I have been a part of some pretty impressive projects during my career. A lot of quality work went into these projects and it is always nice to see the fruits of these labors.

Recently, I was in Las Vegas and went hiking in the foothills just outside the city and there was an exhibit on the Desert Tortoise. In a prior position many years ago, I had worked on a habitat preservation plan, specifically providing protection to the tortoise and it was nice to see the fruits of my labors. I was a little disappointed I didn’t see any tortoises, as I would have thought they would have made a bigger effort to come out and thank me. Oh well.

Now, not so much.

My world now is a world of compromise. The products I’m asked to produce aren’t even expected to be good, they are expected to be done. And as the data I typically get is of low quality and late, the product I typically produce is complete, and that is it. I am not a fan. The crazy part is I am considered a very good employee that does good work. I miss having high standards.

Now I am not as big of a tech hater as some would believe, but one of the things I have noticed is that there are so many electronic documents floated around that they have lost their importance. Previously when completing a project, a lot of work went into to the actual layout and printing and presentation, and because of that I personally think people were a lot more concerned about the content. Now you can just pull something together and push send. And the person reviewing the project can skim and reply, “Great.” It’s kind of like the world has become a blog. Thankfully I get paid more for my “work” blogging than for Male Pattern Madness. And speaking of my job, I have a lot of blogging to do today, so I should probably take a shower and head off to work.