I had a 1 on 1 with my boss yesterday. He says I'm doing really well and making a positive impact on the company. So glad to hear that.
I tend to overthink everything and I end up getting this stressful feeling that I'm not doing as well as I need to do in order to keep my job. The idea of having to go back to my old job gives me a sometimes overwhelming sense of dread.
Was cool at first. Great company to work for, 2 buildings to manage. ~330 employees.
Over the 3.5 years I was there, the company exploded in size. About 14 buildings to manage and over 1000 employees. Too much work for one person to do. Constant 60 - 80 hour weeks.
Had to work during every vacation I ever took because I was the only network guy and they didn't have a solution for that.
When my dad died in late 2018, I was sitting in the back of my aunt and uncle's SUV on the way to his funeral with my laptop open and working on stuff.
On call 24/7/365. Pretty calm at first when the company was small, but absolute hell at the end when they got so much larger.
They eventually hired a contractor to help me out, but there was so much to do that we both ended up working 60 - 80 hour weeks all the time.
Being the only person in the organization that understood networking had its pros and cons. I was the network subject matter expert for the company, but I became responsible for all things network and network adjacent. If some random device had an ethernet port and needed to be set up, it was given to me to connect to the network and do the full configuration. Time clocks. Loading dock call box. SONOS music players (pain in the ass in an enterprise network), other music streaming devices, etc.
New job: Network engineer at a grocery store company
Huuuuuuuuuuuuuuge network, lots to learn. ~350 stores, and another hundred or so admin/warehouse sites.
About 22 people total on the network team, split between different responsibilities. Data center, edge (stores, warehouses, administrative offices), and wireless. Including off shore support so that we don't have to do most minor things overnight unless it's something they can't figure out.
Multiple teams that are responsible for things that I was responsible for at my old job. A whole network security group that's separate from the network engineers that handles network security issues and policies. Multiple teams by region that are responsible for doing physical work on site. Rack and stack, cable management, console access, etc.
I work 50 hours at the most on a busy week here and there.
