Wednesday, February 18, 2015

How are you faring?

It's been a long time...

A really long time...

I'm still pressing on in the job that I first got when I left.  It's good and bad.  It's nice that it isn't a really big company so it's not like you have to steer a supertanker to effect change.  It's not so nice that it's a small company that is lacking a lot of procedure.

I'm all about efficiency lately.  It's crazy to come full circle from academia, where efficiency is rarely talked about (other than profs that are pushing out the Least Publishable Unit) to industry where operations are currently being tweaked to increase efficiency.  Each hour you put in during the day should be motivated by, "How did you make money for the company today?"  Sometimes, it's too short-sighted, as I talked about on the last post, but it really puts into check how you spend your time.  I really like that part.

I've moved up the ranks into a managerial position. People problems consume a large part of my time.  Why can't that person work with the guy in the corner?  What's the backstory?  How much do we play politics to keep people engaged and motivated and how much do we just say, "You know what?  We're paying you so get your fricken job done."  It's pretty weird to consider where I was two years ago...

And the degree itself?  Well, I guess I have come to terms with it a bit more.  It's nice to say that I have a Ph.D. In some respects, there is a bit of credibility there too.  Does it help me in my current position?  No, other than it built reasoning capacity, which is important, but probably could have been picked up along the way.  So I guess I would say the intangible things I developed during my Ph.D were good things.  Would I do it again?  Never.

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