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June 01, 2007
New job, new adventures
Time for a new job. Benefits and a living wage are nice--one might even call them a necessity, especially when you have kids. And a decent working environment is always good. It would have been great to have a real job in western Michigan but the IT market in western Michigan is, at best, almost dead. In April I decided it was time to start looking in other areas. Maybe someplace south, where the winters are less unpleasant. Indianapolis looked promising. So did Louisville, Kentucky.
The day before Easter I updated my resume. The day after Easter I got a call about a great job...in Milwaukee. Well, Milwaukee isn't south, but it is familiar territory: we lived there from 1991-1995. So why not give it a try? A good job in Milwaukee is much better than a rotten job anywhere.
In April I did a bunch of phone interviews, but Milwaukee sounded the best. They brought me in for a live interview, and offered me the job the next day. May 21 was my first day. (Why wait so long to mention it? I wanted to make sure the previous job was going to pay me.)
The job is a great opportunity. I'm working for a company called Metavante, a huge financial data services place. If you do banking in the US, whether ATM, online or at a branch, chances are good that we handle your data. I work in the network management group: we make sure the networks that carry your data are working and working well. I don't know much about networking yet; they brought me in as a Perl programmer to help them maintain and develop tools and automation. That's exactly the type of work I want to be doing. The work is fun, the people are great, the company has a future. It's really nice to be working in this type of environment again.
It's a big change. We're packing up the house to get it sold. We moved to western Michigan to be near extended family, but I can't support my own family in Michigan's economy. I'm going back to an office instead of telecommuting, and living in Milwaukee while everyone else is still in Michigan. That's not ideal, of course, but we have good prospects of renting a house from a former professor and getting everyone to Milwaukee soon.
So life is busy these days. I'm at the office a lot, learning all the new things I need to learn, and going back to Michigan on weekends to get the house packed up and ready to sell. We're really looking forward to finishing this transition and getting back to a normal routine, whatever that is. But for the first time in a while, things are looking up in work life.
Permalink | Posted by Joe at 10:08 AM | Comments (0)