Tonight has been a dazzlingly frustrating night at work. I don’t even know where to begin.
It starts when I walk in the door. My supervisor informs me that all of the animated “lower third” graphics need to be rebuilt because the Avid has curiously lost a lot of media that was stored on it. (“Lower third” graphics are those things that show up at the bottom of the screen only, during news or in these newfangled animated teases for shows that don’t start for hours/days/weeks yet – semi-transparent image of Eddie Olmos hawking Galactica, I’m talkin’ to you. They’re in the lower 1/3 of the screen, hence the name.) A short while later he comes to me with another piece of bad news: we’ve lost one of the two Avid media drives. This might just explain the absence of, oh, I dunno, MEDIA.
Quick aside about how an Avid nonlinear editing system works: When you record audio or video into an Avid, the media files (one file for video, one file for each channel of audio – i.e. a video clip with stereo sound results in 3 media files) are stored on the external hard drive or drive array. On the computer’s internal hard drive, “pointer” files are created which tell the machine where on the external drives it can find the media associated with that clip. The pointer files record such things as the in and out edit points you last selected, what the clip is called, and so on. If a glitch happens – and it does happen – and a media drive and all of its media vanish, the first step to take is to Shut The Whole Damn Thing Down, wait a couple of minutes, then power everything back up in sequence (drives up first, outboard box next, deck third, computer last). Only then, if that drive doesn’t reappear, do you know if you’ve got a real problem. Here endeth the lecture.
Only the dayshift guys didn’t do that. They panicked and started deleting the pointer files, not realizing that the media files were perfectly intact. Now there’s a bunch of dead-weight media crowding the external drives, because with no pointer files, the stuff might as well not be there anymore. The Avid no longer knows how to find that media.
Our lower thirds are a rather elaborate animation that have to be constructed very carefully so everything matches up. There are two lines of text that animate in at different speeds and at different times, plus the station logo. Redoing a branding identity element like that – something waving the station’s banner – isn’t something to be done in a hurry, because it shows up night after night after night after night, in promo after promo. If something is even slightly “off” about it, people will pick up on it simply because of the repeat exposure. As a result, I’ve spent most of my night tonight rebuilding those animations – one for every possible time slot/eventuality (tonight at 5, tonight at 6, tonight at 10, tonight after the game, coming up next, tomorrow at…) – instead of actually getting any promos on the air. I’ve gathered that this problem showed up around mid-day, and promos stopped being made right then and there.
Maybe I’m being a bit of an asshole here, but it seems like, in a job that’s weighted down with so much technical knowledge like this one is, anyone acting as the manager should have the ability to do whatever his subordinates do. But that’s not the case here. Instead we’re reduced to “Wait until Earl shows up.” That’s flattering on a certain level, but terrifying on so many others. Because sooner or later I’m not going to be working here. What happens then, aside from me washing my hands of it? Stuff like this affects the station’s presentation, and therefore its credibility, which in turn affects the ability to sell ad time on the station, which in turn affects everyone having food on the table. Whether I am here or not, the vast majority of the people I work with, whom I like and respect, deserve something better than that kind of half-assed excuse for a standard operating procedure. Because someday Earl won’t show up on cue. I can only look out for my own interests at this point, and keep my eyes on the prize of getting out of here and setting up shop for myself; that’s something I can’t put on hold because I’m worried about my co-workers. But it says something really troubling about the hiring standards. Got a piece of paper that says you graduated? Got a suit? Great. Got any actual practical on-the-job knowledge to show for it? No? Well, that’s okay. At least you’ve got the suit.
One thing’s for sure – I expect to have a much easier time of things with my own Avid, since I’ll be the only person using it. 😛
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(This is probably my most foolhardy blog comment or a nice piece of, well, not advice but observation or a simple retelling of my experiences. Whenever someone complains about their work situation – and lately it’s usually one of my classmates – I tend to stay quiet and nod in sympathy. That’s because, when I do open my mouth in these situations, silence of some form is the usual response. I can only assume that what I did was interpreted as either: unwanted advice, me somehow being critical of them, me not knowing what the hell I’m talking about or me offering sage advice and they just need time to digest it all. I can’t tell because I interpret people poorly. Anyway, take what I say below for what it’s intended: simply my interpretation of similar situations in my old job).
