§ Is Gippy a corporate geek?
Well, good news came down the pipe today at work – I get to shed the Jr. Web Designer moniker and start referring to myself as Web & Graphic Designer. This is a huge step as I started this job with just a working knowledge of Adobe GoLive’s automated workflow and have since moved on to programming XHTML, PHP and CSS all by hand and have gained the ability to run a command line Unix box and install and manage a multitude of services on it.
I guess I could just sum that up as $geek++;
The surprising part is that I’ll be making a bit more than I asked for in this move. What I had asked for when discussing moving up in the company would be at the very beginning of what this position deserved to be paid and what my boss did was push for me to get a bit over that. So not only do I shed a putrid Jr. moniker I gain a handsome new salary.
This now brings up a very sticky question. Just how long do I stay with the company. I’ve never really been comfortable with the corporate environment and how the whole process works. Don’t take that the wrong way – this company is treating the majority of its employees well and expects them to perform up to (and beyond in most cases) their pay level. I’m not sure what other salaries are like (though I’ve seen the compensation incentives that the sales monkeys get and it is niiiiiiice) but from I’ve experienced the company is willing to invest in its employees. For example – last year saw a good hike in insurance rates and a switch in plans that the company holds. This also meant a higher monthly payment needed by the employees to keep the same level of coverage. So what did the company do? We all got a raise in the amount that our coverage cost would have changed.
That was a bold move and said volumes about how they see us as employees.
Just recently they added a few other incentives such as Stock Appreciation Rights and a restructured way of getting people in the running for PClub (a yearly trip to Hawaii for top performers in the sales department and the employee of the year) in which they have now added a single top performer from each department to go as well.
Shit, they’ve even talked about getting me a Mac if that is what will make my job that much more productive and aid in development. That is a huge step for a Microsoft based company whose whole future is based on Microsoft proliferation and who just gained Microsoft Certified Gold status.
So, what to do? I make a good wage, my work is getting better, and there is promise of getting off of Windows in my work day. Do I sacrifice my moral anti-authoritarian and liberal view of the world and ideals of how I like to work for this? My secret goal, ok – not so secret goal, has been to eventually move into my own and push Top Frog Graphics to being my work, and with the recent rise of Fuzzy Coconut freelance seemed like a very promising future for me. But with these new developments in both the company and the work I find it hard to actually leave. I mean, this company raised me significantly in salary from my previous job and I just went through another significant hike.
I’m thinking Gippy might have to lay the idealistic independent dreams aside and realize that he’s found a decent job with a decent company that has given him not only the experience to demand a higher salary but the means to continue to learn and get better at what I do.
Methinks that Gippy is going to start drinking from the corporate kool-aid and like it.
Tagged as: work corporate-slave
