Promotion

Seven days ago marked my year anniversary with Articulated Man, which Sarah and I celebrated with a bottle of wine we have been saving from her trip through the Champaign region in France. It was most delightful.

On Wednesday I flew into Chicago for a week long Development Sprint, which is serving as the kickoff for a large internal development project that will hopefully be the engine of the company for the next couple of election cycles. I had requested an annual review to go over whatever stuff I might be able to improve upon, and since I was going to be in town we figured we could just do it in person, which we did last night.

The good news is that I seem to be doing well and got positive reviews. The better news is that I am receiving a raise and a title promotion to reflect the job I actual do, as opposed to the one I was hired for. Which is not to say I don't still do that job, which was "Developer", but that I really do a ton more stuff on a day-to-day basis that Developer really doesn't encapsulate. The cool part is that I get to select my own title.

The current list of possibilities include:

• Lead Systems Administrator
• Systems Director
• Information Systems Director
• Information Technology Director
• Information Technology Manager

I'm not a big fan of the first, since "Systems Administrator" evokes images of a dude working in the basement... and while I don't really have a problem with that image per se, it really isn't the sort of title I would want to use as a platform to go other places. Don't get me wrong, I expect to be with AM for many years to come, but someday I'd like to go into policy and sysadmin doesn't exactly scream policy proficiency. But the term director and manager are certainly more sexy and can mean some cool things going forwards. I'm open to suggestions if there are others out there, otherwise I plan to make my decision in a couple of days.

Update:

I went with Information Systems Director.