I wish the world would slow down - my life has been deteriorating lately. A big part of it is my inner disappointment in my perceived acceptance of mediocrity - every month I watch the community of Tabulas slip away, a bigger part of me dies inside. Being so committed to one baby for over five years ... it's hard to watch it die a slow and horrid death. Why did I let it die? Why didn't I implement the v2 release faster? The inner perfectionist - the one that tried to make the real product look like the inner vision is mainly at fault, here. Too long did I dabble, fixing things of no real consequence ... sigh. So many lessons learned - if Tabulas hadn't been so successful at one point, this wouldn't hurt as much. To watch success flutter away, while you can do nothing ... the worst pain I've ever felt. This depresses me greatly.

Tabulas, to me, represented my independence and my hope for my future ... and it seems too far behind to catch up now. What did i sacrifice?

. . .

Work has been absolutely brutal lately, which has also been contributing to the re-emergence of the sad Roy. It's been getting to a real breaking point for me - I always felt I was good with handling pressure and juggling priorities, but things are just overwhelming now.

After returning last week from OSCON, I came back to an absolutely broken release process (the Deki 8.05.2 set of releases has been embarassingly bad) which I was mostly responsible for, and I'm still trying to put together a major miracle release at the end of July (Kilen Woods). Even with a stripped down feature set, I'm incredibly concerned it's just not going to happen. And I hate fucking up at my job. I've never missed let the quality of releases and I've never missed deadlines this bad.

I'm trying to hire people, but interviewing and vetting candidates is a long process. Managing people is a tough task in itself, especially when you're running multiple projects at the same time. I feel the worst for my PHP dev, who is a lone soldier - I was supposed to give him support, but I haven't had the time to cut code recently. And now, seeing what the future holds for Deki ... I just want to break down, throw my hands up, and say "fuck this." It doesn't help that the gains we make don't seem to be capitalized - every few months, I feel like there's some other component we need to build that takes us away from our core competency that means I'm stressed for another few months. God, will it just SLOW DOWN?

In the past, the business model aligned behind the product - build the best product, grow adoption rates, and we'll sell subscription plans. Pretty simple. Things were a breeze. I could handle dealing with pushing our a solid release. But now, we are adapting the product to do target horizontals and verticals, and we need to integrate with so many different applications ... the engineering team is a slave to too many masters, and our shortcomings are becoming to rear their gargoylic heads. It's hard enough to ship an OSS product (supported on many different platforms) ... to start shipping things around it is incredibly tough, especially with the small team we have. Furthermore, our pipeline of engineers are bare - bringing new hires up to speed will be tough.

I'm reaching a personal breaking point with what I can handle - I know my failures are starting to outweigh my successes (I can't even remember the last time I felt a "win" with Deki - I was hoping OSCON would grant some reprieve, but nothing) and I don't know how to deal with it mentally and emotionally. If I had friends, I would talk to them, but here I am, pathetically writing about it on a journal entry for the world.

It's even worse, because I feel I've been losing the support of a lot of people internally - I won't go into details here, but I feel I'm largely ignored by people above and disdained by people below. Nobody ever told me this job was so lonely. I keep saying to myself, "Christ, at the worst possible moment, this person decides to screw with me." 

Moving away from the product forces you to deal more with abstractions rather than absolute truths - when in debate, the people closer to the product can ream your absolute truths, and the people above can simply ignore your abstract arguments with their own.

I've tried to a nice guy, but it seems to not be very effective. People take advantage of niceness ... maybe this is why you read about so many horrible managers - maybe they just realized you end up taking shit from both sides, so why even care.

The stress of the job and the uncertainty of the future is positively taking a toll on me. But even worse, the optimism fades. And that is what distresses me the most.

Currently feeling: cynical
Posted by roy on July 28, 2008 at 11:24 PM in Personal, MindTouch | 7 Comments

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Comment posted on August 5th, 2008 at 11:21 PM
Don't be sad Roy, I love Tabulas and I'm glad it exists, even if I don't always have things to write. =]
Comment posted on July 29th, 2008 at 02:47 PM
Tough luck, Roy, but there are always better days ahead! Unless you die tomorrow. But you won't. I guess. Although you can never be sure. Well, anyway, just look on the bright side of life!
Comment posted on July 29th, 2008 at 09:36 AM
I have tried nearly every blogging platform out there, and hands-down, even with your supposed lack of attentiveness, i think Tabulas is the best, most-user friendly. Maybe it can't do fancy stuff, I wouldn't know. But I think with a bit of attention, I think it could not only return to its original glory, but even surpass it. Or at least, what you have learned and developed with Tabulas could be transplanted to a fresh start. If so, I would follow you(r awesome puter skillz) there.

The question is, do you have that attention to give? If not, there is no shame in moving on. Do what you are good at, what makes you happy, and what helps make the world a little better of a place. And if Tabulas doesn't fit into that, it's ok. Just give us enough warning to come up with a Plan B! ;-)
Comment posted on July 29th, 2008 at 09:15 AM
I don't dig manager's blues... but it looks like you need lots of **hugs** :)

crb (guest)

Comment posted on July 29th, 2008 at 08:36 AM
If it helps, every release of Deki makes me a little happier inside. The speed at which you get through things amazes me, and obviously (due in large part to you and your responsiveness) MindTouch seems like a great place to work.

I'm going through the same thing at the moment with too many things to do at work and too many things to sort out at home, but unfortunately that seems to just be the way it is. You get less and less time to do the things you want to do, but life goes on, and you re-evaluate your priorities.

My personal mantra, if I believed in such things, would be "be the happiest you can be at any given time". I believe that long term happiness is the sum of all your short term happiness!

Anyway, you sound like a great guy who's done well for himself, and I'm hoping our paths cross in person soon.

Roebot (guest)

Comment posted on July 29th, 2008 at 12:37 AM
Managing is lonely. I know what you mean.

At any rate, the development of verts and horiz solns shouldn't worry you as much as it is. We can talk about it more tmw, but there is a solution for dramatically easing the development of integration points. Moreover, this isn't a fundamental shift in anything. It's simply a way to highlight the potency of the platform.

You certainly are not ignored. Absolutely not. No way. Get a grip. Shut up, dumbass. ;-)

Finally, looking at your current prospects you should realize that your future is far brighter today than it has ever been. We've already built a lot of value in this effort of ours and we're on a trajectory to build a hell of a lot more.

I hate to tell you this, but surely you realize it, this primary venture of ours has far more intrinsic (monetary) value than your side project ever has. And it has a lot more potential value too. Maybe this is what is bumming you out. You should be stoked to be the position not saddened by it.

Don't think I don't understand what Tabulas has meant to you though. I do understand this. Also, knowing you as I do, I doubt the accuracy of your claims about Tabulas. I'm sure it's just not so dire. I am sure, however, that if you paint this picture it will come to this reality. No one likes Debbie Downer.

monkeynotrobot (guest)

Comment posted on July 29th, 2008 at 07:57 PM
I agree with what Roebot is saying... for the most part. especially his remarks on your bright future, so there's no need to reiterate.

Let me just say I've always looked up to you for your work ethic, integrity, and overall brilliance... keep fighting the good fight at work, I don't think you should be taking any of the internal problems personally, it's just part of the job.. as long as you keep it professional and know that you can't please everyone then you'll be fine...

No one likes a Debbie Downer?

Well no one puts baby in a corner!