Take some time today to reflect on your career. Jot down a timeline of it, including all the ups and downs. What was your best experience? And the worst? What would you like your future to look like, in terms of your career? If you’re a young man and haven’t started in yet, focus on that future part. What do you want your work to look like?
What a topic for me. I feel like I began my career with even less idea than most people about how to go about it or what to expect about how to be successful.
In my view my career started at the Space Dynamics Lab in Logan. Before that I worked lots of jobs but they we all fillers, just whatever way I could find to make money at the time. From a career perspective the only important one was working at Wasatch Post Control because that was where I really learned to work hard and be self motivated. I did so much work that my work literally paid all the expenses of the business including all the employees salaries.
I worked at SDL for three and a half years—still the longest I have worked at any one place—and really felt good about what I was able to do there with the Electronic Office suite of applications that I maintained. Looking back it feels like a mistake to quit there and take a job in instructional technology simply to match my graduate field of study (although considering my future family situation I don’t know that it would have been much different). I then bounced from job to job through my graduate education (never more than 8 months at any one place).
When I quit my PhD studies to begin my career and provide for my family I worked from home for Jardin Howard Technologies. I languished there and my work was totally unimpressive. I think I spent the entire year being disappointed in the kind of work I was being paid to do—wasting 99%of the things I had learned in my studies–until they let me go on my 1-year anniversary of my start date.
After JHT I got hired at Rapid Intake and while they hired me as an instructional technologist to do customizations for clients on their e-learning software I was really doing software development again and the place I excelled wasn’t the customizations so much as the software I wrote and maintained to streamline their internal business processes. Before they were forced to lay off almost everybody I began working ¾ time to try helping them weather the storm and making up the lower salary by picking up side jobs. In reality I was working full time and getting paid for ¾ of it.
Sixteen months after starting there they cut virtually their entire workforce and I spent the next two months going into debt while trying to make my living doing consulting work. I got a few posing gigs but the most promising ones feel through and I realized that I needed a steady job. At the same time, Laura and I felt that we needed to live in Davis County. I began looking for jobs in Salt Lake City and soon find a position at Intermountain Healthcare as a software developer, right back in the field I had been working in at SDL.
I worked at IHC for just under 3½ years. My first year was mediocre, my second rather depressing, and my third year I started figuring out what I wanted career-wise. During the last few months I felt that I needed a new position in order to have opportunities to advance and I started looking within IHC. Then University of Utah Healthcare called me. What they offered wasn’t exactly what I had envisioned but I felt it gave me an opportunity to advance and they gave me a substantial raise.
At UUHC I got a real education and began the most difficult two years if my life so far. In the six months I worked there I helped them hat a grip on their Kronos’s installation but then because of political divisions between the university and the hospital there was no way for me to apply my technical skills. Additionally I was being criticized and falsely accused for not matching up with their culture which was to live your job 24/7. The expectation was that employees should work 50 hours a week (minimum), come in early, take long lunches, and go home late. I preferred to come in on time, take short or nonexistent lunches and go home on time–working no more than 43 hours a week. When they decided to let me go right before my initial six month probationary period would have ended to hit someone cheaper who didn’t have the skills that I couldn’t use in that position anyway they made an excuse that I wasn’t really working full-time and then treated me like a criminal. It was humiliating. My only consolation was that a week earlier I had the impression that I couldn’t work in that environment long-term so I had already started looking for another job.
Because of the circumstances the state had to investigate my termination to see if I qualified for unemployment benefits. They determined that I had done nothing wrong.
I was soon hired at DocuPrep but within two months they realized they couldn’t afford my salary at their small business because they didn’t have the resources in place to tackle the project they had in mind when they hired me and I really want able to immediately put out the fits they needed to address in a programming environment I’d never heard of before. After DocuPrep I spent the months going into more debt again while trying to build and market my own product. Again I realized that I want in a position to do that.
After missing out on a few jobs that I liked the sound of (usually because they felt they couldn’t match my salary needs) I got hied on by Solution Stream to work a contact to hire position at TruHearing. that was the only place I ever worked that was more toxic than UUHC. Within a couple of weeks I was dreading the possibility of being hired on there. After 6 weeks Solution Stream pulled me out and asked me to do other work directly for them. It was a massive relief. Aside from commuting from Bountiful to Lehi I enjoyed working there. Unfortunately for me their pool of PHP work dried up and they let me go after another six weeks when they couldn’t place me at another outside company.
Because of the commute and the fact that I couldn’t be sure if they would have more work when the project ended I had responded to an ad for a job at Questar. I had been working for months on how to describe what I wanted in as job and how to present my skills (ever since I decided that selling my own product wasn’t a viable option before being hired by Solution Stream). I believe my application to Questar was the first time I felt good about my understanding of what I was seeking and what I had to offer. I wasn’t sure when I applied of the work would be a good fit for me but it seemed close enough to deserve a look.
Right before I was finally let go at Solution Stream I got a call from Questar for an interview. I felt fantastic about the interview. I really liked the direction Mike wanted to go with his team and I wanted to be a part of that so although I gave full efforts to land a few other jobs during the first two weeks after Solution Stream let me go I kept hoping to hear back from Questar. I touched base with them as couple of times and even applied for another position there because I had liked the atmosphere so much. Two weeks after leaving Solution Stream Emma was born and I relaxed my job searching while focusing on the family. I picked up the search after a couple of weeks but felt that Questar was getting close to giving me an answer. Finally after 5 weeks of unemployment I got two job offers on the same day, including one from Questar. Because of the second offer I asked Questar to match the higher offer, which they did. I liked the sound of the other job but it was for a small company who had no benefits and I knew I wanted stability if given the option.
I have now worked for Questar for 9 months and it is like having the best parts of all the decent jobs I’ve had before. The only thing it doesn’t have is the salary of UUHC (which would be nice considering the debt I acquired during six months of unemployment in the year before they hired me) but the past is adequate and I feel like I have real opportunities to excel and progress.
Personally I can see spending the rest of my working life at Questar. I might work my way into other jobs over time but I like the company, the commute is perfect, the culture supportive, and the opportunity abundant. They love to hire from within so if I see a job I want I can figure out a way to make the jump. More likely I might invent my own job and figure out where it fits at the company as my interests shift or focus.
What I know I want out of my career is to provide for my family without worry and prepare so that I can devote myself to the service of the Lord while I still have years of health to use in His cause.
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