Origins of Postgreen - Part 2

Back in September of 2007 I wrote a post on the Origins of Postgreen and never followed it up with a final post on the subject. Well, now that Nic has gotten me back into blogging here at Postgreen, I guess I should finish this up.

Last time I left off with me finishing college and searching for my first job in the real world (not the TV show). I looked at two basic types of companies while searching for a job:

1. Large companies with good salaries, benefits, training and perks where I would most likely sit in a tiny cubicle and do the same thing day in and day out while attending school at night to obtain my MBA which the company would pay for.
2. Small to mid-sized companies that were growing but seemed to have no idea what they were doing. These companies came with less impressive salaries and benefits, but I would get a lot more responsibility and opportunity to try my hand at different positions.

It should come as no surprise that I chose the second path since most of my major decisions take the opposite route of what the average and probably smarter person would do in my same situation. My first job was as a Manufacturing Engineer at a $100M barcode scanner manufacturer in South Jersey.

While I was at this job, I was faced with to opportunity to pursue an MBA at night. I went back and forth with this decision for a while and ultimately decided that if I was going to start my own business, real world experience would be much more valuable than an MBA. MBA’s seemed to be better suited for those seeking a career in corporate America that need to be well versed in the latest jargon and buzz words.

So, after this decision was made I decided to take part in an experimental job rotation program at the company that would allow me to gain experience in a variety of departments to make me a well-rounded and more valuable employee. I was the first and last person to try this program. It took me to such departments as purchasing, scheduling, project management and eventually product marketing. While I was in this job rotation program, the company still did not spend squat on training so I had my boss buy me as many books as possible and always went to at least one major training of my own choosing each year. While they didn’t have a specific budget for this, they seemed excited that I wanted to learn on my own and found a way to pay for this training. I made sure that every book I bought and every training I went to could also benefit me when I ultimately decided to start my own company.

I worked at this company for about seven years up until I quit to start Postgreen in the fall of 2007. More on that next time…