I did in 1.5 years what I couldn't achieve in 4 years working at my last place of employment; getting promoted. I wouldn't say that my last place of employment was a bad, it's just the way their HR was setup was bad; they couldn't keep talented people like me around long enough and thus I had to go.
In all honestly, I do miss working in a fully technical field. Research and developing technology is a romantic concept, like the idea of the starting a successful business. It's a story with risk, uncertainty and with perseverance the protagonist will prevail. It is the dream story of the everyman.
I've been in corporate culture for the past 6 years. Working in a corporation is secure because the budgets are big and there is less fear of where the next pay cheque is going to come from. But the problem is as organizations become larger, the visible impacts that a person has on the outcome of a project or operations become less pronounced. Especially top players within teams. The person that would know who their top players are are probably the team members and the lead but without proper promotion to the rest of the organization most top players will go unnoticed. I've been in that situation several times in the past and I've since learned the importance of developing a solid reputation.
In the span of 2 years I've solidified my position as the god of what I do. When shit hits the fan, I am the guy that people call. When there are changes to be made I'm the person that is consulted. The interesting thing in large corporations is that everyone loves to blame IT for things that go wrong. I've come to the point where I can monitor what is going on so well that I actually tell the traders that they've forgotten to turn on their price contributions when they forget or tell them when their prices are off. People don't come to me to complain, I catch things before they happen and help people when they unwittingly make mistakes.
Oddly enough, becoming a person that is well recognized doesn't require tons of brains to achieve. It's is one of those counter-intuitive things that most people subtlety know to be true. I've come from a brainiac place to somewhere where those kinds of skills are less important, but a go getter mentality is what will drive home successes.
There will be more stories to talk about going forward, but those are for later.
