I’m a Data Management Analyst, Sr. The company I work for gets accounts receivable data from thousands of businesses and puts it into a database for generating account management tools (portfolio scoring, management reports, business credit reports, etc).
I’ve been with the company for nine years. I started out validating the data. That is, we receive the data, I would run the raw data through a validation program that put checked it for crossfoot errors, complete addresses, and so forth, and then I would queue the data for loading into the database. It used to be that if there were problems with the data we’d have to make a request to Programming for reformatting or to have missing information added or invalid information converted. This slowed things down, so I learned Easytrieve Plus (a programming language with a resemblance to COBOL). I’ve also learned how to fix JCL so the jobs would run. I’ve become quite good at it, and I’m the “go to guy” when it comes to Easytrieve programming and JCL problems. I’ve been called upon to write special Easytrieves to handle special requests. We work on an IBM mainframe using TSO/ISPF and CICS. I’m the lead for a two-person team, and I help them with data issues. Once upon a time we had people who would work with the data contributors to help them get us data. Now, I have talked to the contributors to explain what they need to do for us to be able to use their stuff. I spearheaded the project (which I came up with) to eliminate paper output, which would have to be driven from the printer in another city to our office. This saves a lot of money. On my own initiative, I have written programs to clean up addresses so that data will not be rejected from the database; and I’ve written another program to capture foreign accounts that we don’t use at the moment, but may in the future. By dropping the foreign records before validation, we save time because we don’t have to research them on our rejects report.
In short, I have proven myself to be a valuable member of our department and I do a good job.
But since we got new management, it seems as if we’re being turned into drones. Morale sucks, and management doesn’t care. One person in particular has mounted a campaign of self-promotion; often disparaging the work of others, inflating her own capabilities, saying things that are simply untrue, and generally brown-nosing. The manager knows, and has warned the VP and another manager about her; but the warnings seem to be falling on deaf ears. What really grates is that, according to this person, I and the other lead “don’t do anything”. I might remember that, the next time she needs my help. She’s also telling another manager that someone else is her back-up. That’s news to me, since I’m the one who does her work when she’s gone. (She also says that she taught the person she said is her back-up everything she knows. Not a ringing endorsement, since this other woman is lazy, has absentee issues, is a crappy programmer – with an easier tool than Easytrieve Plus, I might add – and did not learn the tool from Ms. Brown-nose.)
So it’s no longer fun to work there. Besides, I want to move to northern Washington.
If anyone knows of a job in the Bellingham, WA area that needs a motivated, intelligent, conscientious worker, please let me know. I’d be willing to take a substantial pay cut.
