Since the start of my career in IT, I have excelled at what I do. I'm very fortunate in that I really understand all the little technical details, and can also explain things well in everyday terms to people that don't have a lot of experience with computers. From the start I have always quickly become the person that both my customers and my bosses know they can hand a problem to and trust that it will be resolved without any further worry on their part. This gave me great opportunities to advance my career. I often was given responsibilities or projects that would ordinarily be outside the scope for my position. This meant that when questions of advancement arose, I already had experience and a working relationship with the people in whatever group I would be moving to. In short, I guess you could say I was really on the fast-track to success.
For a while this was great. I found my work to be challenging and rewarding. I had some really excellent bosses that gave me a lot of responsibility and didn't micro-manage my projects because they knew that I was good at what I did, and that I understood what issues they needed to deal with. I wouldn't bother them with day-to-day details, but would come to them for the decisions that were above my pay grade. Also, I would make sure they knew any specific details or problems that might arise that they would need to discuss with their bosses. I also understood how fortunate I was in this respect. I really shocked my immediate boss on one occasion by choosing to turn down a promotion, because I knew that I could not have the same support and working relationship with the person that would be my new manager. I knew that most of the people working for that manager were not happy, and many of them were actively seeking other employment.
Unfortunately, this wasn't to last. I continued to be successful, but I found that the higher up I moved in the organization, the harder it was to avoid all the office politics. I knew that this wasn't the side of the business that I had an interest in, and I had always chosen to move into higher-level, technical positions instead of more management track positions. I have no problem with supervising other people, and really enjoyed being in charge of a number of projects, but at the end of the day I wanted to continue doing the technical work that I truly enjoyed, not move to a position that required me to spend my entire day managing other people and sitting through meetings.
My success sort of came back to bite me. My managers started taking it for granted that I could accomplish whatever they promised and would agree to projects on the spot without discussing time frame or technical feasibility beforehand. I expected this in certain areas. I regularly dealt with public safety related systems. When something unexpected happens with them it has to be fixed right away. The areas where I had a problem with this was with projects for new implementations. Situations where another group had been working for months on a project and waited until the week before implementation to bring us the requirements for the system that we would have to put in place before they could launch. Many times my boss came to me and explained that we needed to resolve a problem with a new system that the vendor was unable to fix, and that it had to be done in the next two days, because they had already announced a press conference. Or we needed to find software that would meet whatever needs and deploy it to 1500 PCs in less than a week because that's the time frame the customer wanted. Meeting the customer's time frame is great, but sometimes their expectations are not realistic. Our standard policy for implementing anything new was that it had to be successfully tested by at least 5 people in the IT department. Then it had to be demonstrated to the customer's department and tested by a similar number of their staff. Written approval then had to be granted by all of the testers and both managers before anything could be implemented. The reality was that in the best cases this would take two or three days to organize and complete. And then only if that was the only thing I was working on.
All of this meant longer hours and more stress for me, in an industry where 60-70 hour weeks and high stress were already the norm. Instead of truly enjoying my work, I came to completely dread having to go to work every day. I knew it was time to move on.
We came to Mazatlan for a month-long vacation: something that took an act of God to get approval for at work. More extra hours allowed me to complete all the projects I was currently working on, including documenting everything, making sure that there were other people who could answer any questions about them, and that everyone knew who those people were. My job required me to carry a Blackberry and a laptop with a cellular card 24 hours a day. It was an incredible relief to leave those behind since I wouldn't have coverage in Mexico. I confirmed with my boss before I left that our plan did not include coverage in Mexico, and that I would be completely unavailable. Both my voice mail and email explained that I would be out of the country and unreachable for a month. While we were here, we fell in love with Mazatlan, and started thinking about how we could move here. That was reinforced when I returned to find my voice mail and email full, and that my boss had actually assigned me new projects while I was gone with due dates before I returned.
At this point I guess you could say I tripped and fell off the fast track. We started making plans for how we could move. We owned our own business, aside from my having a full time job. It was successful and growing, but did not bring in enough money for me to quit my day job and continue to live in Fort Worth. While we were in Mazatlan we spent a lot of time researching cost of living. It turned out that we could live a reasonable lifestyle here on the income from our business. In fact, we could live a better lifestyle than we were used to in the US. We made our plans, and I quit my job - one of the happiest days of my life. Most of the time when I told people I was quitting my job and moving to Mexico, they assumed I was joking. If they believed me, then they immediately started trying to talk me out of it. It really brought to mind a line from one of my favorite Jimmy Buffett songs: "Now his friends all worry about him. They think he's throwing his future away. Its kinda hard being upwardly mobile when you're laying in the sun all day. So they call him up to convince him, tell him what its all about. But on the phone he can never stop laughing. No, got the whole damned thing figured out."
When we moved down here I planned on focusing on our US businesses. Jennifer owns a web design company, Beachfront Web(www.beachfrontweb.com), and we have a web hosting company, Beachfront Host (www.beachfronthost.com). My plan was to manage the servers for the web design and hosting company. I really thought I was done with direct computer support.
However, now that I live here, and have helped some friends out with a few things, I have been reminded how much I still really enjoy computer support. Just like when I started, I find troubleshooting and fixing problems for people to be very rewarding. One of my favorite challenges is helping a customer or a business find a way to make their computers do more for them. Cut out on paperwork, keep better records, use a website or email to allow a business to offer services that they couldn't have before. What could be better than doing what I enjoy while enjoying the beautiful beach and slower paced lifestyle that Mazatlan is famous for? So after spending some time on the beach talking about it, we made a decision and went through all the paperwork with Migracion and Hacienda. I am now proud to announce the launch of MazPC (www.mazpc.com) I look forward to doing what I enjoy best, and helping you to get more use and less headache out of your computer.
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The new website looks amazing! Best of luck!