Stepping Outside my Comfort Zone

A little over 2 1/2 years ago I started a new career at New York Life. I fully expected to spend a lengthy employment and retire from New York Life. Up until 2 weeks ago I was having a successful career in which I was thriving and growing as an individual. I was presented multiple “Thanks To You” awards that recognize employee effort’s and was presented many opportunities to take place in key company initiatives.

During my 2 plus year stint at NYL I was able to help remediate security gaps, assist in virtualizing the DB environment, assist in identifying servers that should remain physical, install/configure/tune vendor installs and take place in many debugging sessions. While taking part in these projects/tasks I was able to make many new colleagues, co-workers and friends. These folks helped me grow technically, professionally and personally. I will miss working with the teams and challenges that were presented to me while at NYL.

So let me rewind the last 17 plus years of my career. During these 17 years I have worked for Nielsen Media Research, Publix Supermarkets and New York Life. All of these major corporations have assisted with my growth. If we look at the common dominator here I have always been comfortable working in stable large-scale environments.  Like a good pair of shoes an old t-shirt or a favorite comfort food, it is hard to step away from this type of stability.

It is 17 years later and I am always amazed at how far I have come. Around May 17th, I received a text asking me if I knew anyone who would be interested in a full- time job at a consulting firm. After many hours of discussion on the topic with Missy and my son Parker, we said let’s hear what they have to say and see if this move is for us. A good portion of this discussion took place at the Epcot Flower Festival which with its good food and beautiful flowers made the discussion less stressful.

At this point you are probably saying enough Dan get to the point. Drum roll please…   As of Wednesday 6/2/2015 I will no longer be working at New York Life. My family and I have decided to step outside of our comfort zone and accept a full-time position at Pragmatic Works. I guess one could say “out of the frying pan into the fire”.  I am excited at the prospects that this new position will provide me. I really enjoy being a DBA, but I have always had a secret love for other facets of the Microsoft Stack. I plan on branching out into Cloud Services, SSRS, SSAS and SharePoint advanced topics/functionality. Yes,  I said SharePoint!  None of this is guaranteed but I am going to build on my current skillset providing value to Pragmatic Works. I am a darn good admin but I am much more than that and need to tap into those skillsets more. At Pragmatic Works I will be challenged to do just that. I am excited to start working for a company that promotes and encourages self-growth and encourages motivated individuals to grow.  So as of 6/3/2015 I will be in Jacksonville walking thru the doors of Pragmatic Works and becoming a member of an already stellar team.