Object-Level
Can you summarize what you do in less than twenty words?
“I coordinate projects to get people in bad circumstances housing.”
What does a normal day in your field look like? Can you give me a “day in the life” kind of run-down?
“Going to several meetings, some that are related to my work, some that are internal, and some that are external. There’s a lot of filing, and taking note of what I did. There’s a lot of follow-up on tidbits of information, and reporting. I do an annual report on housing inventory.”
How does your time split across different kinds of activities?
“It's hard to explain how my time splits because it does vary and some things move really slow. There’s a lot of reporting, and reading data releases about people’s drug use, and the mortality rates of homelessness.”
What does a bad day in your field look like, and how does your definition differ from the average person’s?
“I don't find many days are particularly bad in my field, but there's frustration over how slow things move on a systems level. I guess that’s why government entities get a bad rep. It looks like nothing’s ever occurring. Things are actually occurring, but the bottleneck is synchronizing everyone. Sometimes it’s better to take action and apologize than to wrangle permission.”
What is your physical environment like?
“I’m a complete remote worker, so I work in an office at my house.”
Do you coordinate people who do direct work, or people who manage yet more people?
“Both. I coordinate with politicians and other managers alike.”
Sometimes medical students intent on becoming surgeons find out they can’t take the sight of blood. They may shift towards a less sanguine specialty or abandon medicine altogether for that reason. Are there any “deal-breaker” stressors unique to your work?
“I would say that if you can't handle having to take people's feelings into account, this may not be the right job for you.”
Are there any hair-raising moments in housing coordination? What in your work lights up your adrenal glands?
“When people aren't getting along or they’re bad mouthing other organizations. It's a delicate situation to work in a nonprofit. Everything you say can affect funding.”
For students, or people about to become housing coordinators – what has the potential to go most wrong? How could someone otherwise competent squander their career?
“You could squander your career by getting upset over systemic inefficiencies. You can’t change those things. This perspective once deterred my work. Don’t take an individual’s outlook on the system to heart.”
Meta-Level
Do you find your work meaningful? Is meaningness contingent on specific things, or is it intrinsic to the work?
“Meaning is seen through narratives. The nonprofit narrative is helping others. In the whirlwind of my work, projects halt and funding falls apart. When this happens, you look at the world with frustration. Your model of the future becomes myopic. Your work doesn’t resemble helping others, and the narrative dries out. Meaning isn’t intrinsic to the work. It’s contingent on how well you can see the long game.”
If you were trying to dissuade someone from becoming a housing coordinator, what would you tell them?
“In my field, people act irrational. Irrational to the point of tantrums. I can too. There's a lot of people who hold grudges, even those with power. They operate based on their feelings, rather than their objectives.”
On the other hand, if you were trying to persuade someone to become a housing coordinator, what would you say?
“Um, it’s fun to influence people despite all of that.”
If I transported your mind back into the body of your 18-year-old self, what would you do differently given what you know now?
“I would go to college. I think college functions as a sandbox environment to become an adult, and it would have been good for me to learn those things at 18.”
Are there perspective changes you’ve had?
“It’s hard to remember who you were, but I recall I saw things as starkly black and white. I was less patient with people’s contradictions, and I couldn’t handle ambiguity. There’s a lot of contradictions with college. I think growing to accept this might require a concentrated experience, like college or the military. Discipline is equally important. I’ve been to rehab. It was the biggest change in my life. I learned the key lesson of behavioral therapy – that your brain can change from repetitive action – that I may have picked up from college or the military. My parents are war refugees, and they were used to a sort of instability throughout their life. I went to seven different elementary schools, and I don’t think I ever experienced stability as a child. There’s a psychologist named Rob Henderson who had a similar experience growing up, though his point of inflection was the military. I don’t know how much of this development is biological. I had trouble accepting my religion as a child because of its contradictions, though I think something organized like that would have benefited me. I couldn’t wrap my head around the gaping contradictions like ‘love everyone’ but ‘hate gay people’. I rejected it entirely. When I went to rehab, we did a lot of things that I despised because they felt really ineffective. Some of my rejection was throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There can be something useful inside something that looks imperfect. I learned that you can keep the things that work, and do away with what doesn’t.”
How does the need for routine and discipline relate to the ability to handle contradictions?
“Any routine is going to have subtle imperfections. You need to accept those. The cost-benefit analysis will favor the routine, but you don’t run the numbers in your head when it most matters.”
Domain
To what extent does talent matter for succeeding in your field? This could be a very vague question, but it’s known that journalism and athletics require a high amount of initial talent, and something like dog walking does not. Where does your field fall in between those two extremes?
“It starts with being able to tolerate humans and give the appearance of doing so too. I hear criticisms of people in my org who ‘don't smile back’, which does not actually mean anything, but people take insult to things like that. There are other factors. Some people get into a program for ‘cultural fit’. Otherwise, I’m not sure I’ve identified properly what makes someone bad at a job or what my own talents are, so this question is hard to answer.”
How could someone find out if they have potential as a housing coordinator?
“If they enjoy planning things.”
What makes a housing coordinator excellent besides conscientiousness? We could start with personality traits, but it would also be interesting to expand the scope of this question.
“High extraversion is a beneficial trait, as well as neuroticism and openness. Outside of personality traits – and I almost feel bad saying this – a propensity to enjoy manipulating others helps.”
What falsely fruitful activities do your colleagues engage in? Why do people fall into these traps?
“Attending an infinite number of meetings. Research shows you’re not retaining all the information, so the meetings become a front of busywork. Trying to show others how productive you are is counterproductive.”
Contrarianism
What is something you believe about housing coordination that other housing coordinators don’t?
“That it’s okay to be upfront. Being self-interested or cause-interested is fine as long as you’re telling people and finding the overlaps in motivation.”
Aaron Swartz once observed that the smartest people he knew always talked about fine details, and that charlatans always talked about big, fancy abstractions. Are there any tell-tale signs that a colleague of yours doesn’t know what they’re doing?
“Talking about a project rather than jumping into it. It’s best to start and let something get messy rather than waste hours talking about what you’re going to do or inconsequential details.”
Are there things your colleagues misunderstand about what you’re trying to do?
“My supervisor often struggles to understand why I would want to build a relationship that’s not immediately useful to my current project. It’s good to have a wide circle of influence, and it’s a relatively low cost thing to maintain.”
What is the most common useful fiction that housing coordinators have, and why do you think they have it?
“The narrative of helping people inoculates you from criticism. This helps a certain sector keep going, even when they’re not good at their job, or when their job doesn’t accomplish much. If you’re a terrible nurse, for instance, you still have high social status and people’s sympathy.”
How long do you suspect it will take for a computer system to replace human coordinators?
“I have to go back and reread that Diplomacy article. After CICERO, I can completely see something replacing me, depending on investments in the technology. When we already have advanced project management software, it’s not a big step up to replace a manager. The human component is hard to replace. A computer system would have difficulty making someone guilty, or skewing with the emotions which more underlie motivation than rational reasoning. Yet I still think most of this can be automated.”
Conclusion
How might someone figure out more about what being a housing coordinator involves? What books, interviews, or nontechnical media would you recommend they check out?
“I would recommend project management training to someone intent on becoming a housing coordinator, as well as reading about the psychology of influence.”
What parts of the job do you find make up for the difficulty you need to go through? Is there an element of romance or thrill or existential importance to it that you find? What about your job captures the heart?
“I like getting people to do things without knowing they are – influencing humans without being coercive. Running a project smoothly with no major conflicts makes up for the difficulty.”