Asa Jay's weblog

Change is difficult, but change can be good.

After almost 10 years with my present employer, I am moving on to a new job with a new company. Itron, Inc. has been a great company to work for. I am leaving just shy of 10 years by about 10 days. My first manager there was a kind gentleman who gave me plenty of opportunity to learn, grow and understand my own limitations and interests.

Unfortunately, over the past few years, opportunities have dwindled as the company has grown. I have felt stagnated in my present job, and frankly, I had a project manager that was pissing me off. Although the amount of work in progress appears to be huge, there just doesn’t seem to be any specific direction. It’s kind of like working in a situation where all the people are like chickens with their heads cut off.

Now don’t get me wrong. Itron has some great products, and they provide some great services for the Utility Industry. For me, they’ve simply grown too big and the focus is on way too many products.

I like to focus on one or two things. I like to work across the entire engineering department, with all the different engineers. I like to make sure the company is working toward a quality product for the customer; a product that will experience few returns; one the customer thinks is the best out there and causes them little if any problems. But when I end up with a Project Manager who appears to have a focus of simply getting a design into the hands of the customer, without regard for engineering support, I have a problem.

The last project I worked on was pretty exciting for me. It was a new opportunity to work with eveyone again and help make a good quality product. But darned if that PM just didn’t give us enough prototype product material to really find all the problems. Not only that, but many of his decisions for vendors, locked us in to bad product, which put us behind the eight ball to find a new vendor very quickly. It’s difficult to do those kinds of things.

It was driving me crazy.

A friend of mine recently was offered a new job at a company here in Spokane. After a couple of emails, it sounded like they could use a person with my skills. A phone call, application and resume, and I was asked to come in for an interview. After that, I was offered a job. Being one who believes in taking advantage of opportunities like this, I accepted.

So now, I’m scared, or perhaps anxious. I’m being given a lot to do, and I start in a just a few days. I gave Itron a two week notice a while back, and it’s worked out very well. I’ve tried to document my job and help transition things to other people. So far, so good.

I’m leaving a lot of good folks, but I’m not abandoning the relationships. These are folks I might want to come back to work for in the future. Most are happy to see me find something a bit more challenging. Some are very sad I am leaving, because I help make thier job bearable. I’ve taken business cards from almost everyone I work with. I may need to give them a call sometime for advice.

So things are changing, again. I pray the next 10 years, will be as great as the last.

Asa Jay