…it seems like, in a job that’s weighted down with so much technical knowledge like this one is, anyone acting as the manager should have the ability to do whatever his subordinates do.
Really? You think so? That’s never been true in my experience. Technical people usually make lousy managers. For many reasons too. Instead of doing their job of managing people they get lost in the technical details of a project. Other times they micromanage their employees which, because it shows a lack of trust of the employees by the manager, completely destroys morale.
A former department manager told me that when you promote a technical person (especially a good technical person) into a management position you actually lose two good job positions: the technical position just vacated and the management position just filled in (by someone who does a poor job of it). My experience has proven it true several times. The technical person does a poor job of dealing with the people issues and he is also no longer performing the technical tasks he was so good at.
The best managers I’ve had would recognize those truths and let us technical people do our jobs without interference. We would rely on the manager for people issues (vacations, personality issues, etc.), project tracking and other non-technical matters.
Seems to me that your manager just needs to recognize that a valuable company resource (the Avid) isn’t being utilized properly. If he doesn’t already know about it that means he is either thick or people aren’t communicating the obvious to him.
But, then again, you’ve already indicated that your manager doesn’t even recognize the value of his own employees. So I guess he is thick. 🙂
The worst boss I ever had was a technical person. Not long after his promotion he started telling us how to do our job. He was never a system admin and he was tryig to tell the six of us – with a combined experience of over 50 years – how to do our job. We hated him and went over his head to complain to the department manager. After that he left us mostly alone until he was promoted the hell out of there. He still did asshole stuff, once in a while, but we learned to ignore him by then.
Every once in a while a manager with both good technical and people skills will show up. I’ve only seen it happen twice in my experience and so it’s like winning the trifecta: doesn’t happen often and it’s really nice when it does happen. When it happens to you, enjoy those good times because managers like that tend to be ambitous and don’t stick around long.
Of coures, your mileage may vary. Especially since you work in a different industry (TV station vs. a semiconductor plant).
Just thought I’d pass along my thoughts on the matter. 🙂
Well, consider this: it’s a very small department that has to undertake a lot of tasks that, while they fall under the heading of Creative Services, are also extremely technical; one has to know how to get the gear to produce the desired results, but also have an eye on aesthetics, house style and so on. To be in charge of that sort of thing, you’d better be able to (A) explain very precisely how you want something to look, or (B) be able to sit down and demonstrate how you want it done yourself (and then let you get on with it). Our last manager had the technical knowledge. Now, you do bring up a good point – my relationship with him got pretty strained after a while, so maybe there’s something to the “technical person does not equal a good leader of people” theory. But in a job where both qualities need to be present in some measure, you’d think the upper management would be…a bit more choosy.
Ah, so he’s more of a project manager than a people manager. And yet he is performing both tasks. 🙁 I’ve seen that before and suffered from these (or seen others suffer from the same) problems similar to yours. The only viable solution is to split the role and make the project manager focus on the technical issues and the dept. manager or someone else deal with the people issues. In my case the project manager was my peer and the people manager was the boss to both of us.
Not a problem that can be easily resolved since it’s usually a culture problem within the workplace. One company I worked for couldn’t distinguish between the roles and I saw lots of problems along those lines. The company I worked for later was much more experienced in IT and the built-in culture mitigated that problem. However, “manager’s descretion” was a big deal in this new company and it allowed a big gap between the company’s guidelines and whatever the manager felt like doing. As a result, I saw a number of stupid things happen that went contrary to the overall company policy (like the section head that we all hated).
So if your current situation is the result of a company-wide culture than it may not change even if you do get a new boss. All I can say at this point is grin and bear it until something better comes along. I’ve always thought about ways to solve or deal with the situation on a day by day basis and so I guess you could do something along those lines as well.