Re: I “came out” to my employer

[billd]

Network administration and security is extremely high-stress, and you just can’t keep up even on good days due to constant updates- Cisco sends out an update for the OS in their routers, next week it’s their switches, Mickysoft has security holes everywhere, constant updates, Adobe can’t get it right if the fate of the earth depended on it, constant updates for their huge, no, VERY huge security holes (due to their arrogance), you just can’t keep up. Then someone visits a link they should not have, even after warnings, infects their computers, then they gripe and moan and groan…….. it never ends.

I used to design the computers used at a company where I worked. The computers were the interface to very high-end control systems for turbo-compressor equipment. I spoke with the folks who built the computer motherboards and worked with their engineers a lot. The person I worked with most told me one time that the part of their health insurance plan used the most was the mental health part – the engineers would last a few months then have to leave from the stress, sometimes hospitalized.

It’s not an easy job in IT on a good day, and here the boss keeps wanting us to do more, do more, more more – with less and less resources.

He believes multi-tasking is actually possible. He’s a fool. It’s been proven it’s not possible, only a tiny fraction of humans can handle more than one task. The human brain was wired to handle only 2 things at one time – in decision making, you actually decide between 2, then toss another in, decide between those two, and so on. You THINK you have decided between 10 items and chosen 1, but you’ve actually processed it internally in the brain as chunking it down into decisions between 2 of the 10 at a time.

-And ADDers, don’t get going on the myth orf multi-tasking, you are *NOT multi-tasking*, you are time-slicing – big difference regardless of what you THINK you are doing – the more you take on, the less detail you can remember of each task (shown in studies over many years), and the more mistakes creep in (again shown in studies) – quality of each drops off a huge cliff. Oh, you think you’ve done well and gotten things done – but those things would be better quality, and you’d remember more of them had you done them serially.

Even the ADD wired brain can’t actually multi-task. I’ve got a bulletin board on my wall at work loaded with studies showing the results – I keep it up there to be able to point to it if the boss ever gripes again. Multi-tasking is a myth perpetuated by uneducated management-types. Only corporate America believes in multitasking, medicine and science does not, and neither do I. –

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