This is a story about living a double life...

I don't know if you know this, but I've been working again these past 3+ months. I've been putting on my suit and going to the office and pretending like everything's just peachy. When I put on my professional clothes, I also put on a mask. "Hi! How are you? How was your weekend?" I cheerily ask my colleagues on Monday morning, instead of saying "this place makes me want to kill myself".

I like my colleagues and I like the project I'm working on. There's nothing especially objectionable about the company I'm working for. Every large multinational corporation has skeletons in its closet, and my current end client is no exception. But, I don't have a deep-seated concern that I'm propping up some too big to fail organisation, like I did at HSBC. The global project I'm working on is the number one IT project for a FTSE 250 company. It's a good project and it should be enjoyable.

When I was looking for work I was feeling pretty insecure. I had a run of short contracts that didn't end particularly well. Every job I took, I was inadequately enabled to make a difference. In every role, I was frustrated that I had very little decision making power. I was frustrated that my bosses weren't listening, and instead my Cassandra-esque prophecies came true while I was helplessly kicked to the sidelines.

So, I swapped from a purely hands-on technical role into a managerial one. I knew that I'd be able to ace the interview, and that it's virtually impossible to get sacked from a managerial job just so long as you keep your head down and do a reasonable job of organising your team.

I made a calculated gamble. I knew that I find purely managerial work totally soul-destroying, but also that I've made a reasonable job of running the projects and teams I've been given in the past. I knew that the interview process would be a lot less painful than the current crap that you have to do to get a developer job these days.

And so, I joined a failing project with a programme director on his last legs. Things were just as desperate as they were at HSBC, with total numpties in management whipping people to go faster and faster while the deadlines loomed ever larger, and it became clear that the software was going to be delivered late, and the performance and stability were going to be crap.

The project had - and still has - a huge staff turnover problem. People leave after just a few weeks because the atmosphere is so toxic. Almost every member of the original project team has left. Other IT contractors had warned me to actually stay away from this project. However, the job was offered with a fairly immediate start, and I could get my invoices paid weekly. It dug me out of a financial hole very quickly. It totally made sense to just shut up and put up with it for a little while. That was 3 months ago.

Now, a new management team have been installed. The old programme director got the boot, and we moved from totally crazy deadlines to a properly Agile project. In terms of the task ahead, things looked a lot more hopeful, but I still get shouted at by the grumpy customer every day, literally.

I have no idea if there are any happy projects in IT.

With my team, I throw a protective bubble around them, set them realistic deadlines, and shower them with praise for their hard work. My team have delivered all the work that they committed to doing for 12 weeks in a row now. My team is the most successful team on the project. I've had no problems with sickness and staff turnover in my team. Everybody who works for me is pretty much happy to come to work, and fulfilled in their role... apart from me.

I sit at my desk, and I'm bored.

It's actually quite easy to manage a high performing team. I've set them up to succeed, and my team members relish the opportunity to do a good job. People don't need micromanaging.

For sure, most of my job is pointing out where corners have been cut, or things that developers don't really like doing haven't been done. The code is never the problem. Instead, development is about giving everybody enough time to think about all the things that aren't code. Being a good developer isn't about being a good programmer. Good programmers are not necessarily good developers. Good programming means that something is logically correct. Good developing means that I have high quality features in an application that I can actually use in a meaningful way.

I should be able to have a lot of pride in my work, but instead I'm frustrated that I'm running just one of 8 scrum teams, and that any attempt to help the wider project would see me treading on toes and getting into trouble again, like I did at HSBC. In the interests of my own job security, and that precious cash that replenishes my damaged bank balance, I'm not rocking the boat. I sit there, quiet and miserable, while the whole project goes down the shitter.

My team is a diamond in the rough. It's not that my colleagues are necessarily doing things badly. There are historical reasons why everything is fucked. I'm sitting pretty with a happy motivated team who consistently hit their targets and deliver high quality software. I'm the golden boy, with the customer very pleased with the work we've done.

The difference between this contract and my last one, is that I'm listened to. I sat down with the new programme director and told him I was deeply unhappy that the project deadlines were so unrealistic, and that our end-client was so unreasonable in their expectations. He listened, and he even took the time on Friday to tell me that he's grasped the nettle and told the bad news to the customer. My previous boss would never have done that. I actually risked my job a couple of months ago by telling the customer that there was no way in hell they were going to get everything they wanted by Christmas. Although I got in trouble with my boss, I also impressed the client, so when shit went bad they got rid of him and kept me.

However, the pace of change is awful. It's taken forever to put a decent set of managers in place who have enough of a backbone to stand up to our stroppy customer. It's taking forever to change the toxic environment of the project.

The whole time at work, I'm bored. I can't bury myself in work. I can't roll up my sleeves and fight the biggest fire. Nobody would thank me for wading in, where others are struggling. Things are so siloed. I couldn't get involved without treading on toes. So, instead, I sit quietly, letting my team members get on with doing a good job. "I'm alright, Jack" is not my style. It's totally unlike me to just think about my own role and responsibilities, and try to ignore the bigger picture.

It's killing me, working like this.

