I’ve now shared details on four of my jobs and what I’ve learned through each of them.
If you’d like to re-read any, they are as follows:
- My Jobs, Pre-College
- My Jobs, College
- My Jobs, Graduate School
- My Jobs, Introduction to the Real World
Today we’ll continue this series by giving details on the second job I held after graduation.
The second job I held was again for a Fortune 500 company, another top one in its field (see Five Steps to Six Figures in Seven Years for the impact working for a name brand company can have on your career), but with a company culture that was far less dog-eat-dog in nature than job #1. And instead of working 70 hours a week at the old place, I could get by with only 55 to 60 at the new one. Score! (FYI, I actually held several jobs at this company (within two different divisions) and I’ll cover each job with a different post.)
I found the new job through an executive recruiter. I could see the writing on the wall at the last place, started working my network, and ended up with a couple of job opportunities. This one was the better of the two by far. It required me to move to another state (good thing too, as this is where I met my wife!), so I packed up (actually, they paid a moving company to pack me up — it took them about 15 minutes) and I was off!
The initial job was both a promotion and a pay increase for me. I was at the next level of management and made roughly 15% more than in my previous position (plus some added benefits that made the total package +20% or so). I was part of a team responsible for marketing a large, national food brand, and while the work was demanding, I liked it a lot. I also made some great friends that allowed me to enjoy time outside of work as well. It was quite a refreshing change from job #1.
I learned several things while working in this job including:
- You can enjoy what you do as well as get paid for it. I’m not a believer in “doing what you love” since most people “love” sleeping in and relaxing, not working. But I do think you should strive to find a job you like and enjoy most of the time. This was the first job I had where I had fun and didn’t dread Mondays (at least as much). I also didn’t have to work both days on the weekend (I worked a lot of Saturdays) which also made the job more lifestyle-friendly.
- You can get more accomplished in the right environment. Where the first job was a fight between people to get ahead — even those working on the same business — this company focused more on teamwork. And the results were amazing. Not only did we get more done in less time, but it was a pleasurable experience along the way. This dynamic really impacted me and set the stage for how I’d run my teams in the future.
- Politics are everywhere. Don’t get me wrong — it wasn’t Disney World. I had one General Manager that just didn’t like me (for whatever reason — ever have one of those?) and he was rude to me from day #1. Thankfully he was in another division and I didn’t have to see him much (but oh how things were going to change — yikes! You’ll get more scoop on this in the next post in this series.)
- Hard work plus luck equals promotion. I worked hard at my job and had some major accomplishments that got noticed by those higher up in the company. That with a combination of being in the right place at the right time and making one lucky statement got me promoted to an even higher position. But I’m getting ahead of myself. We’ll save that story for the next time.
That’s it for this round. For the next post in this series, see My Jobs, Working for a Maniac.
I love these series. It seems like my career is an alternating pattern of a great boss followed by a bad boss- hope I can break that streak for the better… 馃檪
-Mike
I am not a fan of the phrase ” doing what you love” in I believe it is one of the contributing factor to the whole college mess.
I want to be (fill in the blank) but I need to borrow $80k to attend college for a $35k job. My son has a friend who is probably up to $50k in debt and only a junior because he wanted to attend a collge where he could play hockey. Mind you he is good but not as good as Wayne Gretsky. His degree will be in business under sports management… I am not sure what sort of jobs are out there but you will need to be quite creative and adaptive with his hockey degree. Classic example of doing what you love, but just trying to find out a way to make it pay. Hockey was number one while college number 2.
My youngest loved blacksmithing. He likes to make swords and knives and yes we have a forge. He wanted to become a blacksmith. I said hmmmm…. Lets look into some college workshops dealing with metals. He went to a metal castings workshop at Western Michigan University and was exposed to all sorts of opportunities in working with metals and was told you want to work with metals in materials science then visit Michignan Techs program. He is now attending Michigan Techinologcice University in the materials science engineering and loving the program. He feels blacksmithing will be a very nice hobby.
You need to explore the opportunites and point in the right direction so they will succeed.
Agree strongly with what you wrote. Had a friend who threw away an obscene amount on an art degree, then went into building. Obviously would have made a great hobby versus a career.
All that said I picked a fairly worthless major, but I heavily supplemented with practical classes that helped me get into grad school where I continued to take practical classes. Both schools I liked my major a lot, but I knew it wasn’t enough by itself to land me a well-paying job.
Hi ESI,
Just found the blog through Financial Samurai and I’m loving it so far. Is there a story behind the one lucky statement you made that got you a promotion?
Thanks! It’s great to have you!
Yes, there is a big story behind it which I’ll be sharing in the next post in this series. It’s set to publish at the end of the month.
I’ll give you a bit of a preview:
I was up for a promotion and told the guy I’d work for that I disliked a particular executive at the company (I would NEVER admit that today but I was young and stupid). Turns out the guy hiring me hated the exec too, so he hired me.
Then in the next series post after late October (late November) I’ll tell how I ended up working for the guy I hated!!! And I LOVED it!!!! Lots of twists and turns… 馃檪
Awesome! I find it fascinating how luck and chance play into our big assets and what we can do tip the scales in our favor. Looking forward to the posts.
You’re an amazing story teller. I’ve been reading a few more posts and I’m hooked.
Thanks! Appreciate that!
I added your site to my RSS reader. 馃槈