TbobbyZ

I feel too reactive with my work. Either waiting for people on what they want changed or handling unexpected bugs. When I’m not waiting on anyone or I understand the issue, I can work a lot and get into a flow state pretty easily. This is when I’m the happiest at work.

I’ve been at my current gig for 9 months and they have many applications, some 20 years old. Their corporate IT hierarchy seems too big for the company. The CIO has 6 people under them, and each one of those people have 10-30 people under them. My boss is one of the 6.

I want to innovate and help the company be profitable. I want to be helpful. I don’t know what steps to take to become more proactive. My feeling is I need to do a lot of reading of whatever documentation there is and create new documentation if what currently exists is lacking.

I’ve been working as a programmer for 10 years and think I’m done with it.

I feel like the golden age of being a programmer is gone. With constant learning, AI, and competing in a global market because of remote work, it’s super volatile.

Yet my neighbor is an electrician and he has endless clients. He can work 80-90 hours a week if he wants to. He has stable work. He just became a manager and is now making more than me.

I've been getting into the habit to write 1-10 sentences at the end of my day that attempt to anticipate appropriate responses if someone asks me about work over audio/video the next day. I'll sometimes add links. Ideally I'll have a to do list to start my day.

This habit really helps with having a productive morning. I don't really need to think for the first 3-4 hours of work. I can just focus on building and fixing.

I wish I could post the 1-10 sentences on a company blog so I can eliminate meetings all together. Only schedule a meeting with me if something is very unclear or it is demo day.

Have you ever tried this style of communication with co-workers? If so, how did it go?

Any resource recommendations would be much appreciated!