In my opinion, the fact that you’re doing all you can and aren’t always able to finish suggests that you need another team member…

My initial ideas and thoughts about what I was going to be able to accomplish have long since gone out the window as there just isn’t enough time to actually put anything that I’ve planned into production. As my VP is very much a “results-oriented” person, I find it stressful trying to quantify what I have been doing over the last year.

BUT, this job has taken me in a few different directions, such as developing documentation on wikis, and helping out the Project Management team better plan out their documentation so that the development all goes smoothly. And I’ve gotten a few comments from my VP that even though I don’t always manage to finish off some of my projects, he knows that I give my all when I do work on all of my projects.

Some people may be shy about inserting themselves where they haven’t been invited, and that’s a valid concern. I think you usually won’t alienate people if you go about it in the right way—communicating that you want to do your job better, expand your horizons, help others, etc, rather than giving people the idea that they need to be babysat or that they’re inconsiderate for leaving you out.

Interestingly, I’ve heard this same fear expressed by practitioners in another ‘helping’ profession I was involved with in a previous career—librarianship.

It’s all about reinventing yourself and grasping the opportunities given to you with both hands. Sometimes it’s hard to see the opportunities, but they abound in any organisation. You just have to lift your eyes from the keyboard, remove the iPod ear buds, and think a little outside the box. That doesn’t mean changing careers—it means enhancing the one you have and becoming a valued member of the team/company/organisation/whatever. It means participating, not being a passive observer. It means stepping out of your comfort zone, and it means saying “I’ll try that” even if you’ve never done it before.

You may still get laid off, but at least you’ll have more employable skills than you had before you said “Yes, I’ll give that a go”. And you’ll have a better attitude to participatory work instead of being the person who always gets told what to do by a boss.

I wasn’t at the conference, but I’ve heard Andrea Ames speak on this before (I believe she was one of the panellists). Her message tends to be just like the one I’ve given above, and I’ve never seen it as being negative, though I’m sure others could perceive it that way. I guess it just depends on your attitude to start with…