A year later: A retrospective

To begin this story, I should probably let you know what we had been through during the four years I had worked for this company. I was hired in 2019 and uprooted my family to move from Las Vegas, which we loved, to Spanish Fork, Utah for an opportunity to really make a difference at a smaller company with some specific goals for their IT department. The move was a sacrifice, as was the move to Las Vegas, but we saw a bright future with this new company. 

When I started the job, I found out that we were going to be doing a lot of changing in the next few months. We were changing the provider for internet access at all of our locations, changing the phone system to a newer system that would require all new hardware, and finally, changing our core operating software from one vendor to another. Any of these projects would be a major undertaking on their own, but all at once was overwhelming.

Once the projects got rolling, at the beginning of 2020, you all know what happened; Covid-19 lockdowns. These lockdowns were a major problem for us because the core software we were using at the time, and moving off of, did not support remote access in any fashion. Fortunately, when I first arrived, I had recommissioned some unused virtualization servers and installed Windows Hyper-V server on them so we could use the hardware and create Virtual Servers as needed. It was fortunate that I did this because it allowed us to create virtual desktops inside the firewall that could connect to our core system and enabled remote work. Without these servers, there would have been no way for many people to do their jobs. 

Overall, as the Director of IT for this company I saved them time, money, and even, as in the case of Covid, their asses. I organized the department around sound Agile practices, brought our web development in-house and into compliance, and we were working on new mobile apps, a new web site (moving off of WordPress to a secure, self-hosted, platform. We had an amazing culture in the department and were well respected in general. 

You can understand, then, why I was so surprised to be summarily fired, along with two of my employees, with no warning, and after getting the first perfect audit our IT department had ever received. Looking back at it even today hurts a little, but I also see how much I have learned, and how much better off I am being out of what became a very toxic environment. 

What followed was several months of the mourning process trying to come to grips that I had been fired for delivering everything I had been asked to. I also lost the only real friends I had made since moving back because Covid made it impossible to see anyone but my co-workers. I started making a lot of changes in my personal life as well.

You might be able to tell by looking at the image at the top of this post, but I have lost quite a bit of weight. When I was let go from my job, I weighed in at 310 pounds. I had been around that weight for a very long time, and I wasn't really doing anything to change it, at least not in a serious way. I went to the gym, but I wasn't doing the things that get results, I was just noodling around. When I was fired, I started looking for a new job immediately, but that didn't take as much time as a regular 9-5 job, so I started spending a lot of time going for walks (sometimes more than 12 miles in a day). I also spent a lot more time going to the gym, and I went consistently. 

I lost 50 pounds in a little over a month, and continued my weight loss journey, eventually losing 100 pounds. I am currently between 205 and 210 pounds and continue to hit the gym and hike at least 5 days a week.

In the excess time I had when I wasn't looking for a job, I started taking courses on Udemy. In the last year I have refreshed my knowledge of PHP, Symfony 6, Python, SQL, JavaScript, TypeScript, and have learned React, React-Native, and even dabbled with Flutter and Dart. I started a new company with a friend, and we are working on a new app for iOS and Android. I am building an app for our family's winery and have loved getting back to my code-bender roots. 

I eventually did find a great job with Sundance Catalog, and I am very grateful to them for giving me the opportunity to join the amazing IT department. I am learning a lot and being back in retail is a nice change from the highly regulated industry I was in before. I still have a lot to learn, but I am finding new and interesting ways to contribute. 

It has been a long journey, but I realize now that being let go wasn't something that happened to me, but rather something that happened for me. I have grown in ways I never could have imagined, and while it still stings to think of all the things that we had in the works that never have happened, I am in a better place overall. 

On a side note, we were scheduled to launch a new web site about a month after I was let go, we also had begun working on new mobile apps with the amazing Atomic-32 that were slated for release in Q1, 2023. In the year since I left nothing has changed on the company's web site, and their app is the same as before I left.