Greetings, everyone.
I recently interviewed with a small company in my area. I’m primarily a .NET developer, specifically ASP.NET. Anyways, this company has an e-commerce business that makes relatively decent money.
During the interview the owners spoke that, if I were hired (they actually used verbiage to indicate I *would* be hired, but it’s not official yet and I don’t have an offer) there would be a lot of chances to work with executive management to develop strategies for increasing profits, this and maintaining/improving the IT processes seems to be the mainstay of the job. As it is a small place, they outsource any development work and I would be coordinating this team via the outsourced team’s project manager.
This sounds really good for me, as it’s something I want to transition more to – working with businesspeople to formulate longterm strategy and improve existing methods, instead of being a “code monkey”. However, an acquaintance mentioned it might be a bad sign, as I didn’t see a dedicated IT person (my office, in fact, would also be the server room). My being responsible for the network and IT infrastructure was not mentioned during the interview, however. It’s not something I mind, at any rate. I have past experience as a systems administrator and programmer.
What was also warned to me is the fact it was mentioned that I could pretty much choose any title I wanted for my position. “If ‘IT Manager’ looks better on your resume, use ‘IT Manager'” is how it was said (the two owners are President and COO, respectively).
Basically, it sounds like a good opportunity IF I really get the chance to develop initiatives to improve the business (which is what they said it would be); in any event I was told I’d be coming on board as a senior member almost immediately (and thus I’m thinking of a “Director” title, but I’m not certain). But I’m a little worried – I haven’t been in a situation like this before. I’m typically “just” a coder, although I want to be much more than that.
Anyone have any advice?
