After reading yet another article alluding to the death of Google+, I’m left pondering the subjective definition of success.
Success : the accomplishment of one’s goals.
Based on that definition, then Google totally failed. I’m sure their aim was to supplant Facebook as the “time-wasting app of choice”, which they’ve certainly not done.
Success : a person or thing that is successful
There are active communities on Google+, with a significantly smaller signal-to-noise ratio compared to the Facebook equivalent. I’m sure the members of those communities will consider Google+ a success.
Rating your own success is also subjective. After nearly three years in my currently role, some would describe my achievements as considerable. By my own estimates, it feels like I’ve achieved very little. It is nice to be praised for work you are proud of, but very hard to accept praise for work that falls beneath the standards or productivity level you expect from yourself.
I’m lucky enough to go round the world giving people advice about how they should be using Oracle products, but the downside of this is you sometimes look at what you are doing at work and ask yourself, “What the hell would people think if they saw this shit?”
I always try to work on the basis I want things to be as simple and clear as possible, so that if I left the company the person that followed me would sit back and think, “Wow. The boy done good!” Unfortunately, a liberal dose of reality and questionable management decisions means you are often left polishing a turd!
As you’ve probably guessed, I’m on a bit of a downer at the moment. I know I’m pretty good at what I do and I get a kick out of the level of productivity I’m capable of, when I’m not being held back. The counter to that is I hate feeling ordinary, which is exactly how I feel today as I plod along at a snails pace, polishing that turd for all it’s worth. It’s totally an ego thing and I need to get over myself, but there it is…
Cheers
Tim… (A decidedly ordinary person doing decidedly ordinary things in Birmingham)