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The Matrix Has You
Joel Crum 2003
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"You've been matrixed."

"Huh?" I look up out of the darkness of my office (I keep the lights off because I find it easier to concentrate on my work) at my boss who is standing in the doorway with a clipboard and flip one of my headphones earpieces off.

He gives me a putupon look, "Didn't you read the memo? In order to leverage the skill sets of our personnel-resources more effectively we will be transition to a matrix management style."

"I thought that only applied to HR."

"By 'personnel' they meant everyone who works for the company."

"Oh. Sometimes when someone says personnel they mean HR."

"This time they didn't."

I don't know why he blames me for not being able to keep track of what the company means when it says something nonsensical. I'm a programmer. I deal with rules. When I tell a computer to "goto line 10" (which I would never do because goto's are naughty) it always means the same thing. As far as I can tell words like "leverage" and "skill set" always mean nothing.

"I'm here to give you the new org-chart. The papers it's clipped to explain your new reporting responsibilities. It's all very self explanatory."

He hands me a stack of paper. The most I can say is it does seem to be a matrix of some sort. I'm right in the center speared by about five different lines which snake to various departments, managers, and titles. Some of the titles seem to be independent of an owner. "This is not very self explanatory."

"Yes it is."

"No it's not. I don't think it's properly mapped to the 2-dimensional surface. Have you tired drawing it on a tesseract?" I paused and squinted down at the free floating titles, "One spinning at near lightspeed?"

My boss gives me a blank look. "It says very clearly that you are a contractor. As a contractor you report to Contract Services inside Personnel..."

"Is that everyone this time?"

"No just HR. ...you're contracted to the Decision Expert Systems project. DES is held by our Computer Design branch and is in turn a contract to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is under the DoD."

"So I work for HR but really on DES for CD who reports to DARPA under the DoD.

"Except for the work you've done on payroll, that's part of accounting which is under HR."

"I already work for HR."

My boss looks a little flustered so I toss him a line, "Who signs my timecards now?"

"I still do."

"Who do I have to listen to about my code?"

"The DES CD Technical Lead."

I glance at the sheet hoping for some relief. Nope. Dr. Baragner is still the technical lead. Frankly, I would have been happier with a free floating title. A free floating title would be more productive. "I think he's autistic."

"Dr. Baranger is a highly respected programmer."

"No one respects him. All he ever does is rant about how he knows more then everyone else. Well no, I take that back; sometimes he tells us to do stupid things then blames us for the mess it causes. All those years in school did something to his mind." That last part is a lie. I've always thought Mr. Baranger became Dr. Baranger because somewhere deep inside he knows just how useless he really is. He surely wanted to avoid the crushing confirmation of this fact as long as possible.

My bosses face hardens and he gives me a look that would almost scare me if anyone else around here could do my job. "You've received your new management chart and as such you are in the matrix structure. I'm marking you off on my list."

As the words hit me, my eyes swim and I think I see a flash of green characters in the air. My boss ticks my name off and pivots on his well polished black heel (a nice accompaniment to his somber black suit) marching off to accost one of my colleagues with the new org chart. I look down at the nonsensical diagram on my desk with a sinking feeling. 

The matrix has me.