On enjoying work

11 Jan 2008

I don't think I have enjoyed working as much as I have in the last two and a bit months at SynthaSite.

That's quite a statement.  I'm a bit surprised that I'm willing to say that.

I'm not sure of how much of that enjoyment is due to changes in me, but I know it's at least a non-trivial contribution.  Being burnt out last year after over two years of hectic overcommitment to KnowledgeTree and the emotional rollercoaster that entailed has meant many lessons have been learned.  Even though I'm not fully recovered, I think I've learned how to enjoy working again, and this started to be seen last year at CareerJunction.

StarCamp and the GeekDinners also have at least a non-trivial role to play - I'm not only enjoying work a lot more, but I'm also generally enjoying life more.  I'm very upbeat about Cape Town as a venue for technology innovation, and I'm enjoying meeting new friends, and interacting with my existing ones more.

It's strange - the work that I've been doing recently at SynthaSite would probably have driven me mad before.  I've been moving from a systems administration base eight years ago towards full-time developer/architect/lead positions at Independent Online, KnowledgeTree, and CareerJunction, but suddenly I'm doing what I'm sure I would've thought fairly lowly sysadmin tasks last year, and I've got no minions to boss around.

I've been thinking a lot about reward/response in the last 18 months (I'm sure I drove Brad, Bryn and Shaun crazy during this period).  I think a lot of the reason I'm enjoying working at the moment is that it has an obvious impact.  A large portion of the work I've been doing has been around process improvement - ways to make the lives of everyone in the company better.  It's easy to feel good about your work when your colleagues thank you for making their lives easier.

The work dynamic at SynthaSite reminds me a lot of the early days of KnowledgeTree as a serious project at Jam Warehouse.  Whether you are "management", have a title like "CTO" or "VP Engineering", or are just a lowly untitled employee, your comment is not only respected but expected.  I don't think I appreciated that feeling at KnowledgeTree enough, but having known it then, I can recognise and appreciate it now.

It's also nice to be surrounded by other people who are enjoying themselves - whatever their motivations for that might be.  Certainly, being in line to make some money if things go well is probably high on some of their lists.  For others, just the excitement of being on the start-up ride.  Perhaps it's the perks.  Or maybe just being part of a well-oiled machine.

Anyway, I think this bodes well for 2008, and hopefully some of you will be inspired to try enjoy working again, whatever that might require doing.

2 Responses

  1. Brad Shuttleworth — January 12, 2008 at 03:51 PM.

    Ha! You never drove me that mad, though I suspect Bryn started off that way :) And besides - a lot of what we did well worked because we all had a voice, and a fairly large portion of what we did badly occured because we didn't have the right voices around to question us.

  2. JBagley — January 18, 2008 at 01:09 PM.

    Neil, its great when a person is able to turn around and in an instance tell you that they love their work and what they are doing.

    As a person spends more than 8 hours a day working, it has a huge impact on how you are after work, and inevitably how your day went (when someone asks. ;-)).

    I also think your employer has a huge role to play in your "work enjoyment" too. The happier a person is at work, the more productive they are.

    Sounds like you having tons of fun at Synthasite... Mmm... maybe I should pop in for a chat sometime. ;-)

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Hi, I'm Neil Blakey-Milner, a technology generalist most interested by open source, security, and building scalable systems (especially if I get to use the Python programming language).

I "work" at the incredibly fun web-sites-for-everyone startup SynthaSite based in beautiful Cape Town, South Africa.

What I do

  • StarCamp

    I was the main instigator behind this 2-day unconference in December 2007 in Cape Town. There'll be another one in Cape Town around July.

  • GeekDinner

    I help out in making these geek social events happen every two months in Cape Town since March 2007.

  • SynthaSite

    I make sure that the systems run smoothly at this Cape Town-born Web 2.0 startup.

  • Presentations

    I speak publically on a number of topics - generally related to technical aspects of open source software or on software development.

  • Code

    I've written a few software projects of my own over the years (although mostly I'm the only user of them).

  • Photos

    I'm far from an artist, but I enjoy capturing my experiences on camera.

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