This past year has been a grand experiment on the career front for me. After 22 years in the information technology biz, I found myself burned-out and needing to do something radically different to earn a living. Since the whole book thing didn’t exactly pan out as I had wanted, I needed to stay on someone else’s payroll. But I wasn’t prepared to step backwards. I wanted to leverage what I could from my prior experience while continuing to bolster my management skills, particularly on the revenue generation and marketing side of a business. So I did my research, I did my soul-searching and I deliberately pursued a job which would be well outside of my comfort zone. It was a hard adjustment for me, but I persevered. I learned a side of business that I hadn’t been exposed to before – defining new product opportunities, launching them into global markets, driving sales, and managing revenue. Way cool stuff! But after a year in the trenches of product management, it’s now time to take those new skills back to my IT roots and see if I can’t finally unlock the door to the boardroom.
But what has surprised me the most is how difficult this departure has been. Today was my last day and it has been one of the hardest last-days of my career…and that’s saying a lot with as many “last days” as I’ve had! I’m really going to miss these folks. I’ve always been an international person at heart, but this team has set a much higher bar for everything ahead of me. In our little corner of the thirteenth floor we had Americans, British, Dutch, Hungarians, Croatians, Spanish, Surinamese, Romanians, and Turks. In the whole European office of 200 people, we had over 40 nationalities! What an experience for a Pennsylvania hillbilly! From Roma’s excellent MS Outlook skills, to Noemi’s smelly lunches, to Sevgi’s smooth style with the customers, I now have enough material to create plenty of characters for at least two more books. I’m gonna miss all of you guys!
Good-bye dinner at the local Ethiopian restaurant.
Back at the office in the new pink shirt.
Double trouble!
The finance and baking teams.
Don't want to piss him off...he's IT!
Our resident fashion queen and Dolomite expert. Check out the photo on the white board in the background. Pretty funny stuff, huh Elena?
