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Re: Do you voluntarily develop long-term projects on the job?
Subject:Re: Do you voluntarily develop long-term projects on the job? From:"Dana Worley" <dana -at- campbellsci -dot- com> To:TECHWR-L -at- LISTS -dot- RAYCOMM -dot- COM Date:Thu, 28 Aug 2003 08:42:02 -0600
On 27 Aug 2003 at 18:43, John Posada wrote:
> I've been working on this for about a month and nobody here knows
> about this, though I'll be ready to introduce it in about 2 weeks.
>
> Does anyone do this type of thing? If so, do you tell anyone or do you
> surprise them with this?
I agree with Mr. Swallow. You should keep others informed of your
efforts.
You can always put a little time, thought, and effort into whether a
project would be worthwhile, and maybe come up with a working
prototype or proof of concept, but before you start investing a lot of
time into a project it should be discussed with Those Who Care.
I prefer to keep my supervisor/his supervisors informed of exactly
what I am working on. I work on a lot of things at one time, and I
think they are impressed when they take the time to ask. Our group
recently went to lunch to celebrate the release of a product. The
President and my boss's boss came along. It felt good to sit at the
table and reel off a list of the projects I'm currently working on, any
hurdles I have with those, upcoming projects, and future things that I
see coming down the road.
Maybe it feels good to you to secretly sit back and work on a project
and then pull it out of your hat like a magician. But someday, this
approach may backfire.
I consider this exchange of information another form of job security.
It ensures that what I envision as priorities are priorities of the
company as well.