Writing today from the insanely cool Hotel San Jose in Austin, Texas. I don’t know what happened yesterday – my post got cut off. Here’s what I wrote:
This week marks five years for me at Ask.com. That’s rather mind-blowing. It seemed like just yesterday when I was sitting in Chicago with a good friend, my professional life at a fork in the road. I had two job offers, one with Ask.com (Ask Jeeves at the time) and the other with a long-established, non-internet entity. I had already been at two failed dot.com’s, so the idea of going to a third dot.com weighed heavy on my mind. But the money was (way) better and the job description seemed a little more interesting so, making the vow that “this would be the last dot.com job I ever take,” I accepted the position and started on July 24, 2001. Time has really flown since then and the progress our company has made in the five years I’ve been around has been stunning.
I have given Ask.com a lot of myself and it has given back to me in spades on so many levels. Work is never without frustrations, but they are largely kept to a minimum and I’ve established friendships there that will undoubtedly last way longer than my tenure at Ask. The other night, out at dinner in NYC, I remarked to my boss how comforting it is to see that our small group of nine people (business development) is about the least political group of people I have ever worked with. That is difficult to find anywhere and much appreciated. My muse will undoubtedly take me somewhere else during this lifetime, but there’s a lot to like here. It is my longest tenure at any job – by double.