Work

Hello Hoboken, I Will Barely Remember You

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Hoboken, you make it so difficult to dislike you. The Times Square office had a fantastic view. You had to go on one off that with a gorgeous skyline view of Manhattan. You took a standard desk setup that I had for 2 years in Times Square and you had to kick it up a notch with a hydroelectric standing desk standard. Now that is cool and I promised my neighbors to annoy them with the hydronic lift randomly let’s face it that function is lost on me. Simply for coolness factor it gets points though.

Then the office has to be nice and bright with lots of personal space to go if I needed it. Then there is a boutique coffee shop only a few blocks away that was on par with Grumpy’s.

I almost like you Hoboken. Almost… all the things I discussed are great yet you still will always be geographically undesirable. My morning commute was around one hour and twenty minutes. I took a local for a seat however at the time I traveled the express isn’t that much faster.

In the end let’s face it I will hardly remember you Hoboken. You are a 4 week layover until London. I footnote in my life. I will be back a few more times. Till then…

Bye For Now Times Square

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Times Square can be a challenging place to work.  It is crowded with tourists most of the year.  The tour bus people always harass you to buy tickets even when I feel like it is pretty obvious i am not a tourist.  Then there are the off brand cartoon characters trying to get you to give them money to take photos with them.  30 Rock was totally on the money about them.  With all of that I still love working in Times Square.

When describing were i worked i had to be more detailed than just i work in times square.  Especially for those from out of town.People would ask oh where in Times Square? And I would say right in time square… If you look up from my window you see the ball. I would also tell the story about the 10 stories high red Walgreens sign flashing at my window annoying the crap out of me for about two years. I get the blinds closed pretty much the entire time.

I do remember many days over the years I would grab my coffee and start walking to the office and enter time square with all the activity even at 7:50 in the morning you get kind of excited. It may be a New York centric thing to say however time square is arguably one of the centers of the world. Even with all the negatives it was has been cool working here.

Friday however was my last day working out of Times Square. My group is relocating to an office in Hoboken. I found out about the Hoboken move after my London relocation was already pretty much done. The move wasn’t really going to impact me much since the overlap of me going to Hoboken before London would be for only a short period of time. It works out to about six weeks between when the move happened and when I will relocate. During that time. I’m glad i am relocating to another country since this move adds about 20 to 30 minutes to my commute. Not the end of the world however it pushes the commute to Borderline challenging especially when I need to get home to pick up the girls,

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with Hoboken. We toured the office about a week ago and it looks really nice. The lunch room has a gorgeous view of the Manhattan skyline. It looks like there’s plenty of things to do around the office for food. Maybe not as much is Times Square however how many places have that much stuff to do like times square? It’s just that it’s further from my house and it’s not time square. Sorry Hoboken. I’m just being honest. You’ll never have a place in my heart like the Times Square office did.

I’m also going to miss a lot of my old group. I might have moved organizations in May however I still sat near people I worked with for several years. We would still go to lunch and grab drinks after work. I know all of that would change when I move overseas however this brings that date up by six weeks that I was not originally planning on.

I still hope to grab drinks now again before I leave. I have to pass right by the Times Square office on my way home from the Hoboken office anyway. It’s not really that far out-of-the-way to meet up with people. I wonder how many times actually will do it. It is still my intention to make the effort while I am still in NY.

I don’t think I’ll find another office when at 8:15AM you will hear cheering in the background because some crowd of people is yelling at the TV morning show being filmed a block or two away.

Oh Yeah it’s Been Nine Years (and a Month)

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Today it has been nine years (and a month) of my working at Thomson Reuters. On one hand it does feel like I’ve been here for a long time. On the other hand it’s still challenging to grasp that it’s been eight years. One of the things I’ve learned that’s good about a large company is it changes as well as your role changes so even though it’s been eight years I’m not doing the same thing I was doing when I started in September 2008.

Thomson Reuters for me by the numbers was something I was thinking about in my head the other day. In the eight years that I’ve been lots of things have changed for me. I have managed five different groups. Six if you count the one I had for about a week or so however I don’t. I’ve had six different positions. I’ve gone through four different managers. Funny enough I switched between three of them within a three-month period that started with a voicemail when I was returning from my honeymoon. I have worked out of three different offices as well as working from home however if you really counted out I’ve gone from Office 1, to Office 2, to Office 3, back to Office 2.

