Good things come when you keep your mouth shut about it…

Red Letter Day for me today… I woke up very non-sore from my 101 Sochin endeavor (well, at least a lot less sore than I expected). It appears that the entire world wasn’t quite crashing down after the big Oracle infrastructure move today, even though there were some performance problems they were overcome by Some Other Group.

That, and I can finally talk about my big news… I’m getting a new job within Cat! A few months ago my supervisor had pulled me into his office (well, actually down the row from his office since his office is adjacent to my workplace), and asked me if I would be interested in taking a job as a Customer Relationship Manager.

He was not sure at the time that this opportunity was going to pan out, so he asked me to keep it under my hat. He didn’t want word to get out, everyone to get all excited (especially my Team Lead) and then have The Powers That Be squash the idea. But I found out today (after frequent updates from my supervisor indicating that things were still “in process”) that I have the position and will be taking over as Customer Relationship Manager for cat.com.

This means several good things for me: I get to grow my ability to project manage and lead teams, I get to work in an area of the IT World at Cat that I’ve always wanted to, and this opens me up for the chance for another promotion sometime soon-ish. I am a little surprised at this just falling into my lap… I don’t know what I have done to provide the impression that I would be good at something like this. Maybe the point is that I can learn to get good at something new… I don’t know. 🙂

How do I feel? Excited, but a little scared all at the same time. I was comfortable in the team that I am in, I like the people, and there is a lot of opportunity there. However, one doesn’t just turn down offers like this out of the blue. Especially considering one of my longer-term goals was to get into a project management style job. There’s more room to move up the corporate ladder and actually influence IT things if I start taking roles like this and building my skills. I just didn’t figure it would happen for another 3-4 years.

Good stuff all around!!