Congrats on your work anniversary!

I've had a lot of messages lately which were "congrats on your work anniversary". This is a standard Linked In message that auto-generates and I'm sure most of us have used it at some point.

In my case, the anniversary in question is 15 years, having joined Old Mill on 14 August 2006. That's quite a long time.

I suppose I have been wondering why we congratulate people on staying in a role for a multiple of years. What do we really mean by it? If you suffer from "imposter syndrome" (and don't we all?) then maybe it means "well done on not getting fired, you got away with it for another twelve months and noone found you out!". Well hopefully that's not how people mean it, but maybe that's sometimes how it's received.

Is longevity in a role even a good thing? Sure, it shows that you're loyal, don't hate your job enough to leave and are well enough regarded to have been retained. And those are good things. But a long time in a role could mean that you've settled, haven't followed your dreams or pursued new avenues. You could be in a rut. Would we ever send someone a message "congratulations on giving up on your ambition and settling for your rut"? Not unless you lack any kind of filters or social niceties!

If we don't know why someone has stayed in a role, then the seemingly innocuous "congrats on your work anniversary" is a psychological minefield!

Just for avoidance of doubt, my mental state is not a metaphorical landmine and have in no way been offended by anyone's congratulations! In fact it's nice to be remembered :)

Which I guess begs the question: why have I stayed in the same job for fifteen years?

Well the thing is, I really haven't.

It's the same organisation but I have had many different roles within it and have evolved my job to circumstance. So whilst I have been here since 2006, it's definitely not the same job.

I first joined as the second member of a team doing corporate finance work in a new office where there were just us. Over time, the office and other teams grew up around us. Thanks to the financial crisis, opportunities in CF dried up for a while and I moved back into audit and accounts and running a team of accountants looking after a client base. In 2012, I started leading the office. Now more recently, I've relinquished the client portfolio and gone back to full-time corporate finance work and am growing a new team.

That's quite a lot of change and a load of different jobs, different challenges and responsibilities. I've been on many learning curves over the years. Going from specialist to generalist meant broadening knowledge. Developing new specialisms has involved more focussed knowledge. I've worked on my own and worked with teams and had to learn how to manage people, which I was probably terrible at to start with. It's one of the anomalies of working in specialist functions of professional firms that you can attain job titles like Manager, Senior Manager and Associate Director without ever actually managing anyone. I've learned all sorts of things from my different roles and I would hope I'm a better all-rounder than I used to be.

And really it's the learning that keeps me interested and that is what inspires me and always has.

Now I'm needing to learn more new things and work out how we are going to grow our CF team considerably from where we are. Not really knowing the answers yet is good, because that will keep it interesting.

Am I following my dreams and "living my best life"? No, of course not and that's a whole other story, but I've done some good stuff, had plenty of variety and learned some things along the way. So, congrats to me on my work anniversary!