My Job

My parents don't know what I do for a living so I thought I would explain. This stems from a phone call my mother had with a second cousin who asked what I do. All she knew is that it had something to do with computers. No problem Mom.

I am a 'project lead' or 'project manager' for website development. Say you want to create a website. There are a lot of pieces to the puzzle: How it will look, how the information is laid out on the pages (this is more important than you may think), how it functions, how it is made (what computer language you use to develop functionality), how a database is structured and what information is stored, where and how the website is stored, etc. etc. and ergo epsum.

I manage all of that stuff. I am sure it sounds boring to a lot of people. For whatever reason, I thoroughly enjoy it. I've thought about it: What's a fella who leans towards History, Political Science, Sociology and all those other liberal arts subjects, doing making websites? I think it has to do with the fact that I am not very detail-oriented while a website must be. Aimee loves to kid me about my lack of noticing details. On the other hand, she never kids me about getting things done.

If one, tiny, minute detail is incorrect, a whole website can malfunction. I look at it this way: the website helps me do my job. If there is a problem, nothing progresses until that problem is fixed. I know enough about the Internet to distinguish the problem, so all I need to do is contact the person who must fix it. This person can be one of many different people. Instead of shooting an email (or calling or asking in person) to all these many different people, I send it to one person. I try to do as much homework on the issue so that the person who's responsible for fixing it has a lot of information and says to him or herself: no problem.

The above was the basic version. I could go into more detail but I don't like to bore. So, Mom, that's what I do.