Management...

Often people I work with forget that I am in management. I think it is because I have a small team and not only manage, but still program. As much as I have tried to get away from it, the work seems to increase to match however many people I hire and I still end up with a portion of the programming - just to get it done. For the people from the other teams, this blurs the line and I am considered "one of them".

This is a good and a bad thing. I regularly get an earful of how management is the bane of the world and if they would just all die and go away, life would be good. Hello???? Another idiot thought it was smart to confide in me that he was using corporate resources to work on this side-line business and was mischarging time while working on his own stuff. (Um...he doesn't work there anymore.) I hear the gossip that other managers don't hear. I'm considered a "cool" manager - kind of like being the "cool" mom.

Then a day like yesterday happens. There was a corporate decision to kill a project. It's not my project directly. My team is a support team for the project. I was part of the management team that went in to tell everyone that they need to look for new jobs. I felt like there was a knife in my gut. There is never a good time for something like this to happen, but the holidays make is that much worse. Hiring falls off this time of year while bills increase.

As we left, a team member came up to me and asked why I had been included in the meeting. When I replied that I was part of the management team she said, "Oh...yeah." Maybe my cover hasn't been blown after all.