Many things can happen within 9 months
Here's a "little" story from work... (actually, It's a bit long, but do read on ;-) ....
I was employed nine months ago - basically to be a code monkey (albeit in COBOL) ... The place I work for is a data center for 15 banks and other financial institutions...
So - without much knowledge in either COBOL, mainframes or financial terms and processes, I (along with 11 other hopefuls) was sent through their "IT College" - a seven week COBOL / MVS / DB2 boot camp, and thereafter we were scattered throughout the company...
I landed as a maintainer (i.e. bug fixer) in the subsystem for registration of financial securities - stocks, bonds, options, what have you not...
Exciting area - but I had to learn it all from the ground up... I've never dabbled with trading stocks or anything like that... All i was familiar with -bank wise - was that I had a bank account, and that there more often than not would be less money in the end of a month for the budget to balance...
Now - in this maintainer post I was under the wings of a guy named Claus, the guy responsible for/managing the subsystem... He had been in the company for almost 10 years, but had only just recently (about 6 months prior to my hiring) been appointed manager for this subsystem.
But one of the things I experienced early on was that we had very different approaches to solving various issues... I would be very detail oriented, while he was more carefree in whether the issues were fixed 'below the surface'...
Some of his 'solutions' have come back to haunt us on later occasions ...
I - on the other hand - quickly became known though out the department for being one who wouldn't settle for half-baked solutions, and I also made good connections with our consultants (business advisers), who later expressed their view that I had gained more knowledge about the workings of the system (from a business perspective) than he had had - even though he'd been in the company longer....This gave me the aspiration to some day become manager of subsystem - but as long as he was interested in keeping his assignment, our department head would not reassign him (although she acknowledged that I'd be more suited for the job)
Now... There's a project that runs every year. It's business critical - has to be run - period. It concerns the statements that are sent to all customers, IRS, state etc. about peoples financial standing... It has a planning period of about 6 months - is run on January 1st - and usually use 2 additional months thereafter to verify that everything has been stated correctly to every recipient..
Claus was project lead some years back (with duties he performed to great acclaim) ... But he was now head-honcho for this subsystem, and was therefore not able to sign up (nor had he any interest in doing so again) when the assigned person decided to leave the company this spring.
Instead we hired another guy who fortunately expressed high dedication to getting this project done.. He was employed specifically for this project on June 1st.
This tuesday - however - he reported that he had found employment somewhere else - and suddenly we were without project lead for a project that usually starts in july/august and runs until february...
Today we were informed that a replacement had been found ... Claus had accepted to resume his project leader task - which suddenly meant that there was an opening as Subsystem Manager...
I was asked - and I accepted the position...
So now - 9 months after employment - and just 7 months after being introduced to the world of financial securities, data vendors, stock exchanges and what not, I've been appointed chief of the subsystem that handles registration and maintenance of financial securities - a highly business critical system...
I can't help but feel a bit proud of my self -- but also a bit awestruck that the whole system now is my responsibility... I know that I don't know every facet about this system yet, but still I hope that I'll turn out to be a good manager...
I was employed nine months ago - basically to be a code monkey (albeit in COBOL) ... The place I work for is a data center for 15 banks and other financial institutions...
So - without much knowledge in either COBOL, mainframes or financial terms and processes, I (along with 11 other hopefuls) was sent through their "IT College" - a seven week COBOL / MVS / DB2 boot camp, and thereafter we were scattered throughout the company...
I landed as a maintainer (i.e. bug fixer) in the subsystem for registration of financial securities - stocks, bonds, options, what have you not...
Exciting area - but I had to learn it all from the ground up... I've never dabbled with trading stocks or anything like that... All i was familiar with -bank wise - was that I had a bank account, and that there more often than not would be less money in the end of a month for the budget to balance...
Now - in this maintainer post I was under the wings of a guy named Claus, the guy responsible for/managing the subsystem... He had been in the company for almost 10 years, but had only just recently (about 6 months prior to my hiring) been appointed manager for this subsystem.
But one of the things I experienced early on was that we had very different approaches to solving various issues... I would be very detail oriented, while he was more carefree in whether the issues were fixed 'below the surface'...
Some of his 'solutions' have come back to haunt us on later occasions ...
I - on the other hand - quickly became known though out the department for being one who wouldn't settle for half-baked solutions, and I also made good connections with our consultants (business advisers), who later expressed their view that I had gained more knowledge about the workings of the system (from a business perspective) than he had had - even though he'd been in the company longer....This gave me the aspiration to some day become manager of subsystem - but as long as he was interested in keeping his assignment, our department head would not reassign him (although she acknowledged that I'd be more suited for the job)
Now... There's a project that runs every year. It's business critical - has to be run - period. It concerns the statements that are sent to all customers, IRS, state etc. about peoples financial standing... It has a planning period of about 6 months - is run on January 1st - and usually use 2 additional months thereafter to verify that everything has been stated correctly to every recipient..
Claus was project lead some years back (with duties he performed to great acclaim) ... But he was now head-honcho for this subsystem, and was therefore not able to sign up (nor had he any interest in doing so again) when the assigned person decided to leave the company this spring.
Instead we hired another guy who fortunately expressed high dedication to getting this project done.. He was employed specifically for this project on June 1st.
This tuesday - however - he reported that he had found employment somewhere else - and suddenly we were without project lead for a project that usually starts in july/august and runs until february...
Today we were informed that a replacement had been found ... Claus had accepted to resume his project leader task - which suddenly meant that there was an opening as Subsystem Manager...
I was asked - and I accepted the position...
So now - 9 months after employment - and just 7 months after being introduced to the world of financial securities, data vendors, stock exchanges and what not, I've been appointed chief of the subsystem that handles registration and maintenance of financial securities - a highly business critical system...
I can't help but feel a bit proud of my self -- but also a bit awestruck that the whole system now is my responsibility... I know that I don't know every facet about this system yet, but still I hope that I'll turn out to be a good manager...