StarkBlog – Weapon of Mass Obfuscation

September of last year I left my employer of 12 years – Jupiter Systems –  and joined a “coopeter”, Christie Digital Systems.  This was a big change for a number of reasons…

Jupiter’s offices are about 42 miles from my home, and when I wasn’t traveling on business, I made the pilgrimage nearly daily.   This meant 84 miles/day of driving to and from work.  If traffic was good, this meant about 1.75 – 2 hours of driving time.  More often than not, however, it meant 2.5+ hours of driving.  Forget about holiday weekends – crazy traffic.

If you start to add up that time (10hrs/wk, 520hrs/year), it starts to look serious.  520 hours is like 10 work weeks spent in the car.  Ouch!

The office I work for at Christie is actually located in Southern California (close to where we originally moved from Montreal to,  back in 1997), and as is the case for my superior – I work from home when not traveling.

This is the first time I have had a job not in an office environment.  It takes some getting used to, but I think I am getting the hang of it.  At first, I was working from home, remote from a whole bunch of people (everybody!) I did not know, some of whom report to me.  I did not know how to get things done, exert influence to people I have not met, and worse, the company was/is 20x the size of my previous employer.  Talk about subdivision of responsibility!  It has taken months to figure out the structure and responsibilities of the organization I am working with… I am still learning everyday.  But  then it gets better, every day.

I now work at home and I have a home office which is great: just 40 feet from my bedroom, 60 feet from my kitchen.  I can get espresso anytime I want it, I can run an errand if need be,  and I can disconnect and be quiet at my office as well.  No people to distract me.  Of course, that is part of the problem too – no connection to office colleagues, no idle chatter about the weekend, sports, etc, etc.  I miss that, really, I do.  Sure I can talk to Christina… but only in small bursts, she is not at work, per se.  (Careful!!)

My old neighbor, Nina, worked from home as well (however, her and her husband moved out East about a year ago) – I should have talked to her about adjusting to the home work environment.

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