The alternate ending to the story of the Little Engine that Could is far more realistic, you know. That’s the ending where the little engine chugs his way halfway up the hill, only to find that the combined weight of all of the cars that are attached to its rear is way too heavy. The engine finds itself dragged back down to the base of the hill, out of control, then crashes and explodes.

Because, you see, sometimes just thinking that you can isn’t enough.

I’m finding myself in a moral dilemma here. On the one hand, I really like my boss and my coworkers, and I’m genuinely grateful to have gotten the opportunity to work for this company. It was good to get a career change and make the switch from clerical to information technology.

On the other hand, I have also come to realize that coming to this particular company was not a good move for me, career wise. Consider that my replacement at my last job at the University has received training in Oracle programming, Java, XML, and C++. This person’s responsibilities have increased, with subsequent raises in salary. Granted, I’m still earning more per annum than this person is, but this other person is in a much better position, career-wise, than I am.

When I started that job, I’d been told that Oracle training and possibly XML and Java training were part of the job description. On the other hand, when I started the job I’m in now, I was told that Oracle, Unix, and Perl training would probably be in the works, as well as training in XML. It sounded good to me; after all, I’ve wanted to learn Oracle and Unix and XML for quite some time.

Unfortunately, none of that training has appeared. When I last discussed the possibility of Oracle training with my boss, I was told that if I wanted to pay for it, the company might be able to reimburse me, incrementally, over a period of several months.

Budget priorities had changed. The development manager in Portland has decided to consolidate all back end development responsibilities to the Portland development staff, and leave us here in Sacramento to do front end HTML development only. This means that no back end programming training can be justified for me in the company’s budget.

It would be unreasonable to blame my boss, or myself, or anyone in particular, so I’m left with the knowledge that it’s just the result of power struggles and bush-pissing that leave the Sacramento development team with nothing to do but HTML monkey work. I’ve finally enrolled in a Java course at UC Davis, but it’s costing quite a bit of money and there is no hope that the company will reimburse me for it.

So there’s my dilemma. On the one hand, I want to do the best work I can for the company, based on the fact that (a) I respect the people I work with and I respect my boss; and (b) simple integrity dictates that I do my best. On the other hand, I have to do what’s best for my own career, and that probably means looking elsewhere for the opportunities that I want and that I unfortunately lost when I left employment at the University. I understand that my boss has been trying to increase the opportunities I have for doing more than HTML work, but that his hands are pretty tied. On the other hand, I can’t let his tied hands stand in the way of my own career development.

The people who run this company — which I think I’ll start referring to as The Little Engine in this journal — are very determined. Our monkeys are still eating bananas and not the apples that we make for them, so we’re making snazzier apples. I have spoken to our CFO and I’ve been told that even if we don’t sell a single apple, we still have enough money to keep running at our current burn rate for another full year. But it hasn’t stopped the sense of desperation and panic which is starting to settle in on upper management; and the recent layoffs — and layoffs are part of every company’s life cycle, especially during the early years — haven’t helped morale at all.

It’s difficult to avoid feeling like I’m riding in one of the cargo cars of this train which is desperately struggling uphill, repeating to itself, "I think I can sell these apples to these monkeys, I think I can sell these apples to these monkeys, I think I can, I think I can." But, as I said, sometimes just thinking you can isn’t enough; and I’m worried about what will happen to those of us in the rear of the train when it comes crashing backwards down that hill.