My Career Trajectory

This blog post is inspired from the first episode of the US smash sci-fi hit, Heroes Series 4 - Orientation. Claire Bennett's (AKA the Cheerleader) room mate at college has plotted her own career trajectory and placed this on a board above her bed. I paid little attention to it at the time, things may not have been great at work but I was coping and getting on with it.

Several months later, I realised the significance of that TV moment and went back to watch that segment of the show again.

The topic came up again, in a one to one with my manager, just over eight years later. As you have guessed I tend to have several blog posts drafted and abandoned from years ago and I always like to go back and think if perhaps this is the right time to revisit past topics. All our career choices are leaps of faith. Beit, decisions made with a great amount of thought, research and gut feeling. Sometimes things work out, other times they do not but you have to be honest with yourself and learn from the lessons of the past. In my case, you can go from regretting a decision and looking for opportunities externally. Only to find yourself a mere ten months later moving to a different team a different management and becoming the happiest I have ever been in a workplace. Is it not strange how things work out?

All our opportunities are half chance, but then so are everybody else's. Thanks to Spotify, I have been listening to Hush again by rapper and Lip Sync Battle host LL Cool J. There are some amazing lyrics in this song.

Certain doors that we go in The people we meet The hands that we shake

To complete the circle, the video features a young Dania Ramirez and she went on to star a mere year later in the Heroes franchise. (For younger readers, the "Game of Thrones" from the early 2000s.) Your career will never be a series of happy accidents, you have to plan to be successful. I totally agree with this but it is actually getting more involved outside of my day job that has seen my career accelerate. I cannot state a single event which meant everything started to head in the right direction. A previous mentor mentioned that environment is key. Does Andrew have the conditions where he can succeed? Of course, but my success is defined not by the people around me, the company overall but decisions made many many years ago.

When I was contracting at Microsoft, in my previous position, I would speak to one of my close colleagues and agree that the dream was to work in the same town I lived (Slough at the time) but the sentiment was always there. Location, location, location. When you are younger, the four-hour daily commute seems a minor inconvenience. You only appreciate the travel distance of a mere 15 miles with the maturity of how valuable time is. However, even with my current employer, I get the best of both worlds. We have a City office and I can work there whenever there is a need. In fact, the next scheduled visit is next Tuesday.

Corporate Team Building

My Dad would always say "Take part son, get involved! Never just sit on the sidelines." Sound advice, which as usual I wish I had appreciated more in my younger days. It would have led to different choices, perhaps different hobbies and a different circle of friends. Who knows?

While never a fanboy of any of my employers (past or present) I would consider myself proud to have worked for Bayer Healthcare, Intel and Microsoft. All well known household names. However when you start to work for an Enterprise Software Company that very few people out of the tech industry have heard of, you know you have work to do to explain to anybody who you work for before you even get to the point of explaining what you do for a living.

Trying my best to not do our Marketing department a disservice, the sponsorship of Trek-Segafredo professional cycling team last year stems from our Canadian CEO, Mike Gregoire being a diehard cycling fan. Apart from a generous employee discount, very little internal events or propaganda had taken place until the end of last year. Being in Operations does mean we are party to certain information early. Being on friendly terms with VP of EMEA Sales Ops and Liverpool fan does have it's advantages. We knew this was coming, because they had setup an experience for customers and partners at CA World, in Las Vegas in mid November. The reason for such early notice, we were informing the EMEA Marketing VP that we had a potential champion walking among us mere mortals. The benchmark for pressure I set against Jessica Enis-Hill, the poster girl for London 2012, holding the hopes of a united nation, going into not one but seven events over two days to win Gold and cement her place in Olympic history. While not quite the eyes of millions, but the burden of several hundred co-workers based in the UK office, Nathan got the reassuring "you got this" nod from our UKI & SA SVP Milko while we listened to Ivan Basso open up the event. Ladies and gentleman, that is pressure. Proud to say our colleague and friend did us all proud. Winning both Sprint & Champion Climb to book his place in the finals at the FY18 kick off in Barcelona.

To be frank, I am not a cyclist or a fan of pro cycling but I have the utmost respect for these athletes. These men (and women) putting everything on the line for their sport. Just watching some of the road racing in Rio over the summer proves how competitive the sport is and how it can come down to the narrowest of margins. While I reminisce of the early 1990s and riding around my estate in Wycombe proudly on my Raleigh Grifter. Let me share with you a few photographs from the Trek-Segafredo Experience day at my office including The Smiling Assassin, Ivan Basso set the bench mark for the Champion Climb and Sprint.