Thoughts on 20 Years
Last week, I shared the blog post I wrote at work for my 20th anniversary at my employer, which was on May 20. As promised, I have a few other thoughts about this anniversary to share.
My company celebrated its thirtieth birthday last year, so I've been there for just shy of 2/3 of its history. When I started, I was number 150 on the seniority list at a very small company. It wasn't quite a start up anymore, but it was pretty darn close. By the 15 year mark I'd moved up to tied for 78th with more than 2300 employees. Today I'm tied for 50th with two other people who share my start date (shout out to Jim and Jerry!) at a giant company with more than 4300 employees. Although you'll never hear my company mentioned with the likes of SalesForce or Facebook or other titans of tech, we are by any objective measure a gigantic success story by the standards of software companies. I can justly claim some small piece of credit for the growth of the company over the last twenty years, but as I've noted before there's an awful lot of luck involved no matter how smart you are and how hard you work.
Twenty years at one employer seems like an eternity sometimes. I certainly never planned to work at the same place for this long. I've read repeatedly that most people switch companies fairly frequently (like every 2-3 years) in search of promotions, raises, new challenges or just better working environments. Part of my luck has been that I haven't had to change companies to find any of those things. While there is plenty that I don't like about my job, it's also on balance been pretty objectively good in a lot of areas, including big things like work/life balance and small things like perks.
While I don't particularly have reason to doubt the data about job switching I've read, the vast majority of my friends and family seem to have stayed with one employer for quite a bit longer than average. My sister is coming up on 15 years with her employer, and most of my closest friends have only had two or three jobs at most in the last twenty years. There are a few exceptions who have hopped jobs a lot. Of course, we all pale next to my father, who retired on the 43rd anniversary of his start date with his employer. Granted, my father's career encompassed at least 5 different geographic locations (New York, Colorado, North Dakota, Montana, North Dakota) and a similar number of different job titles, but still, that's a long time.
I don't know how long I'll work, either at this employer or overall. I've always been comparatively frugal, and if M & I hadn't had a kid, it's entirely possible I could have afforded to retire in my fifties. Now that we've got Birdie, working until she finishes high school would put me at 62. I'd certainly like to retire earlier, but the imperative to have health insurance for her, if not for me and M, makes that seem pretty challenging. By contrast, when my parents were my age I was just about to graduate from high school, so they had a lot more flexibility. I guess we'll plan like I could retire early and see what happens.
As far as the anniversary itself goes, my employer discontinued the plaque for the 20th anniversary. Apparently people weren't excited by it, which I get, but I kind of wanted it to bookend my ten-year anniversary plaque. Oh well. I did, however, get recognized at our Monday Morning all hands meeting, as I did at ten years and fifteen years.
Back at my tenth anniversary, I had to paraphrase what our then CEO said at the Monday Morning Meeting from memory. Now that everything is on Zoom, I can just copy/paste what our current CEO said from the automatic transcription. Well, I can just copy/paste and correct all the weird misunderstandings that the automatic transcription software made while making guesses about what wasn't quite recorded, but still, the technology is getting a lot better. Anything in [] is my filling in what the software missed. I also REDACTED some work specific terms and cleaned up some stutters and the like.
It's a really special 20 year anniversary for Nathan with 20 years in R&D, [where he's been] doing just amazing things. [He] started as a developer in C++ like so many did. [He made] his imprint on so many facets of our PRODUCT NAME product. If those of you that [have been] with us a while would recall the OLD PRODUCT, ANOTHER OLD PRODUCT, THIRD OLD PRODUCT when you add that [he] was here long enough to work on things that we've since retired, which he was actually instrumental in doing, because [he] helped build the first iteration of our sunset process. He was instrumental on working on the CURRENT PRODUCT application server. So really, after all that dev work he's kind of moved and moved into the planning function, helped us build the original PRODUCT NAME release and innovations team that was a precursor to our current release management process and PMO functions.
Today Nathan works in R&D Operations handling complicated, unique problems that really don't have a process yet, or need input or collaboration from various groups. So Nathan's able to do this because he's a collaborator. He's a leader, works with a sense of urgency, and across functional boundaries. And Nathan, you've just been invaluable working on things that if it had been for you wouldn't have gotten done, or at the very least would not have gotten done nearly as well. So thanks, sir, continues to be a privilege working with you.
I wrote the basics of that blurb and my boss added some as well, but the CEO did everything after the first sentence of the second paragraph on his own. I actually had ended with a pitch for people to sign up for the next iteration of the Ensures Accountability mentoring circle that I'm teaching, but this was better.
