A Vocational Crisis

I had a major career crisis today. Actually, I suppose it would be better described as a vocational crisis. The difference being a career crisis is one of those quite frequent "what do I want to be when I grow up?" moments. A vocational crisis is much more rare; its one of those "am I really an engineer?" moments. And given that I've wandered a bit off the pure nerd path, gotten an MBA, and have just done some management, this is a bit of a soft spot for me, even though I am really an engineer to the core of my being.

Anyway, the crisis is all Jodi's fault. She sent out an email with the Subject line: "So Many People Just Won't Get This . . ." If that isn't a challenge, what is? So I opened the email with the full expectation of "getting it" and having a good chuckle. Jodi usually sends out funny stuff. Upon opening, the email contained this Dilbert cartoon and, well, I Didn't Get It. Or, what I think I got just didn't make any sense. Uh oh.

This precipitated the crisis. Not only was I looking at the archetypical diary (hmm, is that an oxymoron? can a diary be architypical?) of the life of an engineer in a large company and not understanding what the venerable Mr. Adams was writing about today, my friend Jodi Got It. My friend Jodi, the sole non-technical person in our house of 9 folks during senior year of college. My friend Jodi, who... well, let's just say that she didn't really need to be subjected to the frozen tundra of Houghton, Michigan and its gaggles of geeks and nerds, other than she was married to one of them.

In the midst of my crisis, I stopped in for some validation from a longtime friend on my hallway at work who was definitely an engineer. She has not one, but two engineering degrees. And deals with Linux all day in her current job. Definitely an engineer. So explained my dilemma and showed her the cartoon. She told me what she thought it meant and well, I'd understood it. The problem is that it just wasn't funny. But there's that nagging feeling there, since Jodi found it funny. Funny enough to send around to all her friends.

It was engineering management. Really.