The transition is underway...
Many of you already know, but anyhoo... I'm changing roles at work. I've been frustrated (fed up, burnt out, etc) with calling on the same customer for ~5 years now after working there for 8. I asked for a change of scenery (and people) and my management actually pulled some strings to make it happen. So as of... well, this week... I am no longer calling on IBM as a customer. Technically the "cut off" is end of 1Q, but it's already moving along nicely. I've been purging my laptop of old email (my inbox currently has 1 email in it... was ~800 about 2 weeks ago) and I'm clearing it of old apps and such that are only pertinent to that account (goodbye CMVC!). It's a good feeling.
My new field is home networking. Specifically xDSL and xPON business. (Think FIOS and U-verse, etc. - 100Mbit DSL and 2.5Gbit Fiber) So I spent this week in Boston/Andover meeting one of my new peers who has been in this field for many years (it also happens to be the field my manager is most focused on). It's been a week of Power Point presentations (over 30 hours of slides) and drinking from the fire hose of knowledge. I'm burnt out for this week, but there's a whole ton of stuff I still need to learn. They are already copying me on emails to/from customers... so it won't be long before they're expecting me to field questions.
It's going to be new and it's going to be a challenge to play catch-up on this field. At least from what I've seen so far... the software and hardware are fairly well baked (except for the cutting edge stuff) so I won't have to spend a lot of time debugging older technology. So it helps focus a bit. Plus the debug tools, while confusing, do exist and seem to be very extensive. So I'll be swimming for a while, but there's a few things to play with in the water. And I've already got some hardware in my luggage to bring home to play with. Time to take over the house with circuit boards and network cables!
My new customer base will cover the Eastern half of the US. Looks like I've got some in NH, GA, AL, FL and NC. Shouldn't be much travel... mainly just when stuff hits the fan or a new product is being discussed. Customers like to put names to faces every now and then.
I'm heading back from Andover today... should be some fun snow tonight!
My new field is home networking. Specifically xDSL and xPON business. (Think FIOS and U-verse, etc. - 100Mbit DSL and 2.5Gbit Fiber) So I spent this week in Boston/Andover meeting one of my new peers who has been in this field for many years (it also happens to be the field my manager is most focused on). It's been a week of Power Point presentations (over 30 hours of slides) and drinking from the fire hose of knowledge. I'm burnt out for this week, but there's a whole ton of stuff I still need to learn. They are already copying me on emails to/from customers... so it won't be long before they're expecting me to field questions.
It's going to be new and it's going to be a challenge to play catch-up on this field. At least from what I've seen so far... the software and hardware are fairly well baked (except for the cutting edge stuff) so I won't have to spend a lot of time debugging older technology. So it helps focus a bit. Plus the debug tools, while confusing, do exist and seem to be very extensive. So I'll be swimming for a while, but there's a few things to play with in the water. And I've already got some hardware in my luggage to bring home to play with. Time to take over the house with circuit boards and network cables!
My new customer base will cover the Eastern half of the US. Looks like I've got some in NH, GA, AL, FL and NC. Shouldn't be much travel... mainly just when stuff hits the fan or a new product is being discussed. Customers like to put names to faces every now and then.
I'm heading back from Andover today... should be some fun snow tonight!