A New Job Title

It is near the end of 2021 and I finally attained three of my highest career goals. These were:

1. Transition To Work From Home Lifestyle

2. Financial Component (numeric goal)

3. Transition To Technical Role From Accounting Role

Work From Home

The lifestyle of working from home, or working from anywhere, appealed to me the instant it became a possibility. I envied the digital nomad life. Working remotely sounded like a dream, one where your personal and professional life could fully integrate with each other. No more worrying about home when you’re at work, no more worrying about work when you’re at home. Plus, no more playing Russian Roulette getting to and home from the office.

I deeply dislike commuting – the possibility of being involved in a car accident, the dread of walking into the office late, the anxiety that leaving five minutes later and the extra forty minutes of drive time that would add. Add in dropping your kids off an hour before school starts so you can get to work on time, thus making their days just as long as yours can be, and the stress that brings on them. It’s just too much to deal with anymore, especially where I live where a river limits the routes you can take.

Granted, I’ve not been able to fully enjoy the work from home lifestyle. I have kids so I can’t just roll out of bed and start working, they do need to be fed and chauffeured to their destinations. However, I do get more say in how I spend my mid-days. I’ve started working out at lunchtime and my health is improving because of it. I did do that in the office, but I had to be very careful getting too close to people because of body odor after lunchtime, even if I just went out for a walk around the parking lot. That was an embarrassing facet of office work I do not miss.

One thing I have experienced is the feeling I’ve improved at my job, which I didn’t expect. I can actually say I am good at what I do, which feels good also. Because I can work longer hours pretty much penalty free I can put in the extra time to dive deeper into my work. I can also continue working when I am in a flow state, which is game changing. I will add working from home only came about because of the pandemic. I do pay local employments taxes in the jurisdiction where I live, and I am considered a remote worker by my employer, but that is a recent transition made permanent only recently. However, it is a goal accomplishment.

Financial Component

I hit my financial compensation goal so I am very happy in that regards. It is higher than what I could’ve attained staying in my old job and getting promoted to a manager. It is actually on par with two promotions up from what I did as a financial analyst, which I am not sure I could’ve attained there, so I did make the right choice in pivoting out of it and into technology. Healthcare is wrapped up in masters degrees, and in many cases it counts more than experience. However in technology that’s just not the case. What you learn and what you can do is more important, and if you can deliver you will set yourself apart.

Technical Role

Finally, I am no longer an analyst, but an engineer. I’m not sure you can get more technical with that description. Although I still use a lot of my analytical skills, I am pivoting more towards the technical aspect. If you break technology down to front and back end, I am all back end. There’s a skill set that comes with managing data that I learned, and continue to improve upon, that helps set me apart. I am a curious type of person, and I like to know a lot about a lot of things. What the next steps are for me I do not know, I’ve put so much time and energy into getting this promotion that I don’t have a plan for what is next. I’ll be thinking about that between now and the first quarter of 2022 as I look to further expand myself into this new sector.