mmmm
Ever since early yesterday morning, I've been feeling a little down in the gutter. My coworker in the course of our conversation about first time buying and mortgages mentioned her base salary. When I was initially offered the job, I had waited for about two months from the first email from the director to my phone offer to hear back from them. I had lost a lot of hope in working at what seemed like the best company, because of philanthropy, work environment, people and overall growth opportunity... so when HR called my direct line at my then job, I was so ecstatic that I practically jumped out of my desk chair. And you know how the rest goes, without a thought, I agreed to the first job offer... only to regret it 5 minutes after I get off the phone. It was much lower than what I had asked for, but it was definitely more than what I had made previously. By the week's end, I had talked myself into how great it is other than the fact that I didn't exactly get what I wanted, but overall, if I fell on my face on my way to work, I knew I had the coverage to take care of me, and Chuck's philosophy on contributing to the community, and promoting that within was great!
For the last month that I've been there, the thought of my salary never crossed my mind. I of course aspire to be better, to learn more, and to earn more as a result, but it wasn't something that made me worry, at all. Until yesterday. This girl, several months older than myself, having worked at the company for about a year and a half was making about 1/4th more... earning well above what I had asked for... maybe she negotiated, and was more composed than I was. And I know I was excited from the very beginning.
Anyway, I finally took some of the smaller projects that I've been working on in the past month that I've been with the company, and instead of waiting around for people to eventually get to me, I updated and revised the various components of procedures that I worked on, and submitted them. My director calls me shortly to ask if I had mirrored the template that I had received from the team lead in the other team that I work very closely with, and after receiving an answer to his liking, told me that he would forward my documents to the director of the Audits/Controls team, and we would make revisions as needed after he reviews them.
I started to work on the AMD project that has been sitting around untouched for the past couple of months without any updates... and decided that if it was important to my director, it's something I should update, and pronto!
In the midst of my updates to the system, I receive an email from my director about setting objectives and updating if needed. I skim through the website, and decide this is a good opportunity to go in and talk to my director. So I amble in, interrupt his emailing moment, and ask about the objectives.
Since I started working with the company, I have worked on Non Marketplace trading, and have intermittently worked on projects in between trades... and constantly going into my director's office, and various team leads and senior manager's cubicles to tell them that I don't have enough to do. I guess I got my point across. Yesterday afternoon, after the conference call with the people in Phoenix, my director asked me to stay to chat. So we discussed the projects, what I saw as potential downsides and my involvement with the project. This leads to a very vague discussion on redistribution of responsibilities within the two teams that he manages... and because of my constant nagging, they suggested that I help out where I can with projects that the other team has been overloaded with, the Non Standard Assets, something that my team lead says would be interesting because not a lot of people know about them, or know how they work.
So anyway, back to today, my director essentially touches on how the objectives are across the teams, and are essentially very general. This goes on to include why we have objectives, and at the year end evaluation (really important!) whatever we've accomplished throughout the year will play an important part, especially if we believe our ratings are not quite up to our own expectations. He mentions that my involvement with SAP would be something to be noted, and I randomly divulge that my involvement with SAP seemed to follow with my involvement with writing procedures and guidelines for Non Marketplace trading. He corrects me at this point and says that there were two reasons for wanting me to work on this project, first was the fact that I'm new and would as a result have a different perspective than those who have been with the company for much longer, and second because everyone else would be too busy to work on such projects. He further states that when I start to get more responsibilities I would probably refuse to work on similar projects in the future. I object to this statement, and so he explains this to me: On a day to day basis, people work their normal 8 hours a day, working on projects like this one would require 10 extra hours a week, how do you think people would be able to accomplish this?
So to explain, yesterday or the day before yesterday, he mentioned how people are often too afraid to take overtime for whatever reason... and he bluntly told me that if I ever had to take overtime, just to take it.
I've never been afraid to work, I've worked long hours before, working weekends, etc, if need be, so working long and hard isn't an issue... so I replied, with overtime. And he nodds. He then says, we have people work on these types of projects, and then when they know the team/department's process better, they can work on corporate projects. Those, he says, are what he thinks are most important. So I asked when he would consider someone to be experienced enough to work on those corporate projects, and he says that's very objective, it depends on the person... between 6 months to a year, and 6 months would be a stretch.
So I'm determined to learn as much as I can in the 6 months that I'm here, and will prove him wrong. I'll stay later if I have to, and get there earlier if I must. I need to get to that corporate project level, and I need to be one step ahead of everyone else. I need to get my engines going, and start trucking, because a lot of people have been there much longer! I need to show them that I can and am able to be that out-of-the-box thinker...!
I am determined.
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