Career & Life Update

Business & Career Jul 31, 2024

It's certainly been a minute - honestly too long - since I've posted any update on here. I regret not staying up to date on here as there is now a gap in my memory book. Since there's a lot to go through, I'll separate the times by sections.

Career Update

I've now been working at AWS for 10 months! That time has flown by and I've learned an incredible amount of things since then. One thing I appreciate the most is being able to have freedom in my job and what I do - I choose how to spend my time at work, I work with very intelligent people, and I have a ton of resources at my disposal to get the answers I need.

After my 90 day probationary period ("internship"), I was offered a promotion on day 91, which I proudly accepted. This came with a substantial raise which puts me about $10/hr higher than I was at my last job just 91 days prior. Pretty freakin' sweet.

Since the promotion I've taken on a handful of special tasks and projects from fixing numerous network switches to being one of the few people to maintain a (small) site by myself, and most recently reinventing the process for new hires to get access to restricted spaces. This resulted in a savings of about 280 labor hours in just the first 3 months of the program.

Additionally - I appreciate being recognized for the work that I do and all of the time and effort it requires. To date, I've never once been told "stay in your lane" which I heard WAY too often at my last job. Instead, my leadership recognizes those situations as me taking accountability and/or initiative where something could be done better. My last job at TQL seemed to condone this at a company level, which leads to employees feeling "capped" in their position where they have no ability to get creative or are not recognized for it, despite the company encouraging 'innovation' and 'being open to ideas.' What a shame.

Anyway I've also been appointed to an on-call rotation - being the first in my hiring class to do so. This entails being a first responder for any large scale events, high severity issues that come up, etc. Unfortunately the schedule requires 12 hour shifts, but I've gotten used to that.

I'm excited for what is next in my career - hopefully my next promotion by the end of the year and LOTS of growth going on in the business, which means infinite opportunities for me (as well as job security, if that wasn't already the case; though I do not take that for granted).