Bet you’ve been wondering what happened to this site? The simple answer: work. My new job takes up an inordinate amount of time (I worked most of this weekend), but I’m hoping that now that I’m into my 3rd week, I’ll have enough discipline to keep this site up and refreshed a couple of times a week while maintaining a full-time job.
So….the new job. It’s really different from my previous one in many ways. There’s one big downside, the time it requires, but that’s about it. I never thought I’d say this about a corporate job, but I work with some incredibly efficient and capable people in my group. (Not to mention that their Excel skills are downright scary.) The good thing about this is that things get done really quickly, and surprisingly, I find there’s no need to nag, remind, and micromanage projects or people. You ask for information via email, and people respond almost immediately with exactly what you asked for. But the downside is that there’s not much room for improvement in terms of just “working smarter”.
In my previous job, we couldn’t get certain things analyzed or done because of lack of resources and tools, but it’s just not the case here. For better or worse, “can’t” and “no” don’t seem to exist. Gone are the days when I could put in 20% additional effort and get 100% more efficiency by being more organized; here, it seems everyone is just as smart at working at their job, and probably even better in certain aspects. It reminds me of a couple of other times in my life when I was in the company of high-performing people, like college, when it wasn’t so easy to excel.
The company I’m with is undergoing some crazy growth, and with that comes the long hours and workload. It also means I’m trusted to make decisions and set the direction on projects that have impact even before I really know what I’m doing, which is a bit frightening, though also kinda exciting at the same time. It’s very much a learn-as-you-go, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants type of environment.
***************************************************
Look Good at Work and Become Indispensable Become an Excel Pro and Impress Your Boss
***************************************************
Dennis @ A Pile of Coins
Sounds like you like your new job. That’s perfect! My congratulations, I wish I ever found a work environment like this! I might even have sticked with my old IT-based profession ;)
The Digerati Life
I suspected your new job was really occupying you quite a bit! We did miss you. :) Now I’m wondering where you work, since you’re just around the corner from me….?
mapgirl
Scary Excel skills? That sounds COOL! :-)
You’ve got to teach me new ones!
ricemutt
Fun to watch, scary to try to duplicate. We’re talking looped vlookups, named ranges, matches, etc. Stuff I’ve never touched before. And they all do it with keyboard shortcuts. Yeesh.
Anandi
Hope it’s going well, but nice to see you blogging. Hmm, I’m not sure I’d opt to go back to an environment as scary as college. Then again, I felt stupid all the time there. I prefer being one of the smarter ones :) but maybe that’s because I’m a slacker at heart.
Golbguru
“And they all do it with keyboard shortcuts.”..that has *geek* written all over it. I have known some fellow students of that disposition and they don’t look too kindly upon lesser mortals like me who need the mouse for everything.
Good luck on the new job, it sounds like a good place with a lot of learning potential for you.
paul in 02144
most posts please :-)
MoneyMan
Welcome back, and good luck at the new job. Complex excel skills can be both a blessing and a curse… have you ever tried to work on a large shared spreadsheet where one of the authors decided to use named ranges/cells and the vlookups you were talking about, along with external links and macros? (shudder).
Unless you’re a derivatives trader inventing a replacement for Black-Scholes or running a Monte Carlo simulation, I find that the giant excel sheets I’ve run into during stints at corporations and investment banks have often been more trouble than they were worth, the biggest reason being that they give a false sense of precision in a world that is filled with uncertainty. The next biggest reason being the more complexity, the more room for error.
Here’s to keeping it simple!
Ricemutt
MoneyMan: So true, so wise. I think every company falls prey to this pitfall, including the one I’m at right now. And this especially because we’re full of engineers, scientists, and math-types.