I'm damned if I do, and I'm damned if I don't. If I had a regular developer job, I'd be frustrated that the team wasn't being run the way I like to do things. If I had a programme director job, I'd be frustrated that I couldn't help to manage individual teams. I want to be all things to everybody. I want to be in all places at all times.

It's frustrating that I can't just bury my head in code, and entertain myself learning new technology skills. It's frustrating that my hands-on skills are getting rusty, as I sit around doing manager stuff, which is mostly just being the punchbag for the grumpy customer at the moment.

Sit back and think of the money, right?

Well, yes, to a point. But the working day goes so slowly, that by the time I get to the weekend I'm filled with pent-up frustration that I haven't gotten to work on anything meaningful. I have almost zero chance of doing anything creative during the week, except for the odd blog post. Even writing short stories at my desk is hard, because there are enough interruptions to ruin my flow. I could try to learn some new technical skill, but it's so hard to do when you can't sit down and concentrate for a block of time.

My life seems remarkably easy on the face of it. Put on a freshly laundered shirt and dry cleaned suit. Put on my polished shoes. Grab my laptop bag and head for the tube. Rock up at the office. Have breakfast at my desk. Count down the hours until lunchtime. Go sit by the river and eat a sandwich. Count down the hours until I go home. Collect my cheque at the end of the week. However, it doesn't feel like a week. Every week feels like a year. A year of pain and boredom.

Yes, I'm probably sick. I seem to be suffering from persistent anhedonia. I get no satisfaction or enjoyment from anything. I have no energy or enthusiasm to do anything. I just write and I drink, and I wait for the next time I've gotta go to work. Day after day, week after week.

I'm grinding out the hours, in the hope that things will get a little easier every day, but they don't. Every day I'm questioning what the hell I'm doing, and then like stretched elastic, I snap. Every day when I get home, all the suppressed parts of my personality come rushing out in a complex tangle of mixed emotions, which I try to deal with by writing.

People at work have little idea that I'm dealing with depression and suicidal thoughts every day. People at work have no idea just how much I hate my day job, and how much it's destroying my soul and sense of wellbeing.

It makes no sense to an outside observer, because what they see is a capable member of the project who comes to work and manages to get the best out of the team. On the face of it, I'm succeeding: I'm well paid and I'm doing a good job. My bosses are happy. My team members tell me they're pleased to be working with me. I've managed to shield the developers and testers who work for me from the toxic atmosphere that's pervasive throughout the project. I've managed to wear my mask so well, that I doubt anybody at work suspects just how desperate I am, inside.

Maybe things will change. Maybe they won't.

I've been waiting for my depression to lift for so long now. I've been waiting for things to get better at work for months, and they haven't, although there is always hope on the horizon. I literally live in hope.

But you know what? It's exhausting, leading this double life. It's so exhausting, telling your team great job, and being sunny and upbeat about everything, rather than letting the whole toxic atmosphere and hopeless deadlines cause a morale problem for the developers and testers who I manage. "Take one for the team" is literally what I'm trying to do. That's literally my role: to be a human shield to protect my team from the stroppy customer.

It's also exhausting leading a double life where you're so depressed you can barely function, but you need to put on the corporate mask of being the reliable high-powered decision maker. I need to turn up and be consistent every day. The whole reason why I command a good daily rate is that I don't take time off sick or bring my problems to work. I'm not allowed to have an off day. That's the point of using contractors: they'll drag themselves into the office even when they're desperately sick.

If I was my doctor, I'd say stop, what are you doing? Give yourself a break. You can't continue like this. This job is making you unwell. However, how can I do that when I need to get a stack of savings in the bank so I can afford to have a nervous breakdown.

I've been bumping along at rock bottom for as long as I can remember. I never recover, because I'm always trapped in a corner. I'm forced back into work too early, and I'm forced to work stressful shitty full-time jobs, because I need to dig myself out of a hole. It's a Catch 22.

It's quite possible that if I can stick things out for a couple more months, my fortunes will change. Things won't look so bleak when I'm no longer working to simply keep a roof over my head and service debts. I'm going as fast as I can, and yet it's somehow still not fast enough. I'm trying as hard as I can, and yet it's somehow still not good enough.

Sure, my bosses are pleased. Sure, my team members would tell you that I'm doing a great job. But it doesn't feel sustainable. I'm living too much of a lie. It's too much of a compromise on my identity and sense of wellbeing. It's too demanding, having to wear a mask all the time.

I'm bloody good at it: hiding my problems. That's really what this whole blog is about. I've spent so many years covering up my problems and maintaining a blemish-free CV, and making sure that I always get a good employment reference, that it was inevitable that I would one day decide to burn it all down. You just can't live a lie forever.

It's not like I'm hiding a drug habit or alcoholism. It's not like I actually have anything active in my life that I need to keep secret, unless you count having to appear like some kind of perfect corporate specimen of a man, who never gets sick and never has any personal problems.

Would it really help, going to my bosses and coming clean about my low mood, boredom, depression, suicidal thoughts? Of course not. Nobody wants to have to treat somebody with kid gloves. Fit in or fuck off is the mantra of corporate life.

Fit in or fuck off. It's fucking me up, living this double life, just to be able to fit in.

Tags: #career