Sorry for the lack of posting, inner turmoil combined with lethargy and laziness got in the way.
Well, I have accepted a new job.
I guess "new" isn't the correct term, I am returning to the company that I worked for prior to my present job. They are expanding by leaps and bounds and they finally got desperate enough to rehire me. They made me an excellent offer (including lots of vacation time) and I felt compelled to take it.
I left them because, at the time, I was going to law school at night and the job's travel requirements were conflicting with the law school's attendance requirements. Law school won, and I was lucky to find my present employer, who needed my help and understood that I might go work at a law firm after I graduated from school. Well, by the end of law school, I had no desire to start a legal career and I liked what I was doing so I stayed on.
Over the past few years my former co-workers would half kiddingly ask when I was coming back. Up until now, I laughed them off. What changed this time was state of the power generation market (former job) vs. commercial real estate market (present job). Utilities are currently building power plants like crazy. Coal, natural gas, nuclear, wind, etc. they are being designed and constructed on a large scale. Things are so good that they are expanding their offices by 40% over then year or two. The prospects for commercial real estate aren't so good. My present company is currently busy, but at some point in the next six months the sub prime mess has to affect commercial real estate, and I want to stay a little ahead of the curve.
I like what I do now and I should like what I am going to do aw well. I am lucky to be going from one good thing to another. The two things I will miss are my co-workers (pretty much all of them) and all of the IT stuff I got to do. I really enjoy being the computer guy, specifying new PCs, picking out software, fixing computer problems, choosing service providers etc. At a big company, they have moderately relatively competent people doing those tasks.
It is kind of sad to say this, but I think my dream job is to be a CIO/CTO at an engineering company. I like the engineering stuff, but computer stuff, including trying to fix annoying problems, make me much happier.
One bonus piece of advice: Get a second monitor. I really like Dell's 2007FP (20" non-widescreen). You will be amazed how much more productive you are with the extra screen real estate. On the IT side it is the thing I am most proud of pushing at my company. When I got there no one had two monitors, now only one engineer doesn't have either two LCDs or an extra screen for their laptop. Unless you are getting a 24" or larger monitor, get a square (or non-widescreen) monitor, the extra vertical resolution of the square monitor is much more useful than the extra width of the widescreen monitor.
I agree about the monitors! I missed my 20" non-widescreen when I went to my 17" widescreen laptop.
Widescreen is nice but the endless scrolling drives me nuts. Thank gawd for my frictionless scroll mouse.
Best of luck on the new job. Engineeering>>>Real Estate.
Posted by: gadzooks64 | June 02, 2008 at 10:40 PM