New Job

So I see it's been about 10 months since I posted here. In the intervening time period, I've moved to a new job, which in most ways is an improvement over the previous situation. What I was starting to realize about this time last year is how miserable I was working for Steve at Microsoft. There was no sense of mission and there was never any sense of accomplishment or that we were even working for anything that mattered. Things got better in January when Abdul came along, but it was too little too late. By April-May I was ready to go.

So at the end of June my contract ended, at which point I basically went on the bench for 4 months until my company called me back and asked me to take over management of this contract with one of their main customers. The job, this time around, is more of an account management role than project management, which is fine by me. I don't think I actually like project management all that much, even though I know quite a bit about it at this point. 

The problem is that I'm not sure anything can be done with this customer. It may just be scorched earth. Also, I'm getting conflicting messages from my manager telling me not to worry about the status of invoices, but to simply focus on making sure the service is running correctly and that we don't pay penalties. This is confusing to me because my understanding of account management has me wrapping my arms around the whole thing and owning it. That's the kind of work I want to do, especially the money part. I want to see the money each month. 

Another issue is that there is this very real, very tangible sense that this position isn't permanent, that it could all come crashing down and I could be out of a job. However, I suppose as long as I keep things running and we don't pay any further penalties, that it could last a while. But it seems like there just isn't that much that I can do, which makes me feel like I'm not doing enough, which makes me feel like the job isn't going to last.