November 30th was not only Cyber Monday for me this year. It marked a new beginning for me as I left a 20 year stint in Information Technology and moved towards a more administrative function in the world of grants. For some reason my colleagues have been treating me like I died or all of a sudden lost all my tech skills. Rest assured, my palm motions to fix computer problems isn’t going away.
I was more surprised about the overwhelming number of people who thought I quit to open a restaurant. I guess that’s in my future…now that I have people who I can hit up for start up costs. I was reminded about something I wrote a few years ago about being in a job for a long time and wishing or not wishing that could be me. 20 years in IT is a good chunk of time. Imagine supporting machines that ran DOS to Windows 10! Not to mention Mac OS 7 to 10.10 and random variations of Linux…managing servers, developing databases, writing scripts, making websites, tiger, bears, lions, oh my! Oh, totally forgot to mention the telecom type stuff I’ve done—running cable, phone, wireless, gigabit between buildings, etc…
I’m not regretting leaving the professional world of IT…the hardest part of this is the transition to new acronyms and a new way of thinking. I have a fresh feeling as I did when my first boss asked me what POP stood for. Whatever that feeling is, I like it. This past summer’s Harvard Business Review Journal was about career changes and all the things associated with it so I prepared myself for that kind of a move. One of the main things that stood out was about transferrable skills. I’m on day 2 of the new job and I have already used many of those previous skills.
I’m not talking about my ability to fix computer problems with a wave of a hand but having the innate feeling to ask the right questions to get the best answers or at least give me the understanding of how to approach something.
For the tech stuff, I still have Gecko Labs to work on IT things. Let me know if you need a website, server, or some kind of infrastructure and I’ll get you set up.
I thought this was going to be my mid-life crisis post but I don’t think I’m there yet. You’ll still find me on the internet with my random hobbies. Guess I’m not dead yet.
