Corporate America

Almost six and a half years ago, I entered big time Corporate America. I wrote about my journey up to this point (read about it here) about a year back when I was actually writing in this space regularly. When I started this post, I went back and re-read my earlier ramblings and boy, how things can change in a year.

I say that because I am leaving Wall Street and heading back to the small pond from which I came. Many factors contributed to my decision to leave the large-scale corporate world. One of the largest came as a shock at the end of last year, when it became clear, that contrary to the previous post, I was no closer to figuring out how this game is played than I was when I started.

After being a little negative about dealing with the corporate workplace, there are some pluses. I am off to Tokyo on Friday to visit our office for a week. And of course eat and drink on the company's dime.

There are drawbacks of course. I do miss the weekend time with the kids and wife This weekend is the first dance competition and the first lacrosse game of the season so they will be scrambling without me.

This will be my second trip over there, and even though I am not a sushi fan, I am looking forward to some of the cooked food they have to offer. The deep fried pork, which I can never remember the name of, was one of my favorites of course. That and the Raman noodles. The Top Raman brand from the grocery store just doesn't seem to cut it.

In a case of perfect timing, I have a follow up to yesterday's post.

My team has been supporting a application which I have been desperately trying to move out of our space, as it does not fit in with what we do. This has been going on for about 18 months now.

I finally had a tentative plan in place to transfer ownership with the leader of another team. Well over the past couple weeks, not only did the leader leave, but 2 more members of the other team, leaving my plan, and the application, homeless. So I sucked it up, went to my customers, and my boss and all decided, or so I thought, that my team would own it for the long haul. That is me being a good team player and taking on a project we didn't have the head-count for.

A lot of what this post contains isn't any major revelation to many (most or all) of you, but this is one of the reasons I wanted to start this blog, to say things like this, and if someone wants to listen all the better.

I have been working in corporate America since graduating college. Well graduating is a loose term, I would say it was a mutual parting of ways, but they did give me the diploma, so I think I got the better of them. Actually, my father got the best deal, as the tuition bills stopped. In that time, it has only been in the last five years that I have found myself at a 50,000+ plus corporation which epitomizes all the stereotypes corporate America has to offer.

Up until only a couple years ago, I was still living under the impression that good, hard work was all that was needed to succeed. Now, by succeed, I don't mean that I would be CEO one day. The only company I will ever run is one I create, but I think I would have a bad boss then too. By succeed I mean move far enough up the food chain so I would be able to have someone else do the gritty weekend work and answer the late night phone calls, and if I was lucky maybe get some power to run some cool projects.