ya know what I forgot to write today? it's september 3rd! this means that exactly five years ago today was my first day on the Real Job.

The big thing I clearly remember that day was that I wore heels, and by the end my feet were absolutely positively killing me. I'd called HR, and they told me to dress nicely because I'd get my badge photo taken and all that, so I wore uncomfortable shoes to make the whole outfit work. Big mistake. Yes, there was the three seconds of photo, but the rest of the day I was being led around like a puppy, walking everywhere.

I thought HR was just cruel, not to have told me to wear comfortable shoes. Now I know that HR barely knows what engineering is. Yes, my contact there told me to call her for everything, she arranged my relocation, gave me my interview schedule and told me who to ask for in the engineering building. But she had no freaking clue where or who I'd be after 7:45 on September 3rd. And honestly, people who work in HR do wear cute shoes and "outfits"... because they don't walk through airplane hangars or climb into cockpits.

I also remember being super excited about meeting everybody, because I just thought they were all so wonderful... now I size people up in horribly judgmental ways. Are you an engineer? A pilot? Can you e-mail, or are you going to bug the s out of me by calling all the time? Are you one of those smarmy a-holes who's going to go over my head and ask my boss questions because you don't believe I know what I'm talking about? Do you believe in standards? Are you one of those creepy socially inept engineers? A total idiot? Insane? Lazy? Micromanager? Are you going to blow off my meeting because I'm not important enough, then go behind my back to the people who were in there and reverse our decision? Do you understand schedules? Are you afraid of technology? Do you know what you're doing?

Are you in marketing?

Oh, I love my job. Back then I think I just loved having a job... the rest of the details just scared me. I wasn't sure how to prove myself, or if I was even capable of such a task. I thought being smart and knowing a lot about airplanes were sort of the same thing.

now that I work with new college grads, I'm also pretty sure I annoyed the shit out of my coworkers. they've all got that "world's cutest kitten" thing going on.

sometimes you break them... they get so frustrated they decide engineering isn't for them, or they're just going to be pissed off and work outside the system as much as possible. Try to get the friendly managers to sign their reports, pay for the pricey healthcare plan because there's less paperwork.

They stop calling the help desk about our crappy computers.

I always call help desk. I call them about ridiculous things that I know they'll be clueless on, just to spite them. I love the challenge. I even know the real IT guys at our company now, and they know me because I've done website stuff, and we joke about how things fall apart, and I still love calling help desk. I get better stories... like the day my monitor died and I called them, and said "We plugged the monitor into another computer to see if it was my PC, but the monitor still won't come on." and the guy at the other end said, "Well ma'am, it sounds like the problem might be with the monitor... I'm going to put you on hold for level II just to make sure."

I love the system. Individual people are freaking insane, but the whole system... I'm a diva at it now. I'm good at what I do. People want me on their projects. I'm slowly learning to be diplomatic (I think) but still have my tough edgy image. I have friends at work. I feel like I fit in.

A college kid asked me what it was like to be at five years, did I feel all "old"? Nice question, brat. I told him that I still felt like there was infinity to learn about airplanes, the only big difference is that now I know enough that I can do a lot without managers, so they piss me off... I used to just be so happy to talk to my bosses, happy they were taking an interest in me, now I mostly think they're in my way.

I think the real difference is very, very round. I wanted to be an engineer. I thought that meant learning everything technical. I thought if I had technical knowledge, I'd have everything... people would respect and adore me, I'd get responsibility, I'd be valuable.

Five years taught me that knowledge comes from experience, and experience comes from a lot of things that are very non-technical. The ability to present information, the ability to argue, confidence to jump in there, networking, sucking up, having an image, enthusiasm, earning respect, running a meeting, walking fast, listening, learning, knowing who to learn from... there's not one important thing. there's not one important thing about an airplane. it's all part of something bigger.

A few weeks ago, I was invited to a round table discussion with one of my company's higher-ups... they like to have these meetings regularly to sort of get a feel for how the little people are doing, sort of like when the president has meetings with random iowa citizens or whatever to answer questions like, "Can the senate outlaw beets?" And I have to personally admit, when I was invited to this meeting I thought it'd be funny to chris farley the thing and say stuff like, "Remember when we decided to make TCAS II standard on the RX300? That was AwEsOmE!!!"

But enough backstory... someone in the meeting asked about attrition rates, saying that it "felt" like we were losing a lot of good engineers to other companies, and he replied that the numbers are really pretty average. Sure, we're doing what we can to keep people... comparing our benefits with other area companies, doing exit interviews, etc. but when it came down to it job hopping was sort of a generational thing, and as we continue to hire people who aren't baby boomers, we have to get more and more used to everyone having these 3-5 year stints. Without sounding too mean, he used the "it's not us, it's them" argument. And since I'm not getting the rats fleeing the ship feeling lately, I think we're really pretty average and the guy is somewhat in touch.

There has been this battle going on for years though: companies accuse us of being unloyal, and us gen-nexters (or whatever) accuse companies of giving us no reason to do otherwise. We see very succesful people all around us who didn't get to be that way by working the same 8-5 job for 30 years. In my department, a lot of the supervisors are ones who left and came back... getting a job with a new department or company was an easier way to step up than convincing current bosses to promote you just for fun. A very long time ago, your retirement depended on a pension from a single company you'd poured years into, but now nobody pays pensions, they match your 401k and that's all you can ask for.

So the question remains: should companies try to reward loyalty by promoting from within, or, given our new culture, would that only reward people who are out of touch with the "system" and can't get better jobs? Should they keep funding pensions, or reward people who assume that the pensions won't be there by doing a better job matching 401k plans? Did people in my generation cause the cultural changes by job-hopping, or is it all a product of corporate greed? And the biggie... is someone like me, who's had the same job for four years and feels pretty happy with it... shooting herself in the foot by not constantly having an always out there, up to date resume?

I'm spending the week away at six sigma training. oh sure, I'm only a building away, but I don't sit at my desk or answer my phone or work on my reports, I'm just getting trained. And to tell the truth, it's fabulous. Six sigma is a sort of quality control program... you know the cute problem solving process you learned in the forth grade, where you identify the problem, brainstorm solutions, look at costs vs. benefits, all that? Well, six sigma is like that on all the best drugs.

So the program goes like this: you get 80 hours of training, then you do a couple projects to help your department Be Better, then you're certified and you can say that you've been six sigma-tized. Different people see it in different ways... like most people in the program, I didn't exactly sign myself up for this, I got put on "the list". Engineers never like being signed up for anything, but there's pressure for every department to have certified six sigma types (actually they're called green belts, but my God that's corny) so when you get put on the list everybody laughs at you. But it's turned out to not be so bad after all, for the following reasons:

1) I've gotten away from my job all week, to discuss ideas and learn new things and (here's the key) eat free snacks. and drink free coffee. Sure I love my job but we all need a vacation sometime, and with the certification hurricane lately, no one has gotten vacations.

2) I like forms, databases, and spreadsheets, and six sigma uses like nine billion forms, databases, and spreadsheets. I appreciate structure, I really do, you all know how much I yammer on here about digitizing what's analog.

3) Since I work at a Very Big Company, I see totally stupid processes every day that need fixing. If I'm trained in this, someone might let me fix something.

4) I still have internet access during training, so if I get bored, I e-mail my friends.

5) We get an hour for lunch. Usually I just get 30 minutes.

So that's how I'm spending my week, it's pretty okay! The only thing left to do is decide how I'm going to act about it to everybody after I get out... I know there's going to be some "how was SIX SIGMA?" questions from the engineers, I'll need to act really miserable to stay one of them.