Quitter

Since I graduated college 12 years ago, I’ve worked for 14 companies. My longest stint at any one company has been about 28 months, and my shortest stint was four days. If you count the companies that resulted from acquisition and mergers, I’ve actually worked for 17 companies. I’ve been laid off once, and fired twice – all in the same year, 2006, when I worked for a total of five companies in that calendar year. It was kind of a sucky year.

I graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) with a BS in computer science back in 1995. Straight out of college, I was hired on by Raytheon, the largest company I've ever worked for (the only reason I bother to mention it by name). This was my first experience with real a real workplace, and all the bureaucracy that goes with it.

It was not a good initial experience.

The biggest question in my mind, when starting to write this blog, is how to actually approach the material. I could simply rehash all my experiences at each company, in chronological order, analyzing what went right, and what went wrong, in each chapter. I could pick out each lesson learned, and make a chapter out of it, and simply use my experiences for examples.

I then realized that the way I needed to resolve this question was actually analogous to one of the most important lessons I've learned: One must have a vision of the future, from which they can make strategic, and ultimately, tactical, decisions.

Had to laugh when I saw today's Dilbert, given today's entry on corporate vision:

Why do I place so much emphasis on vision? Why is a well-defined corporate strategy simply not enough? It's because my experiences have led me to this conclusion, sometimes in very obvious, no-question-about-it ways.

Sometimes a lack of corporate vision isn't as obvious as being told, "We're not re-investing in your company, you have no coherent strategy or vision." Sometimes it shows up in the behavior of people further down the chain of command.

Once you have a vision, and you've communicated it, all your oars should be rowing in basically the same direction, but you still need to have someone at the front of the boat, leading the crew. This might sound easy; you tell people where you're going, what to do, and it's all good, right? Wrong.

To give the companies I've worked for a bit more of a memorable naming scheme, I've taken the advice of two people and renamed them -- keeping their order by using the radio phonetic alphabet as part of their name. Thus, "Company E" is now "Echo Communications", while "Company I" is now "India, Inc." Yes, I tried to have some fun with the names.

Should any of the names I came up with actually refer to a real company, be assured, they are definitely not the same company. I've never worked for a company named herein, with the exception of Raytheon (which, since I named in the prologue, I figured I'd leave as-is).

Not all of my experiences have been horrible. Several times, I've found myself working for and with some exceedingly bright people, and have seen them really shine.