Thank You!

Welcome to my very 2007-esque website, and thank you so much for stopping by!

This website is constantly under construction, and this is one of the first iterations of it. Feedback is more than welcome! My email can be found in the footer.

Since this is a new website, it seems likely that you were brought here by a resume of mine, so I will try to keep everything concise, in order to respect your time.

Here is a quick list of links that might be of interest to you:

• If you are here looking to fill in some gaps in my resume or you want a more complete timeline, checkout my full work history: here.
• If you are looking for a summary of my life since college, checkout my first "blog" post: here.
• If you are a hiring manager trying to determine if I would be a good fit, I give a bit of a cover-letter-like summary of what sort of team I'm hoping to work with and what enviroments I excel/fail in below.

The Purpose of This Website

The hope for me is that this website continues to grow, and that it ultimately becomes the home to document my learning journey. I consider myself a continuous learner, but I have neglected the sharing/documenting of that learning since leaving formal academia. This website exists to try to reconcile that. Over time, and several iterations, the plan is to have the "blog" portion grow and become more refined. In addition, I'm hoping this homepage is able to change. I am currently on the job hunt, and it seems like a wasted opportunity not to use this site as a bit of a "portfolio" site/personal promotion landing page while building it out.

To give a bit of background, I am quite happy with my current company. However, circumstances in my life have changed, and I've begun to realize what the key things are that I value from my career. Since graduating college, I've been looking for a company to grow with. This has been something I have said at every job interview since graduation. Until recently, I had thought this meant I needed to be at a big company that I could grow in. Recently, I've realized that this is the opposite of what I need. I still firmly believe that I could excel in a big company; however, it has become clear to me that I find the most success when on a small to medium team (regardless of overall company size). My current company, Pfizer, is a rather large company, but it still feels like I excel when on my shift team of about 15 people. My previous team at American Chemical Solutions was about 10 people, and that was amazing. Every person had a role, and it was great to be a part of a team where everyone actively shared in the successes and failures.

That feeling of accountability is the other reason I've gone back on the job hunt. My favorite jobs have been kitchen/bartending jobs, largely because it felt good to be an integral part of the success (or failure) of a team. It was easy to see the immediate results of the successes and failures of each member, but more importantly, of the team as a whole. This feeling of being an integral member of the team is something I have sorely missed since working for larger companies. In addition, finding constant process improvements and iterating on techniques or strategies was something that could be done every night. While this ability to quickly iterate isn't possible in all fields, I do seem to be more drawn to those sorts of fields (tech, research, manufacturing, food service, etc.).

Pretty closely tied with the feeling of accountability for me is the feeling of challenging myself. I greatly enjoy a good challenge, and I especially like challenges that force me to change the way I think. Learning new things is a favorite pastime of mine, and my dream job would be to get paid to be a student. Unfortunately, that does not seem practical. The next best thing would be to find a job that is intellectually challenging. For me, this is almost built in to jobs that have accountability. Simply trying to improve a process by 1% everyday, or trying to find a way to make the team get along a bit better are my ideal sort of challenges. However, I have found it extremely hard to do these things in large teams, and that is part of my preference for smaller teams.

As I've continued to learn and grow since college, I've come to accept that I am destined to be a generalist. This, more than anything, seems to be at the root of my preference for smaller teams with a lot of accountability. When learning something new, I'll often get bored well before the point that I could call myself a specialist; however, I will likely have learned the fundamentals before getting bored. This has been a constant cycle in my life. I'd get obsessed with something and learn a lot about it, but then I would get bored and move on. Let me assure you, it was a great point of frustration for my friends and relatives. However, it is ideal for small teams. In small teams where one person needs to wear several different hats, I excel. That is the ideal sort of environment for me, and the search of such a place is largely the reason for this website, at the moment.

To close this meandering letter out, I greatly appreciate you taking the time to read this. If you are a hiring manager, I sincerely hope to hear from you soon!

Thank you again for your time!

Ike