What’s something that you’ve done as part of a job* that you’re most proud of?
*job here and in the title is something that you’ve done. It could be volunteer work, paid work, caring, or even a hobby. This is intended as an inclusive thread.
Anyway!
I was part of the team that helped demolish the Pile 1 Chimney at Sellafield. It was very tricky, 125m high at the start. Has been a great job to put on the CV for loads of reasons.
Learned a new test automation language / tool in a month by spending time intensively working at it, and then a couple of weeks later finding that people are now asking me questions about it. Of course I don’t know the answers, but it’s flattering to think that they think that I might.
I’ve been several colleagues’ supervisor for their professional exams/submissions. I think I’ve found that more satisfying than completing any building, oddly enough.
Last year I managed the largest team in the company to a successful release on a record number of platforms during a global pandemic with enforced remote working.
Had all parking penalty notices issued in 2018 for motorbikes in Maidstone’s council-run car parks written off (probably my most random “achievement”)
Got a family rehoused after years in unsuitable accommodation.
A lot of my job is a slog but sometimes we get to make a big difference, which is nice.
Edit to add - I thought the motorbike one was going to be super exciting and I’d end up with some kind of parade in my honour, but instead it only amounted to about six penalty notices. Ah well.
Passing on my methods for how to pass difficult professional exams with the lowest possible amount of effort.
(The trick is to stop viewing them as a test of your professional competence and start viewing them as logic puzzles that you can get through almost entirely with exam technique)
Probably the work housing / rehousing rough sleepers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Not sure what the figures would be after 18 months, but the Lancet reckons that the work saved over 250 deaths and over 1000 hospitalisations nationally:
We didn’t have a single hospitalisation or outbreak in any of our accommodation and that was down to a massive collective effort. Just showed how much everyone cared about the work. Lots of individual stories in with this, but I guess it’s the overall effort / impact that I was proud of.
This was really amazing work and showed what could be achieved if the govt wasn’t trying to decimate local government and the voluntary sector, and instead said “here’s the cash, go be creative”. Those lives saved and improved will be worth immeasurably more than whatever the financial outlay was.
I was really lucky in my first proper job in that I got to work on a lot of crowdfunding/pre-order campaigns with some really cool artists - I think the one I look back on most fondly though is the FOTL one for The Truce of… I can’t really take much credit as I was just looking after the crowdfunding page but they were really really GBOLs and it was really fun.
Another couple that I was probably a bit more deeply involved with were with Deep Forest and Merz, again two really nice fellas and two great records that came out of it.