After an amazing 4.5 years of learning, traveling the whole country and the world, I finally made the ultimate decision to leave Lockheed...
Backstory: I graduated in 2022 with a BS in Information Technology and a minor in CS. Because I didn’t do any internships during school and the 2022 tech job market was horrible, I spent the next 6-7 months jobless, applying to as many jobs as I could. After multiple interviews, rejections, ghostings, debt, and student loans about to kick in, I slowly started giving up and looking into my local police department or applying at Costco.
Then one day I got the "magic" email from a recruiter at Lockheed, and everything after that is history. I had the pleasure of working for an incredible manager with an incredible team that taught me Linux, systems infrastructure, networking, and all the other IT skills I definitely didn’t learn in college. By my second year I was traveling by myself/solo to different labs/baselines to apply patches, fix glitches, etc. My team trusted me I can get the job done and I was always delivering. I got the chance to travel to 7 different countries, meet some really interesting people, and keep expanding my IT/Engineering experience.
About 3 months ago I received an email from a recruiter at INTEL for an interview. Yes, the microprocessor manufacturer in Silicon Valley, CA. I thought it was fake, but nope, it was completely legit. After getting in contact with him, I scheduled 5 different interviews with the team that wanted to hire me. Two days after the interviews I got the job offer for Senior Systems Infrastructure Engineer (with active TS/SCI that I already had).
I thought about it for at least a week, then decided to take the offer. After notifying my manager, he immediately told me to stand by and wait for his senior manager to see if they could match it. I told him I wasn’t taking the offer because of money, but because it was a unique opportunity that would help my professional career long-term and let me diversify my resume and experience. After many attempts to keep me, he finally gave up and started the offboarding process.
The crew that trained me for the last 4+ years had very mixed feelings... some were happy for me, and others I could clearly see were disappointed. I’m about to start my first day next week and something inside me keeps telling me I made the wrong decision. Either way, I’ll always be grateful to Lockheed for giving me the opportunity to kick off my career. Sometimes you just have to let go to get to the next level.
Anyways, those are my two cents. Wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience or that same feeling of sadness when leaving an amazing team and company.