Re: On Office Politics and Being the New Kid

[Lori Olcott <lori_olcott -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

Hi Y'all - 

Thanks to everyone for their insight and ideas.  It helps greatly; if
nothing else, for the reassurance that I'm not on crack.

To answer a few questions, yes, we do have the same manager; and no, she's
not my manager.  I've been told the team needs documentation, but it
hasn't been made clear what level of documentation they want.  It could be
nothing more than an ISO buzzword for them, but I sure hope not.

The "personal notes" impression may have come about because she trained me
on some of the duties I've been documenting.  She saw me jotting down the
process and may be assuming that I'm just giving her a typed version of
what I wrote down.  There's a lot more in there now than my "personal
notes", but they were needed in the beginning.

Her version of documentation is along the lines of:

Log into VTG86y and run BigSetupStart.pl

Mine is more like:

Log into VTG86y as topuser.  Go to /home/topuser/tools and run
BigSetupStart.pl.  You will be prompted for a date range (yyyymmdd) and
volume number(s).

I also include screen and text captures.  

Which gives me an idea.  The procedures she's written are very much like a
seasoned admin's check list (as someone previously suggested).  It works
well if you already know your way around the system and know what jobs hit
which data, but it's totally useless to a newcomer.  If I pitch my writing
as training material, that would give it a bit of distance from her baby
but still bring much needed documentation into the team.  My work could
supplement, not replace.  After all, I would hope that at least one of us
will be promoted in the next ten years.  Others will have to be trained
eventually. 

I'll let folks know as the saga resolves itself.

Ciao!
Lori

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