earnest at work

it's sunday, and that means i go back to the job tomorrow. well, not really "back" because i was on call this weekend.

this is my first full day of wage work in over a week, and i'm not sure if i'm going to be able to care. it's my job to care; i'm told i should be an inspiring leader and an example of technical excellence. sure, but for what end? i'm not even talking about the fact that all my toil for salary serves only to enrich the founders and investors manifold compared to my princely pay. i'm not talking about whether the endeavor itself is worthwhile or ethical. i'm talking about my daily experience at the job. i'm talking about my relationships and my chances to exercise and learn. i'm going to set aside the big picture questions for now. i need a stable foundation.

one of the great parts about my job is the fairly wide latitude i get in choosing my work. i have to justify it, but thankfully my peers take well to sound technical justification.

i learned a new concept a few months ago called, "system safety." it's an outgrowth of risk management in low-probability, high-consequence environments. think rockets, power plants, etc. although i wouldn't consider my job to be such a high stakes environment, i think we can use the framework of system safety to make our service more reliable and our lives less toilsome. i won't explain the topic here, but if you're interested i recommend the first four chapters of this book:

Open Access version of "Engineering a Safer World" by Nancy G. Leveson

i've introduced this concept to my teammates in little drips, but i haven't been too explicit for fear that it's not "relevant enough" or something. i think it is, though! i want my life to be full of searching, of yearning with people that want the same. why not try it?

recently at the job i've been asking myself, "what would the company want me to do?" instead, i will start asking myself, "what can i convince the company to let me do?" i caught myself thinking that this is selfish. my job don't love me. why should i love it? instead, what if i loved the people i worked with, and the things i did every day with them?