Re: Anothe question to ponder

[TechComm Dood <techcommdood -at- gmail -dot- com>]

> At review time, she highlighted that I needed to be
> more of a team player. Fortunately for me, the VP of Engineering saw right
> through this and asked her to rewrite it and the other writers in my group
> came to bat for me. This manager was let go soon after.

Woohoo! Excellent! I despise managers like that. Team player, indeed!

> My second job was for a very large company with a great Tech Pubs
> department. During my tenure, there was one particular person (who happened
> to be an older woman) that would constantly make agist remarks to me. I was
> "too young to know this or that archaic, non-existent desktop publishing
> software hence I really couldn't grasp X, Y, Z of whatever". I was lucky
> again to have other writers come to my aid and we found ways to politely and
> quietly stop these comments. I'm not sure, however, if she ever thought it
> was possible to "respect" me as a valuable writer.

Probably not. Unfortunately, the only way to gain respect from someone
that blind is to help them out... of course you have to do so in a way
that is accepted by that person as a genuine act of kindness and
teamwork on your part, which can be very hard to do sometimes.

> This being said.... The writers that came to bat for me at my first job were
> much older than I. They treated me as a peer and were open to learn
> something from *me* without being defensive. These writers were truly
> brilliant and I felt lucky to have them as resources. It was a win-win
> situation.

Yep. Age has nothing to do with any of it, really. It's all about each
person's disposition. I've seen plenty of younger people treat older
team members just as poorly (as in the two examples you shared), and
just as nicely (as in the teams who went to bat for you).

> I hope when I am in this "older" category (I don't even know what that is
> anymore) that I can be this kind of colleague.

You shouldn't have to hope for that. ;-)

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