This month marks the end of my employment with a company I called home for the past seven years (sans 2 months). I started at GOVECS in March of 2011. I was hired through an online job listing, by an American dude who also happened to be the co-founder. Statistically speaking, what are the odds of buying a one-way ticket to Poland, and without any connections, friends, or otherwise, getting hired off of the street by a company whose owner just happens to be an American citizen and understands your weird southern California point of view.

(Ok, I know, you can actually quantify this by taking the population of the city of Wrocław, divide that by the companies hiring back in 2011, and then again by American run companies to boot, but I’m trying to make a point here people. I got lucky is what I’m sayin’.)

 

 

I started my career at GOVECS as a Process Engineer, which to some extent I was sort of learning on the fly along with the steady increase of production volume. Being a geek at heart, electric mobility quickly became my passion and I started writing, blogging, photographing, researching, and generally having a lot of fun at work which led to a promotion into a Marketing Manager position, or as some describe to this day, a Facebook Manager position.

With company growth and our co-founder’s vision of the future, a PMO (Project Management Office) was established about two years ago and I was promoted one last time to a Project Manager role along with a couple of guys within the organization.

Through my project management training, my Project Management Professional certification, and my introduction into the world of PMI (Project Management Institute), along with knowledge and experience gained by working with some really awesome people within GOVECS, I am where I am today, which I think is a step in a very bright direction. Most recently, I was the project manager of the electric Schwalbe scooter development, where together with a team of truly inspiring people we delivered the scooter seen below.

 

However, there were certain aspects of that last change that I never really got fully onboard with which lead to frustration, deteriorating productivity on my part, and ultimately to my resignation from the company. A great quote often found on LinkedIn comes to mind:

People don’t leave their companies,
they leave their managers.

I recently read in “Born for This” by Chris Guillebeau, that your job should be a perfect blend of money, joy, and flow. When one of these gets off-balance, the job begins to lose its appeal. Of course, as with most properly thought through decisions, a move this big has many components. All of mine just added up to my leaving.

Nevertheless, I am grateful for the experience and lessons learned over the past seven years, and especially over the last two, which have really defined the trajectory of my future. Or at the very least, have given me a clearer vision of where I want to go professionally.

Thank you, and goodbye.

On to the next chapter.