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2018 In Summary: Work
Dec. 22nd, 2018 02:00 pmI'm still at the same firm I've been at for ten years, Deem Inc.. Indeed, this past week was my 10th anniversary, if you count from when I first started doing work for them, Jan 5 is my 10th anniversary if you count from my official start date.
On January 25, I became the manager of our systems engineering team. I was already the senior member and was doing the equivalent of team manager since the prior fall, but this was when it was made official. Unfortunately, it did not come with extra money or stock options: management pleaded poverty. I accepted it however as it definitively shifted my job title from mere systems guy into a management roll; this is something which would look good on a resume should I move elsewhere, especially if the company was pleading poverty.
It has been a good year. Besides the day-to-day activities of keeping our systems running, we cleaned out & closed down the one cage in DC3 which I had originally been hired to support & manage ten years ago. We had switched over 90% of all activity to the new cage in May 2017, so we just had to be aggressive about moving that last 10%, then securely disposing of the old equipment.
The other big project was getting our PCI compliance certificate in the fall. Because our systems store credit card information of our customers, we are required to be certified by the paycard industry as compliant with their security guidelines. Some rules had changed since our last certification, and some of our systems had aged out of compliance on their own: it took a significant amount of effort just to collect the proof of compliance for our good systems, not to mention upgrading & modifying our non-compliant ones. In all, we were successful by the deadline but it was a huge effort.
There are still quarterly activities which must be taken as part of the compliance. I just received word yesterday that we have cleared the hurdle for this quarter. Good times will be here again around March 20.
On August 8, I was promoted from Manager, Systems Engineering, to Director, Operations. This promotion did come with extra money, and a pile of additional stock options. Now several teams report to me (and me to my senior VP, Bret). I'm spending more time in coordinating activities and in managerial meetings, but I still have my finger in the systems administration side of the house. I'm still the only person who lives even approximately near our production data center near Dulles Airport.
I had two trips to San Francisco this year, two more than last year. At the moment, there is a strong possibility of another trip for the first week of February, but I'm awaiting word to confirm that.
And while I can't write more about it here (or anywhere, really) because of confidentiality issues, there is something big and wonderful happening right now with work, and I'm very excited about it. I hope to write something a lot more informative by the end of January.
On January 25, I became the manager of our systems engineering team. I was already the senior member and was doing the equivalent of team manager since the prior fall, but this was when it was made official. Unfortunately, it did not come with extra money or stock options: management pleaded poverty. I accepted it however as it definitively shifted my job title from mere systems guy into a management roll; this is something which would look good on a resume should I move elsewhere, especially if the company was pleading poverty.
It has been a good year. Besides the day-to-day activities of keeping our systems running, we cleaned out & closed down the one cage in DC3 which I had originally been hired to support & manage ten years ago. We had switched over 90% of all activity to the new cage in May 2017, so we just had to be aggressive about moving that last 10%, then securely disposing of the old equipment.
The other big project was getting our PCI compliance certificate in the fall. Because our systems store credit card information of our customers, we are required to be certified by the paycard industry as compliant with their security guidelines. Some rules had changed since our last certification, and some of our systems had aged out of compliance on their own: it took a significant amount of effort just to collect the proof of compliance for our good systems, not to mention upgrading & modifying our non-compliant ones. In all, we were successful by the deadline but it was a huge effort.
There are still quarterly activities which must be taken as part of the compliance. I just received word yesterday that we have cleared the hurdle for this quarter. Good times will be here again around March 20.
On August 8, I was promoted from Manager, Systems Engineering, to Director, Operations. This promotion did come with extra money, and a pile of additional stock options. Now several teams report to me (and me to my senior VP, Bret). I'm spending more time in coordinating activities and in managerial meetings, but I still have my finger in the systems administration side of the house. I'm still the only person who lives even approximately near our production data center near Dulles Airport.
I had two trips to San Francisco this year, two more than last year. At the moment, there is a strong possibility of another trip for the first week of February, but I'm awaiting word to confirm that.
And while I can't write more about it here (or anywhere, really) because of confidentiality issues, there is something big and wonderful happening right now with work, and I'm very excited about it. I hope to write something a lot more informative by the end of January.
