Managing expectations

Influencing what people want from me is an important part of this job. I mean that partially in my usual I'm-a-lazy-bastard-I-suck self-deprecating way, but it really is legitimately more important to this job than to many. Compare this to my previous job, at which there was only one person between me and the owner of the company (a much smaller organization than this with a very different business model): I don't even know how many layers there are between me and the top, but it's six at the very least. And while at my previous job I just reported to my one supervisor about everything, here I'm responsible to at least four people in various ways. So I just have to put a fair amount of thought into not getting overcommitted.

For example, on Wednesday last week I was told by a team member on the doomed project that by the end of the day Thursday, he would give me something that I would have to add into the document on Friday. The addition was small when I saw an early draft of it but at the time we were getting pretty close to a relevant deadline and it wasn't the only thing I would have to do, so me, H. and my supervisor were worried about whether I'd have time to do it. The team member was pretty cavalier, though; he assured us that it would be a "less-than-20 minute job" for me.

Now, obviously, no one would want to be on the receiving end of that. Realistically, I rarely truly work nonstop, but even when I do, what if more had been added to the new stuff before I get it? What if I'm busy when I get it and can't get on it right that minute? What if I have computer problems? What if one of my other responsibilities takes up more time than expected? I figured I could definitely do it in a day and probably a couple hours, but not just 20 minutes. And to make matters worse, around 2 or 3 p.m. Thursday (so, about two hours before he said he'd have it for me), he said he was leaving the office for the day. His basement was flooded due to the recent crappy weather. So I wouldn't get the thing before Friday morning at the earliest. H. and my supervisor J. thought of all the issues I just mentioned and I made it clear to the guy as well, so H. got a one-day extension on the relevant deadline. I'm sure that was a Herculean labor all by itself, but she did. So I had a sort-of reasonable time to work.

Well, it turned out that the team member sent it to me before 9 a.m. Friday morning. There were no further problems worth mentioning. I decided to work nonstop and time myself just to see how accurate our respective time estimates were. Result: it took me 36 minutes. Add another 5 or even 10 minutes for checking my work, because it really was a complicated job relative to the length of the addition, involving putting multiple things in different places in multiple documents, and I'd say that the job took 45 minutes.

So on the one hand that's less than half my estimate ("probably a couple hours"). On the other hand, it's more than twice his. And any of a hundred potential problems could have come up. Had I been held to his estimate or if any of the potential problems had actually materialized, I would have been screwed. Fortunately, my supervisor and H. has a better idea of what's reasonable than some people I work with. And to be clear, this guy is not even on the list of problems with the doomed project. This guy is normal or even more reasonable than normal. But if a normal-or-even-more-reasonable-than-normal guy can cause this kind of thing, imagine the problems a co-worker with less reasonable expectations could cause.