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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bill Swallow
>
[...]
>
> We only know one side of the story. Frankly, 8 years of putting up
> with an ever-increasing workload while getting zero help causes me to
> raise an eyebrow. Either OP never raised the issue until it became
> unbearable, tried but lacked the confidence to do it effectively (see
> cadet Laverne Hooks from Police Academy), or management truly doesn't
> care. But 8 years putting up with it... Something's amiss there. Thus
> the tone I took in my initial reply.
Hindsight, or the 20,000-foot viewpoint of the uninvolved
is 20/20.
Here's the thing about that...
If the workload grows over a span of years, you are (most likely)
getting better at it while that's happening. Not only are you
becoming more skilled just by sheer volume of exercise of your
skills (read Gladwell about that 10,000 hours to mastery thing),
but you are also gaining deep product-niche knowledge, and
most likely creating an ever-expanding trove of re-usable,
re-purposable [izzat at word?] material. So, while the job
has been growing, you've been handling it and finding ways
to juggle more plates. That could be why they added "Senior"
to your title... in lieu of pay-raise... some years back.
As well, you are on the inside of the problem - alone - and
therefore do not have the arm's-length perspective to realize
that it's reaching/reached the tipping point, where your own
prowess begins to fail in the face of further increased demand.
You are dancing as fast as you can.
Your biggest clue, perhaps, is when OTHER techwriters
(at other companies) talk about doing new/interesting/professional-improvement
activities in their periodic "down-time", and you realize that
it's been about four years since you can recall a single moment
when you didn't have multiple, overlapping, slip-sliding
projects on your plate. You have been at the company
long enough to have accumulated 5 weeks of vacation,
but you take most of it as single Fridays... and you
bring the laptop home just about every night and
definitely every weekend.
Add to that the complication that your industry, or
the economy of the entire country/continent/world
might have been a tad soft and you were:
a) hearing from all the other TWs who were either
not finding work at all or finding themselves undercut
by ... well... everybody
b) on your third manager in six years
c) seeing staff trimming and "re-org" on every side,
leaving you strangely untouched, year after year...
untouched, but a wee tad nervous about making noise,
making demands.
Less than a year ago, and a while after I began
making creaking noises, they hired a contract
writer. He's just across the cube-hall from me.
We're pleasant enough with each other, but I
can never quite quiet the nagging little voice:
Is he my help ... or my replacement? :-)
-k
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