A month ago, I teased that there would be some changes with my primary source of income and the technical work that took up a majority of my busy-time from 2010 to today. Since my primary diet these days consists of Ensure-like liquid meals, I have a spare 35 minutes on my Friday lunch break to talk a bit about some of these changes. It’s been Spring for a few weeks but there’s snow in tomorrow’s forecast. That’s life here in New Hampshire.
I was brought to this area of the country in September of 2010 with the objective to utilize our customer base to drive improvements to our global map. The objective aligned very well with what I was doing in San Francisco. Find opportunities, develop tools and processes to capture data, cultivate a community and utilize feedback to drive improvements to our core product. I performed in this role for 90 days before some parts of it were shifted. The shift wasn’t a negative one but my role expanded from community to other aspects of our company. Like any Project Manager, I was given ownership of projects that were immature and ones that were live and in-use by our customers around the world.
I’m really lucky to have been given the trust and opportunity from late 2010 to early 2014 to develop some projects that I myself came up with. Some of these never saw the light of day but I feel really good that I was able to bring elements of Gamification, Metrics and Mobile to our map input technologies from customers. I also worked to break down some barriers that enabled a really direct connection between customers and the humans that edit our map. Finally, acting as a subject-matter expert for our marketing, communications and community feedback teams was valuable and rewarding. We have a vibrant discussion forum today and support operators who help customers give us map feedback through web and mobile tools. Not every dream was realized but I like to think that we accomplished a lot in 4 years.
In 2014, I was given a new role that took up about half of my time as liaison between our map operations and some of our largest customers. It was a technical, operational and outward facing role with a lot of visibility up the chain to our company leadership. It’s a role I still own today and I really love it. I can have a huge impact and the teams are small enough that we move pretty quickly at applying new processes that save a lot of time and effort for our editors and engineering teams. This role also allowed for a lot more travel in 2014 which I loved.
There’s more that I wish could be said but vagueness is one of those aspects of this kind of work. Maybe in 20 years I can tell more of the stories from the past 5 years.
The first 90 days at this company and then the next 4 years were closely aligned to my strengths and work at the startup level but as time wore on, I did get further away from the things I really loved and, as my 2nd manager here told me, “…more a part of the corporate structure”. He also told me every year that I should try to maintain my startup-style of getting things done. It’s an asset to move quickly and iterate a concept rather than plan things out years in advance while competitors pass you by. I’ve tried to apply this to the work I do every day.
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In March, things changed a bit. The first change is that I transitioned to a manager that was local to me (as in, the same building) instead of a boss who was 2,000 miles away in Belgium. My 3rd boss at this company is luckily, someone I’ve always respected. His style, leadership and loyalty to the people in his team is evident after you sit down for 5 minutes. I consider this a win for me to be a part of his group but I have nothing negative to remark on about my former boss. In fact, we still work closely on many global projects. My new manager also has high expectations of people in his team. It can sometimes feel intimidating but when you’re working on something, you should be able to answer anything about it without having to check your notes. He expects your A-game and getting your hands dirty and if you aren’t of this kind of personality, it can be a challenge. It’s forced me to dive much deeper in data than I ever have at this job and I work more effectively because of this.
While one aspect of my old role remains, I have some new tasks for 2015. These tasks also align very well with the original objectives for me when hired in 2010. My team is now even smaller and my manager is 10 feet away where we have quick iterations which takes me back to my startup days in SF where you could reach over and tap your CEO on the shoulder and throw an idea out.
Also this year, I’m going through training to be a full-fledged cartographer and I’m already feeding a lot of map improvements to our team in North America.
Saying more would be nice but that’s challenging given how much stuff we work on being secretive and our own IP. I do get a lot of readers emailing me to ask how my work is going because, back in SF, I wrote a lot about my work and things that were going on and not so much anymore. That’s the nature of working for a large, publicly traded company.
Things are good at work. Next week, I’ll try to get around posting some photos of my new office setup and blurring out anything too private.
Time to connect with our customers for a few hours, discuss some process ideas with one of my editors and then have some after-work drinks with colleagues. A lot has changed in the last month and it’s going to be a great year!
In closing, the future is uncertain but I could see myself here for another 5 years and beyond. I also feel very lucky when looking back on my career for the past 10 years in the workforce as an adult. I’ll be 29 just before celebrating my 5th anniversary at this company. I’ve worked for Apple, managed parts of a successful IT company, a profitable blog, spoken at events, written a book, worked for successful and failed startups and still run my own profitable startup with 2 employees in my spare time. Life has been good to me and being only 29 without a college degree and very little formal training, it feels like a blessing to be able to do the work I do every day without feeling like anyone is there to hold me back. Who knows where I’ll be in 5 years.
One thing is for sure. I’ll still be writing and taking photos and traveling and hopefully, working at TomTom.
Thanks to you, my readership, for checking out this blog from time to time. I appreciate it.