Hindsight is 20/20

* As Charlie pointed out in yesterday’s comment, it has been a full year since I was ’surplussed’ by Cingular. I had spent nearly ten years there, and if it weren’t for the downsizing, I probably would have stayed there for another ten years.

Thank God for small miracles!

At first, life was quite hectic. Between wondering where my next paycheck was going to come from to worries about insurance, life was a fast-dance for a while. I struggled to work at anything I could, mostly small consulting jobs. The state of the economy was pretty much at its worst… Every company was downsizing, there were hiring freezes everywhere, and every dot-com dropout was after any job that could be had. Eventually, I decided to incorporate (see Xionic Technologies) and see where that would take me. I managed to land a very nice long-term assignment (although it was through another consulting company and not my own) and started back to the 8-5 work week in mid March. The contract was for six months, which seemed quite palatable at the time since I had been doing small one-time gigs previously. (Mostly web design, firewall implementations, basic security type stuff) I was hired as a Security/System Admin at a large company headquartered in downtown St. Louis. The people are fantastic to work with, the work I am doing is challenging and rewarding ( intrusion detection/prevention, vulnerability assessments, VPN security, etc…) and, yes the pay is notably better than before. It looks as if the contract will go through the end of the year, with a significant possibility of it turning permanent.

I still manage to take on small consulting jobs during my off hours, and continue to pursue my studies (I just finished a twelve week GIAC/SANS training class to prepare for a Security certification) I am happier with the work that I am producing than I have been in a long time. I knew I was unhappy at Cingular, but I didn’t realize just how miserable it was until I got away from there. As the memories of Cingular begin to fade, I am only now able to remember the great times that were had there.

As for the future?

The future’s so bright… I gotta wear shades!

General — entered at 22:38PM

Comments…
I am very happy that you have moved on from your last job to something better. I wish I could say the same but I can’t. Funny thing is that right after you went I was soon ‘released’ from my place of employment. Also heard over the summer about a friend in NYC who was put on probation at his high profile company. Remember how good I thought he had it before the dot-com bust. Looks like the worse may be over but still can’t say that ‘the future’s so bright…’ or as we would say out here ‘the future’s so bright I gotta wear prescription sunglasses baby!’Posted Thu Nov 13 01:21:19 CST 2003
From: P. Brahler http://paulbrahler.bravehost.com