As some of you know I started a new job with Los Angeles County at the beginning of August and I have been there a month so I thought it is about time I posted about it. At the beginning of July I left my previous position with a consulting firm I had been with for a year and took a month off to get ready for the wedding, honeymoon, and moving out. We got home from Hawaii on the 2nd and I started on the 6th. They hired a group of new developers and put us all through 3 weeks of training classes in a bunch of different areas like communication skills and software testing.
Now that I’m out of training and getting settled into my team I find that I am really starting to like working for the County of Los Angeles. First of all I’m at the Imperial building in Downey so I have a nice 5 minute / 2.5 mile commute which has made a huge difference. This cuts down my time spent in the car by over an hour and fifteen minutes per day which means I get home earlier and incur less stress from the drive home. The shorter commute is also saving me about $1000 a year in gas.
I’m already plugged into a team and working on an active project so I’m feeling good about being able to contribute so quickly. Working for the county is a nice change in that I’m not working for some company whose only concern is making a buck. Here I feel like the money isn’t the only thing motivating me, there is also a sense of being able to help make a difference. A lot of the systems our group creates are used by other county departments to directly serve the public. I see this leading to higher job satisfaction and less potential for burnout.
The benefits were one of the biggest things that attracted me to the county. The private sector can only offer so much and the benefits here made up for the raw pay cut I took. The big benefits include excellent medical and dental coverage for both Sarah and me, 401k with 4% matching, paying into a pension instead of social security, and generous vacation/holiday/sick time. There is also a lot of room to move around since the county is so large and everyone is always looking for good talent.
So that’s what I’ve got going on.
sounds awesome! what’s the project you’re working on? or is that top-secret?
Sorry, forgot to comment. Good work on the new job. You’re making it happen!
Just make sure leafcat doesn’t follow you to work.
cool bro. good to see that life is fitting in.
Current project isn’t terribly exciting. It is a system for the Auditor-Controller that let’s people report fraud and then it manages the whole investigation process. Current Live App, the whole app is pretty much being rewritten and the new interface will be much nicer.
I had to call the IT guy at the VA today, and instead of asking me questions, he should’ve just said what he was thinking…”MOVE!”