The One About The New Job

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Now that I have a few spare minutes to collect my thoughts I figured I’d share a little about my professional life as of late:

The Previous Employer

If you’re not aware, I left my job of 11 months and 3 weeks (just barely a year) this past July 18th. I had been working at E&Y and made a quick decision to move on to my passion: the internet. The firm itself is awesome; they’ve definitely earned the many awards and recognitions (a top 25 employer for a decade according to [Fortune][2]). I learned a lot, worked with great people and clients, and I don’t really regret anything about my time spent at E&Y.

Lessons learned from my first full-time job out of college:

[][3]I’ve learned plenty from my other experiences and jobs but this one is a bit different. It was my first full-time job out of college (not an internship, not a part-time job); one where I had bosses, business cards, a phone number, responsibilities, performance reviews, etc. Some things may be obvious or things you’ve read about before–but this is the kind of stuff I finally learned from experience.

• You’ll never love everything about any job. But it’s definitely possible to dislike most of it.
• The people you work with are extremely important (50 hours is different than a few times a week).
• Hopefully you like those people if you don’t like the work, or else things get frustrating.
• Despite management’s best attempts, I’m still convinced I can work an entry-level corporate job from home.
• And I could probably do a typical entry-level corporate job in 20 hours a week.
• Many people still see the ‘ladder’ and the need to ‘pay dues’, they’re the rule, not the exception
• Some people are very good at getting work done, but that doesn’t mean they can manage / lead
• Big companies are great because there are processes and structure that help support you
• The wealth of knowledge is “out there” but so damned hard to collect and organize
• Traveling can be fun no matter where you go (anywhere from Lexington to Atlanta)

…and I could go on and on.

The Current Employer

I’m now working for Crowd Favorite which is an internet company specializing in WordPress (the software that powers this website), custom web development and design, consulting, and builds some web products. Surprise surprise, I’m working on the web!

I suppose this isn’t new: I’ve moved around a lot and some people might look at that as being scattered or unfocused. But, guess what: all that moving around and dabbling paid off! I found something I really enjoy (and I think I’m good at it, too). How do I know? For starters, I’ve been excited to go to work all 10 days these last two weeks (and enjoy checking / responding to business e-mails during some of my spare time)!

My job is a mixture of things but I think we could describe it as a mix of the following:

• Account management: working closely with customers to help address things including future development needs
• Business development: following up with individuals that are looking to use our services, deciding what we can do to help and make sure they’ve fully explored their projects
• Project management: managing project goals and tasks, scheduling them internally, managing budgets, updates to clients, etc.
• Internal projects: there are some things we’d like to do internally and I’ll be managing those, too

So, that sums up what I’ve been doing and what I’ll be working on. Everyone I work with is great, I’m happy, excited and learning plenty each and every day.

[1]: http://www.ey.com [2]: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/bestcompanies/2008/ [3]: http://flickr.com/photos/24436943@N00/1350774613 "handshake I"