I first walked up these steps and into this office in May of 1995 to start my second “real” job after college in the midwest region pre sales group supporting the SDRC Test products. For a few years, I schlepped an SGI workstation up and down those stairs each time I went on the road for a demo.
I sat on these steps and celebrated with a few folks on a lovely night in June of 1997 when I accepted a new role as the marketing manager for Test. Little did I know that that business was in the process of being sold to MTS. I was fortunate (in hindsight) to execute a quick “shift left” and move into marketing for CAE before the sale or I else I might be writing this from Minnesota :-).
I didn’t use these steps for more than a year when I made a brief detour into telecommunications billing at the dawn of the mobile internet. I enjoyed my time working in downtown Cincinnati, but was glad to take this path again to work with all the great people that I’d left behind when I came back in 2001.
I walked down these steps late at night after for weeks on end after meetings with EDS leadership working through our integration details. That was truly a trial by fire where I both learned a lot and ended up getting burned.
In 2004, I walked in using these steps each morning not sure whether I would get to do it again the next day as we learned to live and work in the world of private equity.
In 2007, I walked up these steps before sunrise for months on end to make it to meetings scheduled in CEST with new leadership in Siemens to work new integration details. I came home to these steps after regular trips to Nuremberg every few months.
Over the next 13 years, I walked up and down these steps to different offices, different roles and different teams. I walked in dreading the day sometimes. Other days I couldn’t wait. Sometimes I walked down these steps feeling like I’d really accomplished something. Other days I wondered why I had bothered.
These steps and the office they lead to closed down like the rest of the world in March of 2020. I used them again in June of 2021 in the first a few failed attempts to revive the building these steps lead to as a place where work happened.
Today I walked up these steps for the last time. We’re moving to a newer, smaller space in a few weeks. I had a meeting here today but don’t see much else that will give me reason to make the short trip to these steps again before we move.
It’s another change in a few years of pretty heavy change. And while I’d love to say it’s the last one, some part of me knows, and welcomes, that it’s just the next one. It is all about the path, not the destination
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