Career growth in a large company

Posted on July 5th, 2010 by Sacha Chua

I’m not counting my chickens before they hatch.

But there is something really cool about exploring career growth in a large company. For one thing, I can talk about it. I can simultaneously love my current work and be curious about the possibilities. I can get advice from mentors and votes of confidence from colleagues.

It’s also pretty awesome that I can read through lots of intranet resources. When I was a graduate student applying to IBM, I used the intranet to read about behavioural interviews and other techniques. Now, in my current position, I can look for deeper information about Global Business Services and about Lotus.

The blogosphere is great, but lately it seems like there’s a consensus that working for a company is bad. Perhaps it’s just a change from grad school, but working for the right company is awesome. There’s access to resources and expertise that I wouldn’t have otherwise. There’s diversity of opinion that’s really helpful. There’s constraints that require creativity to work around – yesterday that led me to more deeply consider my solution.

- Working for the Man, Cate Huston

Big companies can be awesome.

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On This Day...

2012: “So, what do you do?” — I still have the hardest time with introductions, even more so now that I’m doing something… different. I’m not a [...]
2011: Organizing my digital life — W- upgraded our file server to a RAID-1 configuration (mirroring without parity or striping) using two 1.8-terabyte disks. Now we [...]
2009: From here to first frost — The typical first frost date in Toronto is October 6, which is 93 days away. If we allow two weeks [...]
2009: Cat portrait session — The cats very obligingly sat for a portrait session: From Cats From Cats No treats needed!
2006: Faceplant! — Day 3, accident 1. I faceplanted while going down a hill. But it was tons of fun going down that hill! [...]
2005: T-Shirt-First Development — Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users writes about T-Shirt First Development: how we just _love_ geek shirts. AMEN! Excuse me while [...]
2005: Doing Something Great — Keith over at To-Done wrote an interesting post about doing something great. I want to do Something Great. I’m crazy about helping [...]
2004: Ooooh, new toy! — In a fit of generosity, my parents got me a Sony Cybershot digital camera. I can take lots of pictures now! [...]
2004: Family bonding in the time of Google — My eldest sister Ching just texted to ask if I wanted a Gmail invite. She had a spare. I thanked her [...]
2004: Class reflections — - CS21A: Walked through the GuessingGame and CrystalBall exercises. It looked like everyone’s on track. Mentioned my decision to my MIS class. [...]
2004: Lessons learned — - Argentina Beef Loaf tastes more like vienna sausages than like SPAM. Eww. Doesn’t get nice and crisp, either. Vienna sausages [...]
2004: Documentary: me using Emacs? ;) — Andy Sy said: Is there a film documentary available somewhere showing you how you use Emacs? God knows I’ve tried and [...]
2004: “Searching for the Perfect OS” — Both Microsoft and Apple Computer are promoting technology that makes it possible for users to search for information on their computer’s [...]
2003: Article on teaching — http://www.mb.com.ph/news.php?art=35438&sect=5&fname=YC03070235438o.txt

sacha chua living an awesome life