Jack, that’s some experiment! My problem, as it were, is that this approach tends to stress me out as much as just hammering through whatever nonsense my boss is wasting me on.

That said, I’ve always made it a policy to keep up-to-date on new things. That means I spend some time every day reading and learning. And if it comes out of my “8 hours,” so be it. (As if I ever worked as an employee where engineers were truly expected to be in the office only 8 hours in a day.) The consulting gig I currently have is off-site. I bill only for the time I actually spend working on the client’s problems. I actually like it that way. It means I can spend as much or as little time reading as I need.

I went through the same… When you describe it I almost feel it again… Code quality, good design, etc. is very important to me.

Few months ago I quit my job and started contracting. It is not as good feeling as when you start your own business, but I must say it changed my apporoach completely.

Before, I cared, I burned myself, I was bashing the cubicle wall as you describe it…
But now when they don’t listen I just charge them… And wait for my holidays And then look for a better next team.

Recently I have done an experiment – I was working only one hour a day, and spent the rest of the day learning new stuff, reading blogs and preparing for next “challanging” assignment. Guess what, even if they realized I am not working they dont do anything about it as office culture doesn’t allow it. You can use the same strategy as they use, don’t listen, do what you want – check Dilbert.

…you think I am demoralized… you are right – I never wanted to behave like that…
I am also counting days to the end of my contract…

I left a software job at a BIG company to work for a startup. That startup fell flat about a eyar later and after several other career shifts, I am actually back at the same big company. BUT….. I am NOT sorry I left and I got a lot out of leaving, including the ability to leave again. I got a customer and business perspective from getting out of the cubicle that I will never forget and that frankly I find almost none of my cubemates have.

But this is supposed to be about you. Yes, you might fail. You certainly will have some failures. But that’s okay. You’ve thought a lot about this and you’ll have successes too! You don’t have to be perfect and you don’t have to start a wildly successful business in order for you to have made the right decision. I think so many of us get hung up with “what if I make a mistake. Or what if I fail.” So what? Everyone fails sometimes. If you never fail, you probably aren’t doing much. To do something great, you have to risk a few mistakes along the way.

Please, keep us posted!

I agree, Artem. And I’ve been in situations where no one wanted to listen. You definitely shouldn’t waste your energy in such situations. Still, sometimes it’s more difficult than I thought it would be to tell whether someone is actually listening. Sometimes management buys in… Or they want to buy in. So you have management’s support. You may even get approval and priority for specific projects. After you have someone’s support, that’s when you get to spend years trying to get them to change their habits. And in this situation, there’s a fine line between being an examplar and an enabler. And I guess sometimes you have to try for a few months or a year before you can tell for sure how much fruit your efforts are going to bring.

-TimK

It’s exhausting trying to innovate and improve when nobody is listening. What I’ve found being effective is, first, to make sure they understand they have *time* to listen, and second, heh, the patience to repeat, demonstrate on the own example, explain again and again and try things together.

Though all of these things require at least some level of the management support..

I’ve been doing onsite consulting as a subcontractor… been the best 2 months of my life.