In plowing through the initial pile of work emails this morning, amongst the wheat (useful test results and signed documents – 20%) and chaff (random garbage, pointless cc:’s, etc – 80%) was a copy of a job announcement to fill the recently-vacated Deputy CxO in my organization. This isn’t particularly abnormal; when something like this comes out, they like to distribute it widely as an opportunity to improve the quality of the applicant pool.

What was weird about this time, is that I qualify.

Now, I’ve been in this general sector of public service for a while now, so I have some seniority and general currency and goodwill in the industry, and tick a lot of the relevant education and certification boxes. That said, it was sort of a revelation that I was on that level on my so-called “career path”, if that was a thing I spent a ton of time worrying about. I recognize in myself that I’m not the career-focused “go-getter” type, and I don’t really define myself by my day job; I do the day job in order to afford to do the cool stuff I get real enjoyment of outside of the office; I don’t crave the spotlight of appearing to work long hours and be the hero. Not that I’m not passably good at my job, I am, though I it’s not the first thing I think of when I try to conceptualize “me” – sometimes, a job is just a job.

It did get me thinking a bit about the position and role I’ve built for myself within this organization since I joined it a few years back. The slot I occupy on the org chart bears very little resemblance to the position I filled when I was hired for it. Sure, there are similarities (I’m still “in charge” of the same program, etc), but the requirements of said job are very different now, to the point that it’s really not the same job anymore, and most of that has to do with choices I’ve made to change the focus a bit, broaden the responsibility, and change some procedures to make things more efficient.

That said, when I consider things, I don’t actually work all that hard to keep the wheels of public service running. In the past, this particular position chewed people up and spit them out; average time in the chair was something like 15 months. Sure, reading my musings here and on social media, you hear my regular venting about organizational dysfunction, bureaucratic fiat, and Microsoft SharePoint, but within my little corner of this universe, things run…pretty smoothly?

We keep the wheels turning, improve efficiencies with the software, and are one of the few cogs in the “modernization” machine that’s actually sort of modernizing. I keep things running, and for the most part, I’m left alone, which, honestly, has been my overarching goal since my days as a student. And, if I’m totally honest, I have some room to slack off a bit.

As I’ve said many times, it take a good bit of work up-front to get to be lazy.

And, my ability to bring things in on schedule, spin impressive levels of bullshit, and pull my boss’s ass out of the fire have earned me slow and steady progress up the pay scale, while maintaining a comfortable distance from being anybody’s boss or spending all day in conference rooms (or calls, lately) briefing senior leadership on who knows what.

And, that’s kind of the way I like it. I get to be (or at least appear*) technically competent, and stay under the radar unless somebody needs an expert, and then, generally, I’m feeding lines to my boss, which isn’t a bad place to be, even with the frustrations inherent in an organization that’s as broken as this one is at the staff level.

So, those frustrations aside, I guess I’ve built a nice reasonable place for myself, and even if I have no desire to ever ascend to the C-suite, it’s an interesting feeling to know that I probably could if I felt it was worth the effort.**

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*-Impostor Syndrome – it’s still a thing.

**-It’s not.