The Guru

So, I've started my full time job ever since mid-July. And to be honest, I don't think I was exactly ready to work full-time yet. For one, a bunch of people I'm close to are still at school and I wish to be with them more than anything. Another reason is that I wasn't sure if I wanted to do what I was doing at work--mainly because, I didn't really know what I was doing AND, for awhile I really wasn't doing anything. And I hate admitting what I'm about to admit, but one of the reasons I took the job was because I had an awesome time in California last summer. Keyword: California. Of course, it was the people that made all the difference. So yes, part of that reason was because I enjoyed working with my co-workers. But, I'm going to say this (because it's something I learned)--NEVER go for a job BECAUSE of the people and not the job itself. The job should ALWAYS come first. Why? Because by now, pretty much ALL the people that I enjoyed working with are either leaving, or have already left.

Yea, you can say that I was pretty bummed to hear that my awesome manager from last summer has left the company when I joined (I am managed now by a not-so-awesome-but-I-guess-not-too-terrible-either manager). And it's not exactly encouraging when two weeks later, one of my closest co-workers/friends revealed to me that he, too, was also leaving the company.

HOWEVER, (and this is a big "however"--kind of like a plot twist), recently I've really been enjoying working. And I have to thank one person for this. We'll call him--(god I'm so bad with coming up with names)...

*5 minutes later*

We'll call him Guru (no he's not Indian). Guru joined the company about a year ago and has a tremendous amount of industry experience, not to mention technical expertise. He's kind of the "go-to" person on our team because he's incredibly sharp and quick at understanding the exact problem that is brought to him.

On top of everything he does, he has been meeting with me on a daily basis starting about 4 weeks ago. And under his guidance, I can say that I now understand much better what it is I'm doing, how what I'm doing fits into the needs of our team, the environment that our systems are on, how our system environment compares to that of other companies, etc.--basically, how everything fits together.

In addition to understanding things, I've also learned a lot technically. I won't go into the details* but I'll just say this--before, I hated it when people asked me what my job was and what I did. Because, it wasn't clear even to me what exactly I did, let alone explaining it to other people. I feel like I always gave some bullshit answer that others have told me. I mean, I obviously know what I did at work on a certain day, but how did that fit into the bigger picture? I didn't know. But now, I'm much less averse to it.

And not only that, Guru and I developed a relationship which makes work even more enjoyable for me. For one thing, we joke a lot and he calls me "boss" all the time because I always remind him what he's supposed to go over with me. Another thing that I like about him is that he always always always encourages me to ask questions. Sometimes, I might look like I have a question to ask him, but I might just be thinking, but he'll be like "ok what is it? what's the question?" I think this is how I'm able to learn so much in such a short amount of time.

Butttttttt, (and this is the part that I've been wanting to get to since the beginning of the post), he'll be gone for a month, starting tomorrow, due to personal reasons. :(

If I know for sure that a month is all he'll be away for, I'd be ok. The truth is, I don't know. I mean, that's what he tells everyone. But for all I know, he could just not come back at the end of the month. A person like him doesn't need to be in this company where everything (system environment-wise, see "*") is so screwed up. He can easily find another job elsewhere.

In fact, a question that I keep on wanting to ask him is "why are you still here?" He knows how messed up our environment is more than anyone else on my team, so why is he choosing to be here, instead of at a company where everything works efficiently and he could put his efforts to something else rather than trying to painstakingly fix our environment in little bits at a time? Sometimes I wonder why he even bothers to teach me, a newbie, so many things (yes I'm cynical like that). I mean, I love it and appreciate it greatly. But I can't help but wonder, "What's in it for you?" I suppose that he could just be very nice and want the best for me. But, I've been told multiple times that in a corporate world, every man is for himself. Once you get what you want from a place, you move on.

What it comes down to, I guess, is that if he leaves the company for good, I don't know if I'll be able to stand on my own. I don't want it to be like last summer again, where I was given little guidance and basically had little understanding of how everything worked. I mean, with the knowledge that I have now (even though it's a lot more than what I knew last summer), I don't think it's enough for me to--well, do my job. Obviously, I'll do what I'm told, but without enough understanding, I don't know if I can grow on my own (or stay stagnant).

Of course, I'm not afraid to take steps to ensure my career advancement. It's just that, without him, I think it'll be a lot harder.

--------------------

*Ok, I lied. Here are the details regarding my job and what I do. Basically, my job (so far) deals with the backend systems of a company--the "databases" that stores the company's data--namely how to efficiently utilize it to perform meaningful analysis on the data so as to ultimately help upper management and different divisions of the company to generate revenue.

"Databases" is in quotes because it's not exactly just databases--there's the source data (which is stored in different places, in different formats), and then it is extracted, transformed, and loaded into target data warehouses via ETL (extract transform load) softwares. Reporting tools then retrieves data from the data warehouse and perform analysis on it and generate reports.

In fact, I don't even think the above paragraph even begins to explain how complicated things can get. For one, there are usually three parallel environments--development, test, and production--which have the same systems installed on them. They are used by different projects. And there are a lot of connectivities that go on between the systems and the different layers in the data transfer process. There's always room for improvement in terms of making things more efficient. In fact, we have a project right now (one of the ones that I'm working on) that consists of making changes in the environment to make things go faster.

Actually, I still haven't gotten into the complexities yet. But I'll spare you (this post is getting too long). :)
If you're really curious, send me an IM or call and I'll tell you more.