Accelerant

I’ve come to the realization that although I like working for the company I work for, it’s a slow burn kind of company.  And that bothers me to an extent.  Working for this company is like sitting in front of a small warm bed of coals that continually produces heat, but the fire stays in control the entire period.  Nothing substantial happens, and no real change happens.  Just a lot of the same thing day in and day out. 

Which would be good if I wasn’t at the top of the knowledge chain. In order to move forward in the knowledge chain, you need some sort of accelerant.  Lighter fluid works pretty good.  And fire is always chasing the lighter fluid, right up to the bottle.  Trust me.  Don’t try that at home (it’s pretty fun, though).   Now, for a work accelerant, you need some sort of catalyst.  In a larger company, there is generally an influx of people to keep the ideas fresh and the knowledge high.  There is always someone to go chasing after that has just a little bit more knowledge than you, and picking their brains or working with them and just observing is a wonderful experience.

Those at the top of my location are the people who broke the 80/20 rule and are in their never ending path to reach that magical 100% knowledge level.  But those people are chasing one thing, and it all depends on what they are chasing.  Sure, words like virtualization and the cloud sound wonderful, but until you’ve got someone out there to train you on how to set up and maintain it, those are just words.  We use VMWARE for virtualization, but all of our sever work is outsourced to a company across town.  Talking to someone and picking their brain requires a field trip and an assignment.  So that’s no good. 

So I’m stuck with smaller networks and information I have to pick out of books that are several years old and discuss things that would really be helpful, but I have to build those situations.  So the learning is… slow to say the least.  Because I’m the only one understanding anything near to what I’m trying to do, so the conversation ends up with a bunch of polite nods.  Yeah… at some point, you just have to find some accelerant.