I have progressed

Two Thursdays back, a few days short of completing the first month of my fifth year with my current employer, I received, for the first time, a letter that indicated that I have been moved to the next role. And to make things clearer, the movement is to the next higher role and not in the other direction.

While the reader may think that this is something great and worthy of some kind of celebration, truth be told, this is the first time in my career that upon receiving such a communication, I had a level of composure that even a Zen practitioner would have envied, if a Zen practitioner could indeed envy.

In theory, I could have gotten this change in 2007, but at the time of consideration of role change, it was just my first year in the organization. When the time came in 2008, I felt that I wasn’t given the change as a penalty for everything that transpired in the middle of 2007 – I have chronicled the sufferings in these posts between June and October of 2007. And in 2009, I was deemed to have improved drastically, but since I hadn’t passed a set of internal certifications, I wasn’t eligible to get this change.

But this time around, I was eligible on all parameters and more importantly, was still deemed to be good enough to get the change. And with the support of my current bosses, I did get it this time.

In my opinion, I work the same way that I worked 3 years back. The real big difference from then on has been the internal customers for my project, who have been a thoroughly professional lot and have been extremely co-operative. There have been instances where I have slipped up, but instead of focusing their energy in just blaming me, they have gone around and helped me get back on track. That was not the case 3 years ago, when a similar group was only intent on associating the project’s risk squarely on me.

And I have also been very fortunate to get a pretty cooperative team and more importantly, I had a couple of outstanding folks working at my client’s office. Were it not for these guys, I don't think I would have progressed this time either.

So what have I become now? To quote a comment I made in Facebook, I have now become a Senior Vetti Officer from being a regular Vetti Officer. And Vetti Officer = Project Manager.

Based on the current organizational structure in my company, I won’t be eligible to be promoted for another 3 years at the minimum. This structure was revamped late last year and hence, quite a few people who were in higher levels are now at the same level that I am in. So, I will have a pretty tough competition 3 years later, when the already senior crowd would obviously be more favored to move on. Let’s wait and see what happens in the future!