The New Boss

Over the last few months, I've had some important career decisions to make.... or not to make. I got an offer to leave the challenging world of sub-prime lending to be part of someone else's team in prime lending. The team manager position in a neighboring branch became available and was offered to me. The latter was tempting because it was a promotion instead of a step sideways, but I felt the commute would have been too long and the earning potential not really there. So in the end, I decided to do nothing. I decided to stay where I am. I spent 12 years with my last company, so I'm definitely not a job-hopper.

Another factor in my decision was that we were without a manager in my current position. I've held a "let's-wait-and-see" attitude about what was going to happen next. There is naturally a bit of trepidation when you're part of a business that isn't doing so well, corporate comes in a fires the person in charge and a new boss is installed. Conventional wisdom has it that the new boss being brought it is likely to be a hardnosed, standard-operating-procedures kind of guy who may be looking to clean house. Although I'm still not 100% convinced that the new manager, isn'tone of those types, all the evidence so for would seem to indicate he is pretty mellow. He's very effective, but not an ass-hole about it.

He is fighting for our loans, and that's a great thing. Even in just a week, he has had files pushed through that before would have gotten stuck in the mire of underwriting for days. In no way will the office have that warm, we're-all-one-big-office-family feel it had under the previous manager, who was very mom-like in her management style. Instead, if there is any family metaphor I can use, it's like we've got a big brother who is willing to go beat up bigger kids who mess with us. Right now, that's what we need.

Big brother also likes to have a good time, as we found out on Friday night.