|
Wanted: New challenges
A competitive salary was cited as the most important factor in choosing a job by 62.5% of respondents. This was followed by career advancement and job responsibilities, which were cited almost equally when deciding to take a new job or stay put; the opportunity to work on innovative projects also heavily influenced job satisfaction and career choices.
ING Direct offered Golden his first chance to lead a storage team. "The salary wasn't the primary motivation for me," he says. "It was more of a challenge, a chance to lead the group," he says. "And I knew I would be part of a group where we discussed storage at a global level."
Seventy-two percent of our respondents report managing teams with five or fewer people (Golden manages a team of three people). The promise of new job responsibilities and the expectation that he would interact with senior management were selling points for 44-year-old Golden. "One of my goals is to do what we call a SAN health check and present the findings to senior management," he says, and to conduct an in-depth analysis of storage resource management (SRM) tools.
Additional benefits, such as ING Direct's 401(k) matching contribution of 6%, a large onsite gym that offers exercise classes, and a 45-minute commute all factored ...
To continue reading for free, register below or login
To read more you must become a member of SearchStorage.com
into Golden's decision to work for ING. However, according to our survey, benefits ranked last among respondents (behind company location) when considering a new job. And, perhaps as a sign of stricter corporate budgets, more than 18% of those surveyed say their benefits packages were reduced this year vs. 2007; however, 14% report improved benefits, while 67% saw no change.
Last year, Matt Milone was looking for a new challenge and accepted the position of senior engineer, SAN architecture at First Financial Bank in Middletown, OH. Milone, who had previously worked in Ireland for Dell Inc., says he was inspired by the possibility of building a new storage system. "They had a partially implemented storage infrastructure, but they needed someone to come in and design a storage environment," he says. "That's a very rare opportunity."
Like so many storage pros these days, Milone was tasked with saving money while implementing new projects. For example: "When we were bringing the [EMC Corp.] Clariion storage online, [EMC] added some blocks [in the contract] to provision storage and set it up. I said, 'No, we'll have a block in there for you to certify, but I'll do the rest of the work.' They were probably not too happy about it, but the bank was happy." That's the sort of thing that helps him earn bonuses, says Milone.
|
 |
|
