It’s a Record!

No, not a running record (but stay tuned for that post soon) – a work record! I’m about to break my full time job tenure record. As of this Thursday, I’ll have been at LogRhythm for 3 years. I lasted 2 years and 11 months at the job before this one, although in theory I could have lasted longer if they hadn’t shut down. Before that, I lasted 2 years and 1 month. And before that, I did a bunch of random part time jobs while in grad school and bounced around from country to country teaching English. Being in a job this long is most unusual for me.

It’s not that I haven’t thought about leaving. At this time last year, I was considering it heavily and applied to a number of jobs throughout that summer. At times, my desire to leave was prompted by things happening at work and other times by events in my personal life. But when it came down to it, I didn’t actually want to leave and, at this moment, I am fully committed to continuing to work here for the foreseeable future. So why is that?

There’s the obvious: I’m well compensated and have a great vacation policy, excellent formal benefits, and a ton of other perks. I like almost everyone I work with: people on my immediate team, people who sit around me, and people on the teams I support. For the first time in my working life, I enjoy participating in company social events and volunteer for initiatives, like our charitable giving committee. And I feel that on the whole, LogRhythm treats its employees very well.

But, the number one reason I’m still here is my boss. He is a true manager in the sense that he has managerial skills and cares about people. He isn’t someone who was promoted simply because he’s been here a long time. He talks to his employees about what their skill sets are and works with them to tailor their jobs to their strengths and make sure they feel challenged in a way that they are growing professionally. He lets us work autonomously but 100 percent has our backs when we need him. He’s the kind of boss you can be completely honest with about how you’re feeling—like last September when I finally straight up told him I was so done here and seriously thinking about leaving, and he worked with me to figure out how to make things better. He treats us like adults and actually cares about us as people.

They say people leave managers, not companies, and I think that’s mostly true, although even the best manager in the world can’t help with a pervasive, toxic culture. But I think people stay because of managers too. My boss, and the other people here, are the number one reason that my tenure here is ongoing and I haven’t actively looked for another job in the last nine months. So here I am, getting recognized for my anniversary in a few weeks at the end-of-quarter company all-hands with a nice gift card to treat myself. Or pay bills. Either way, gotta love those perks!

With a friend at the company’s annual Octoberfest

Cutting down invasive trees with a coworker during the United Way Day of Caring

Hosting a Write the Docs meetup onsite

Taking our off-shore coworkers gambling at Black Hawk