Sunday, January 28, 2007

Time to Wind This Up

Hmm...I feel bad about having one of the those millions of blogs that never get updated so I think I'm going to stop going down this particular blogpath. I always have reasons not to blog--I'm taking Spanish one night a week, play soccer one night, but mostly I don't feel like doing the work of writing a post (30-45 minutes per post) on the other nights.

I'll finish with a few observations.

- One year and a quarter after beginning my job, I think I'm doing pretty well. I'm competent, got a good year end review and solid peer reviews. I've become more discliplined and detail-oriented and have learned to adjust my project management style to work with different people, getting really prescriptive in some situations but staying laid back in others. I wish I had developed these skills at Widgets but there was no mentor for me and little chance for training.

I'm on a variety of projects--some long-term, tedious projects but also the key company-wide project for the next year--so the projects balance out. I've actually had two products release into Production and should have more in the coming months. The company is great and will be vastly expanding my campus soon, creating more opportunities that I could move into. I was given a good raise last year and will get the company bonus in a month or so. The company stock that I can buy at a discount is slowly rising and pays dividends. The negatives of my job are pretty minimal--I think if I wrote them down it would be minor whining, so I won't.

- Widgets has changed quite a bit but, unfortunately, has also stayed the same in many ways. I think the situation has improved for some people because of reorganization but not for others and the big problem area of planning and prioritizing work still need a lot of development.

- Some of my friends are leaving Widgets but I know some will be there until they close the doors. I'm hoping for a buyout of my shares next year. I enjoy doing lunch with Widget friends, attending going away parties as people leave, and staying up on the news.

- The ex-Widgeteers that I communicate with seem to have found good opportunities and miss the people, not the place. They have found companies that appreciate it when you work hard don't consider working long hours a requirement.

- I'm so glad I did this blog! Putting time into writing again has inspired me to get back to a writing project I put off a long time ago--writing up the journal entries that describe my experiences during the Democracy Movement in China in 1989. I may do that as a private blog so I can get comments and questions from people who were there (like my kids) and from people who weren't who can prod me to explain things that most people wouldn't understand. If you want to be invited in, let me know.

Thanks to everyone that's read this blog and especially to the people that wrote comments!

Bye

P.S. I downloaded these HTML files and copied the text of the blog into a Word file for archiving. The Word files is 133 pages long!