Career hop

There are hunters and there are gatherers.  I’m more the latter, my wife the former.  I like to settle down and dig my roots in.  What can I say, I don’t like change.

The same goes with my job choices.  My first job post-college lasted 10+ years.  It basically fell into my lap — a recently graduated upperclassman contacted me during my senior year, asking if I wanted a job.  I said yes, and so did the company.  MTSI was a fantastic experience for me; great people, great training, great experiences.

Then I moved on to Colorado.  And what a wild, dizzying path that has become.  Liteye Systems brought me here, and I am forever grateful.  I found my wife here, and my life is all the richer.

Soon after Sarah and I married, we moved into our first house together in the old part of Colorado Springs.  Liteye is located in Denver.  The distance from point A to point B is about an hour’s worth of travel time.  On good traffic days with perfect weather.  It’s been a long 6 years of commuting. Again, I settled in and stayed perhaps longer than was necessary.

And so, this summer became Project Find-A-New-Job.  Enter Thermo Fisher Scientific smack dab in the middle of Colorado Springs.

I had been wanting to branch out a bit from Liteye.  Having been immersed in the rugged military product development world for quite a while, I wanted to see what else I could do.  Thermo Fisher fit that bill.  It’s in a completely different market: high-end scientific and laboratory products.  It’s a branch of industry that I had no experience in, so I was excited to take part.

It’s also a very large company with a small local branch.  This was something I was looking for specifically too.  My previous couple job experiences ranged in the sub-50 employee size and were both startups.  Though those environments can be very exhilarating and dynamic, they can also be occasionally chaotic.  I was craving a larger company culture, where processes and infrastructure were more fully developed.

And what can I say about a commute of only 15 minutes?  As the snow steadily fell this week, I revealed in the fact that I wasn’t stuck on I-25.  Being a true “local” of the Springs now, I’m eager to settle in here and reinvest all this extra time I have on my hands into my family and friends.