And so it goes….
Author: Tom
It has been several months since last I posted any sort of news. Since I was re-hired by my company, things have been actually going pretty well for me. My new manager is great and actually seems to care about her employees: she spends a great deal of time asking for feedback and pushes us to get training and advance our careers. I think I can count on my two hands and two feet the number of times over the last eight years my previous manager pushed me to do anything related to my career (granted, I should have done it myself, no excuses). My new team seems to be made up of some genuinely good people who want to do quality work, and I feel humbled to be on their team.
My previous anger about being laid-off from my company was not directed at any particular individual, but merely at the situation and the congruence of events that led up to it, and that anger has cooled somewhat in hindsight. In fact, I’m very glad it did happen, since it gave me the opportunity to put myself into a higher mental gear, and take a hard look at what my life-goals are.
Over the past several years, my professional craving to be apart of the industrial development machine had driven me to snub advancement for advancement’s sake. In fact, I have been offered managerial positions several times in the past only to turn them down (or simply not pursue them) for fear that I would lose my connection with the real technical community. Throughout my career, I have met older technical “sages” in the community and I thought, “I want to be like them!” My thinking at the time was that these “sages” have successfully managed to avoid being corrupted by the corporate ladder, and had somehow retained their “coolness.”
Today, I believe my professional priorities have changed. I am still considered by all that know me as being technically savvy and definitely more than capable of doing the technical aspects of my job, however I’m starting to really gain greater satisfaction about helping and leading younger technical professionals down their career paths. I’m not certain if this is merely an aspect of getting older, but if so, then I’m OK with it, and I find I want to continue to do this. Being a leader and a mentor is daunting since you want to give the “right” advice, and help these younger versions of yourself to achieve where you have failed in the past; perhaps I have begun a new path of my life that I am only now realizing that I’m already walking down, and it has begun to make me think that becoming a manager is not out of the question. I know one thing, I do not want to lose my technical ability, but I really think the challenge of balancing that with team leadership and mentoring is a worthy one… who knows where it may lead?
Nevertheless, I don’t ever want to be in the position of not being of value to those around me, nor to the company I work for… even though I disagree with the foolish and wasteful practices of large companies that lead them to lay-offs when those pink-slips could have been avoided if only there were smarter people at the helm… I can only be myself and affect those around me, and to whom I am responsible, in the most positive way I know how — anything else is out of my control. I must live life from moment to moment and enjoy every aspect of it while I can, whether it’s a moment from my profession or one from my personal life, these moments will never come again!