On a personal side I have lived in three different apartments. I have dated, got engaged, got married. Oh and I also have two kids within those nine years. In context my life is vastly different than it was on September 8, 2008. On a personal and professional level far better off than where I was. In anti-climactic fashion I realized about a year and a half after it happened that I have been at Reuters longer than any other company.

Note apparently I had a bunch of posts that I wrote last year that were actually submitted as drafts and never public.  This post was one of them.  I updated the metrics on work and the years working at TR however not much else changed in the post.  I missed posting on my anniversary so i am posting on the anniversary and a month.

Coincidence

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“Never ignore coincidence. Unless, of course, you’re busy. In which case, always ignore coincidence.” Crazy that a Doctor Who quote is semi-appropriate for describing how I feel about something at work.

Of course during the same issue I kept thinking and said out loud at least once “if Woody had only gone to the police, none of this would have every happened. I guess that I am just well rounded in my pop culture quotes.

8 Years and Counting

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Today is the eighth anniversary of my starting to work at Thomson Reuters. On one hand it does feel like I’ve been here for a long time. On the other hand it’s still challenging to grasp that it’s been eight years. One of the things I’ve learned that’s good about a large company is it changes as well as your role changes so even though it’s been eight years I’m not doing the same thing I was doing when I started in September 2008.

Thomson Reuters for me by the numbers was something I was thinking about in my head the other day. In the eight years that I’ve been working here lots of things have changed for me. I have managed five different groups. Six if you count the one I had for about a week or so however I don’t. I’ve had five different positions. I’ve gone through three different managers. Funny enough I switched between all them within a three-month period that started with a voicemail when I was returning from my honeymoon. I have worked out of three different offices as well as working from home however if you really counted out I’ve gone from Office 1, to Office 2, to Office 3, back to Office 2.

On a personal side I have lived in three different apartments. I have dated, got engaged, got married. Oh and I also two kids within those eight years. In context my life is vastly different than it was on September 8, 2008. On a personal and professional level far better off than where I was. In anti-climactic fashion I realized about a year and a half after it happened that I have been at Reuters longer than any other company.

Be Here Now

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Last year I went to some culture training in London for work.  I have wanted to write about the experience for a while and I keep putting it off.  Much of what I learned I have been actively trying to use every day.  That of course was the point of the culture training, to get everyone taking part to think and act differently in their interactions with each other.  At at the end of the training we were asked to write down things we learned at the training that we wanted to remember to do every day.We were given an “I will” card to write the items down on and put it in our wallets.  I don’t keep the card in my wallet but it sits at the base of my monitor at work so i have it to reference if I ever need to.  I keep a picture of it in my Evernote so I always have it with me.  On my trip to Minnesota last month I was having dinner with several managers including my manager and his manager and the topic of the cards came up.  Out of the 5 of us present everyone remembered what they had on their card or produced it out of their wallet to show they still had it.  Some of these people had taken this training 2 years ago.  It was interesting to see that everyone was still invested in changing our behaviors with each other, and that I wasn’t the only person actively working to inprove.

I have been mindful of things I want to improve on however that experience got me wanting to renew my efforts at self improvement.  The first item on my “I will” card was a reminder that I will apply what i learned at the workshop.  To me that was a catch all to just remember to think about what I learned and not forget.  That is harder than it seems.  There are many days were I don’t remember however thankfully I think the majority of the time I am mindful of things i want to be doing.  The first I will that I learned that I wanted to live by is “be here now”.

Be here now is a fascinating concept that can be applied to work life as well as personal life.  It simply is to remind me to be in the moment and avoid distractions.  At work that means focusing on a meeting or a conversation and not multi-task.  It means paying attention and giving what you are doing your undivided attention.  At home it means to not be distracted by work.  To me it means that I want to leave my phone on my desk or if i have to in my pocket when i get home and not be distracted by it or what it is alerting to me.  I get so little time with my kids when I get home and almost no time in the morning during the week.  I want to make use of that valuable time and not be distracted by my phone, work or anything else.  There are days when I am.  I am not perfect but i am getting better.  I want to get to a place were i put my devices away in a drawer and not worry about stuff.

Maybe I am concerned about this because I am in the technology field or because i read about how kids react to parents distracted by devices.  I also read and see how families and small kids just zone out with devices when together.  I  worry about that with my family.  I know MC and I are role models for them and the girls watch what we do and try to emulate us.  That is why be here now is important to me on a personal level as well as a professional one.

