, an increasing compliance with respect to the management hierarchy, and a commensurate drop in both efficiency and individualism at a very personal level.

It also turns you into a genuine company operative in that your technical soul separates and begins to drift away from your body, you start wearing clean clothes that often even have collars, and you get really quite uninteresting to converse with in any kind of group discussion¹ outside of the sprint process or what colour the new office carpet should be.

Yes indeed, if you aren’t already marked, you also run the risk of becoming indelibly branded with that most awful of ownership labels — “potential management material”.

We in the game like to call this phenomena “getting too comfortable”.

It creeps up on you too — one month you’re all creating repos packed with sarcastic readme files full of in-jokes, crafting clever and efficient algorithms, and connecting EC2 instances with a wave of your mouse cursor, the next you’re leaning back in your new Herman Miller chair discussing the merits of SOLID principles, praising the agile methodology, and wondering what colour Post-It to use for blocked tasks on the scrum board.

Progression of this insidious rot can damage such individuals to an extent that they lose all capacity to leave and become completely magically enthralled to their present position — even though it offers less and less in terms of challenge, satisfaction, and naturally, remuneration.

Symptoms of this dreadful affliction include,

• Having your own ‘special’ coffee mug In a ‘special’ place in the company’s kitchen cupboards. You also get irrationally irate if anyone else moves it let alone dares to use it.
• Knowing everyone in the company by their first name You being to making a point of ‘dropping by’, saying hi and actually waiting for a response, then chatting about your hobbies, choice of shirt colour, or where you’re thinking of going on holiday this year.
• Always attending ‘mandatory’ company events You’re the first to click ‘Yes’ in Teams and arrive (in person or virtually) in the meeting room, saying they’re “not so bad” when everyone else is criticising the frequency and mundanity of the occasion, and always asking just the right question at just the right time in order to successfully prolong what is already a brain meltingly long HR PowerPoint presentation.
• Wearing company merchandise² outside of work hours It starts with the gardening, maybe washing the car, then progresses to doing the shopping, then inevitably wearing said landfill a full 24 hours a day — even at actual work — you even begin to forget you’re wearing it at all… (Look down at yourself, right now, and check)
• Cleaning communal spaces out of habit Have you caught yourself pulling on a kitchen towel and clearing things away without thinking, not vowing to lock the culprit out on the 10th floor balcony in the rain, but thinking about how you’ll just hang on a while in the kitchen and see who comes in next?
• Running errands such as collecting pizza for mandatory fun events, making sure everyone has company merchandise² at said events, then clearing about the soggy pizza boxes afterwards. “Don’t worry, I’ll get that!”
• Being involved with every project, at every level, in every meeting but you just can’t remember why. Then, you get involved in recruitment too. Focus is lost, purpose dissolves, and what’s left of the once promising soul has leaked into every gap, every niche, every nook and cranny, and is now spread oh so thinly oiling the wheels of the business.

The consequence of repeatedly doing the same tasks is that you can easily get locked into it, the more it becomes familiar, the more it becomes comforting, the harder it is to escape.

With larger organisations this can be offset, to an extent, by attempting to move between roles and/or projects —even though this is often difficult and time consuming.

Company culture, that insidious indoctrination, may also be a cause of the rot — shaping behaviour, wearing the logo, buying into the oatmeal treats in the colourful packaging, even attending the Zumba classes — you know what I’m talking about.

Company culture is akin to radiation, ever present where small and intermittent doses pose little harm but prolonged exposure or just higher doses can be life, or in this case sanity, threatening.

When you catch yourself copying those dance moves, going back to the company canteen for dinner, or slipping on that baseball cap with the garish logo it just may already be too late.

Please, when entering the premises, leave your brain at the door.

Us progressives, and our surrounding support entourage of UI designers, testers, and various non-manager classes, must continually be on our guard against circumstances where our daily lives become just that little bit too habitual and just a little bit too comfortable. That way danger lies.

It’s best to stay fresh, or “hungry” as the saying goes for a very good reason, and mix things up a bit.

Bin that company landfill after you’ve used it to clear up after the pets a few times, embrace the standard sarcastic demeanour and resistance to corporate diktat, and perhaps even think of just moving the hell on if you think you’re getting just that little bit too comfortable with your current role…

…before it’s too late and you’re the one sitting alone in the office wondering who the new people are on the video call or as they file past you in the office, before you’re the one managing people decades younger than yourself, before you’re the one stuck between the developers and genuine hardcore ineffective management with little chance of making it over the wire to freedom.

[1]: Especially those that involve shaming people who use tabs over spaces, making disparaging comments about company direction, and (vitally) anything opposing company doctrine. You might also making slides, sorry, “PowerPoints” now you’re this far gone. [2]: Some call it swag, I call it corporate landfill.