Three Years at Acquia

Today marks my third anniversary of working at Acquia. This job has been more stressful than I imagined it but also with more laughs, learning and love than I imagined. Today was a good example, where an issue affected multiple customers and I ended up being the communications lead for the problem, but through teamwork and empathy we each played our part and kept things as light as possible while we figured out what was wrong.

I’m not saying I don’t love sleep, but every day I’ve looked forward to getting to the office and on the video hangout to work with my colleagues. There has never been a day where I wanted to get the hell out of there, and compared to previous jobs in my career, I never went home so exhausted that I couldn't do anything else.

The week leading up today has led to reflection around what it means to do essentially the same thing at the same spot in the organization chart for 3 years, and the challenges associated with working in a different city than my colleagues. A situation with the product developed by the team in Toronto led to a senior engineer realizing the value of having me in the same room, though, and while it took 2 days to pound on what was ailing the system, I was happy about the response to me as a customer support representative, that is, someone with a technical ability and confidence with technology with an understanding of the processes. The only regret of those past two days is I didn't get to show how the Support organization works as a team, but I am happy to have been able to showcase the access level and responsibility we're trusted with, and our orientation and reputation towards being as helpful as possible.

This week's work anniversary has also rejuvenated thoughts around levelling up. Chelsey Troy’s Levelling Up series tackles the subject of programming. In reading it, I was inspired to think more broadly about levelling up as a person. Getting in the swing of cooking for myself, joining an executive, seriously investing in hobbies, involving myself with the neighbourhood association, all those are all things I started after moving to Toronto. I think of taking care of my physical health, taking all opportunities to socialize (even if they have tended to be mostly over video, and taking advantage of the general situation of living in Canada's biggest and therefore best city, but I also think of what skills are going to be of most use in my 40s and what I don't have to do anymore.