The training was a very enlightening experience for me.  Seeing how it affected and continues to guide others that I work with is also good to see.

Be here now was one of 4 items on my I will card.  I hope to write about the other ones in the near future.  One of the points in an upcoming post I think will have a lot to do with be here now so I wanted to write about it first.

Note the photo in this post is from my desk at home.  Everyone who went through the training got that placard.  I see it around my office here and there.  I know people who put up posters in their garage to remind them as they got home to be mindful.  I felt the biggest impact for me would be at my desk at home since that is where i put my bag and keys, etc right when i get home.

Teamwork Is an Individual Skill

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Over the past year and a half my team has been working on ways to improve how we work.  There are many aspects of this, and I am deliberately being vague with the high level.  One part of this improvement goal is to transform into a high performance team.  Turns out that isn’t just some buzz term.  There really is a definition for it and proven ways to get there.  Going into this process I had no idea!  Kidding aside this renewed focus at improvement has had me fascinated.

One of the trainers who I am generally friendly with recommended to me several books to read to help better my understanding beyond the training classes and coaching I have gotten.  The first one I read was “Teamwork Is an Individual Skill: Getting Your Work Done When Sharing Responsibility” by Christopher Avery.  I thought it was a fascinating read.  Much of it was common sense but still I found myself not doing much of what it suggests.  It also made several points that were counter intuitive in todays business world but after reading the book and talking to others that I trust their judgment the concepts really made sense to me.  Ever since finishing the book I have been trying to adopt the concepts for myself and in hopes that my team also adopts them.  One major point of the book is i can’t expect the team to do what I want.  I can only influence them by my own actions.

I read the book on my commute home from work.  It was a good read and as much as it wasn’t as exciting as a novel I was very pleased I read it.  So much so that I want to read more books like it to help in my quest to be a better manager and a better member of a team.

This wasn’t the first book I have read for this initiative but it is the first one I am blogging about. I am hoping to write some more posts about some additional books that i have found were extremely valuable.

The challenges of Google Stickiness

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The biggest challenge I have seen with getting rid of my Google Account is that I don’t really want to get rid of it 100%.  I plan on getting rid of the account I have been using because it is the only way to delete some things.  For example i moved out my Google Voice number but all my call records and voice mail cannot be removed unless i manually delete them or if i delete the entire account.  With thousands of log entries and voice mail i won’t be doing any manual deletions so nuking my entire account is the only option.

Since i want to delete everything i will lose anything i cannot backup or move.  For example any purchased Android app’s and media I won’t be able to keep.  There is no way to transfer purchases.  I was smart and only bought one ebook from Google and never bought any music.  I continue to do that with Amazon MP3 just because the MP3 has no DRM and allows for me to keep using it even if i ever get rid of Amazon.  Google and Amazon for that matter tie your ebooks to the account you bought it with.  The one ebook isn’t an issue since i had already bought it on my amazon account due to issues with the google reader.  

My biggest challenge is all the Android app’s I have purchased. Over the years I may have spent $100 or so on apps. Many of them I do not even use anymore but on principle i am not pleased with having to give them all up because they are tied to other services that I don’t want. In the end I think I am going to bite the bullet and live without the apps, but I am not happy. I already setup a new Google ID just for registering Android devices and any App purchases. Going forward that will be my approach, dedicated accounts for specific services that I need/want to use. Right now all i think i need is something for Android and Youtube.

Five Year Work Anniversary

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In some ways it is hard to believe I have been at Thomson Reuters for 5 years.  So much has changed in my life in five years and so much seems not to have changed at all.  I love that I still get excited for things I am working for and changes in my group keep things new and interesting.  I have been in the same position for a year and a half but after 11 months the responsibilities changed enough that it is half like a new position again.  Working with great people on interesting technology helps also!  Here is to another 5 years if the future is as interesting as the last five!

As always when I mention work I would like to note that anything written on this blog are my own opinions and thoughts and are not those of Thomson Reuters.

Kanban Training

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Over the past two days most of my team in NY and I have been in training related to a project we are doing that involves implementing Kanban. The training was really good. I know the trainer and he is very energetic. He didn’t disappoint. The training was very interactive and got everyone thinking. I think it was really helpful and I hope to use a lot of what we learned and apply it to the real world. Its one thing to try something (I have been trying a Kanban implementation with my team for a few months) and it is another to get really in depth info from experts and be able to use it better. I already learned of several ways i can modify what we are doing to improve on it outside of the project we went to the training for.