Promotions

This years company promotions were announced earlier this month. I'm somewhat proud that of the dozen or so promotions I was the only female (there was one other but it's her father's company). I'm not in a Mad Men era of male/female work role situations but i sometimes hear reference to "girls" and female engineers are still very much a minority and female engineer leaders even more so. It's still very much a"mans world" I work in. And I work hard to get to where I am. 

I appreciate my coworkers and knew all the guys who made associate with me. I figured we should celebrate and get drinks. It took a little to orchestrate it all but in the end we had a nice evening out at Trade an upscale, modern restaurant/bar. 

I'm just heading home now after our outing. Interestingly I'm the one who has been at the firm the shortest amount of time but not everyone knew each other. I'm about 3 years in where most of the others are 6-15 years at the company. We had a great time - good company, good food and the drinks kept coming, on a nice spring evening with the beautiful evening sun coming into the modern decor. Looking around it's a very different group of coworkers I was drinking with from my earlier jobs. All men, married, with children. Very engineering based and different views on the world. But good company and joking all around. 

And the thing that puts the extra hop in my step on my way home is my role in the mix. I was the person bringing everyone together. The facilitator. Of the six of us, we span over four different departments. And as people peeled off and headed home they were all very appreciative that I put this together. 

The only bummer is that I forgot to get a picture of all us: Jeff, Laszlo, Drew, Steve, and Mike. When we were toasting our promotion and enjoying the moment I couldn't help but wonder how things would be in five years. Where we'd all be and how much more grey we would have!

And sitting with this group I was appreciative of how quickly I've been able to position myself within the firm and with some of the key leaders that this group isn't exposed to as much. I wonder out of all of us who will be first to make it to the next rung on the ladder. I'm hoping it's me, but I still have my work cut out ahead of me!