At Work

Many of you have been asking about my job, so here goes. I joined Ethos Technologies in June as the head of the .NET Web Solutions group. Ethos is a small software outsourcing firm of slightly under 200 employees. We serve primarily European clients. I manage a group of about 40 people. My teams use .NET technology (don't ask me too much about that because I don't know!) to provide a variety of web solutions for clients. Our solutions range from social networking sites to hospital data management systems.

In addition to the day-to-day work of managing my staff and overseeing their projects, the other department heads and I spend a significant amount of our time working on corporate strategy and internal process improvement initiatives. Since we are a small firm, the breadth of our work is quite broad - we work on everything from IT and HR policies to sales strategies to training.

On a typical day I arrive at the office between 8:30 and 9. After catching up on overnight email, I might spend some time preparing a performance review for one of my employees, go on to a meeting with my colleagues about HR policies, then have a routine one-on-one meeting with one of my project managers. Returning to my desk I might then spend some time reviewing quality or financial reports or drafting a new standard for some aspect of HR. Except on Mondays & Wednesdays when I have a Chinese lesson at lunch time, I typically head out for lunch with some of my colleagues around 12:30. Lunch usually consists of greasy, stir-fried green beans and rice, although we occasionally vary the diet with a sandwich from Subway or spaghetti (when they aren't out) from the coffee place. Afternoon looks very much like morning, meetings on a variety of topics interspersed with brief periods at my desk to work on resource assignments, performance evaluations or formulating standards, strategy or training materials. Time at my desk is, of course, always punctuated by IM discussions and email exchanges. I typically wind down and head home between 5:30 and 6:00.