My company celebrated its thirtieth birthday last year, so I've been there for just shy of 2/3 of its history. When I started, I was number 150 on the seniority list at a very small company. It wasn't quite a start up anymore, but it was pretty darn close. By the 15 year mark I'd moved up to tied for 78th with more than 2300 employees. Today I'm tied for 50th with two other people who share my start date (shout out to Jim and Jerry!) at a giant company with more than 4300 employees. Although you'll never hear my company mentioned with the likes of SalesForce or Facebook or other titans of tech, we are by any objective measure a gigantic success story by the standards of software companies. I can justly claim some small piece of credit for the growth of the company over the last twenty years, but as I've noted before there's an awful lot of luck involved no matter how smart you are and how hard you work.
Twenty years at one employer seems like an eternity sometimes. I certainly never planned to work at the same place for this long. I've read repeatedly that most people switch companies fairly frequently (like every 2-3 years) in search of promotions, raises, new challenges or just better working environments. Part of my luck has been that I haven't had to change companies to find any of those things. While there is plenty that I don't like about my job, it's also on balance been pretty objectively good in a lot of areas, including big things like work/life balance and small things like perks.
While I don't particularly have reason to doubt the data about job switching I've read, the vast majority of my friends and family seem to have stayed with one employer for quite a bit longer than average. My sister is coming up on 15 years with her employer, and most of my closest friends have only had two or three jobs at most in the last twenty years. There are a few exceptions who have hopped jobs a lot. Of course, we all pale next to my father, who retired on the 43rd anniversary of his start date with his employer. Granted, my father's career encompassed at least 5 different geographic locations (New York, Colorado, North Dakota, Montana, North Dakota) and a similar number of different job titles, but still, that's a long time.
I don't know how long I'll work, either at this employer or overall. I've always been comparatively frugal, and if M & I hadn't had a kid, it's entirely possible I could have afforded to retire in my fifties. Now that we've got Birdie, working until she finishes high school would put me at 62. I'd certainly like to retire earlier, but the imperative to have health insurance for her, if not for me and M, makes that seem pretty challenging. By contrast, when my parents were my age I was just about to graduate from high school, so they had a lot more flexibility. I guess we'll plan like I could retire early and see what happens.
As far as the anniversary itself goes, my employer discontinued the plaque for the 20th anniversary. Apparently people weren't excited by it, which I get, but I kind of wanted it to bookend my ten-year anniversary plaque. Oh well. I did, however, get recognized at our Monday Morning all hands meeting, as I did at ten years and fifteen years.
Back at my tenth anniversary, I had to paraphrase what our then CEO said at the Monday Morning Meeting from memory. Now that everything is on Zoom, I can just copy/paste what our current CEO said from the automatic transcription. Well, I can just copy/paste and correct all the weird misunderstandings that the automatic transcription software made while making guesses about what wasn't quite recorded, but still, the technology is getting a lot better. Anything in [] is my filling in what the software missed. I also REDACTED some work specific terms and cleaned up some stutters and the like.
It's a really special 20 year anniversary for Nathan with 20 years in R&D, [where he's been] doing just amazing things. [He] started as a developer in C++ like so many did. [He made] his imprint on so many facets of our PRODUCT NAME product. If those of you that [have been] with us a while would recall the OLD PRODUCT, ANOTHER OLD PRODUCT, THIRD OLD PRODUCT when you add that [he] was here long enough to work on things that we've since retired, which he was actually instrumental in doing, because [he] helped build the first iteration of our sunset process. He was instrumental on working on the CURRENT PRODUCT application server. So really, after all that dev work he's kind of moved and moved into the planning function, helped us build the original PRODUCT NAME release and innovations team that was a precursor to our current release management process and PMO functions.
Today Nathan works in R&D Operations handling complicated, unique problems that really don't have a process yet, or need input or collaboration from various groups. So Nathan's able to do this because he's a collaborator. He's a leader, works with a sense of urgency, and across functional boundaries. And Nathan, you've just been invaluable working on things that if it had been for you wouldn't have gotten done, or at the very least would not have gotten done nearly as well. So thanks, sir, continues to be a privilege working with you.
I wrote the basics of that blurb and my boss added some as well, but the CEO did everything after the first sentence of the second paragraph on his own. I actually had ended with a pitch for people to sign up for the next iteration of the Ensures Accountability mentoring circle that I'm teaching, but this was better.