Up until 2002 I was a pretty stable employee. I left Picket, Tarpley and Associates after 15 years of service that year to follow my wife to Atlanta where she wanted to continue working for her company that had closed their Chattanooga office. The job I came to in Atlanta was with Hampton-Tilley Associates. The job lasted for six months and then the office closed down. I went out on my own then for nine months and discovered why Hampton-Tilley had closed, there was not enough business during that time to keep me fed.
My next job was with Polytron and it lasted for three years. Half of that time was on my last project. That project broke me. It had me out of town way too much. That job was followed by three more over a years time. The first one I just wasn’t the right guy for and that was followed by another that just ran out of work and the third was a personality clash between me and my manager.
My current job I’ve been at since August of 2007. It sounded like a dream job and except for too much time on the road it has been. I say has because I’m changing jobs again.
A couple of weeks ago a head hunter that I had previously tried placing me called me up to see how I was doing and what my current employment status was. There was a company looking for someone like me and he wanted to submit my resume to them. Now, my resume had been submitted to them at least twice in the past without any result at all. I told him I was skeptical of there being any result this time either and that I really wasn’t looking for a job right now. He gave me one last pitch though and I told him to go ahead and send it to them.
I was surprised when he called me back a few days later and told me they wanted to talk to me. I met with them this past Monday and discovered that I had worked previously with two other employees there and one contractor. The director of Technology had been employed by the company that I hooked up with when I came to Atlanta, Hampton-Tilley, and we knew a lot of the same people. I learned that the past couple of times I had sent them my resume it had never made it to the electrical managers desk.
Anyway, I received a call from the HR manager on Tuesday afternoon with an offer. It was a very good offer and travel would be a lot less. I told him I needed to sleep on it and I would call him back in the morning. I discussed the offer with my wife and we decided that I would accept the offer but would make a counter offer first. I’m getting too old to wait around to accrue extra vacation time. I wanted a week after six months and three weeks after a year.
I begin work on May 12, 2008 with Clyde Bergemann, with the vacation I asked for, in the position of Senior Controls Project Engineer.
In spite of the long hours and constant travel I will miss working with Matrix Scientific. There are good people working there and my customers were some of the nicest people you would ever want to meet. This was just too good of an offer to refuse. Hopefully I will only have one W2 form to worry about on my 2009 taxes.
Congrats on the move (again)!