September 21, 2006

Even More on Multitasking

I had a sincere intention to move away from the subject of multitasking but today something happened…

As I said in my previous posts, in my company most people are switching between tasks and between two projects. Everybody is aware that it’s not good but still continuing with this practice.
Let’s call these two projects A and B. I work on the project A. Project manager of the project B has a lot of tasks on different projects so she switches between them all the time.
Because she thinks it’s not fair that others should work on only one task, she was always pro project switching. Logic: if I’m suffering, let everybody else suffer too.

Another person who works only on project B was planned to take one task from me (project A). This person reacted to the decision and said it is too complicated for him to switch all the time. Project manager of project B backed him up by saying that she will do all she can to save her project team members from project switching because it’s bad for the project (no kidding?!).

From my (and some other colleagues) point of view, I’m pretty annoyed because:

a) Most other people are working on at least 2 tasks so it is unfair that someone refuses a task like this.
b) Person who refused the task was backed up by someone who is in general pro project switching.
c) I’m actually in a situation where I want someone to suffer just because everybody else (including me) is suffering. And I know it’s a stupid.

It’s a sick game. Avoid project switching.
If the humans are not complicated, I don’t know what is.

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