Career Opportunities in SoCal

It’s amazing how change can just creep up on you. Sometimes, you can sense it coming but other times you have no fair warning. I always like to think that I handle change well but as history has shown, I have a hard time with it. Typically, the major changes in my life have come as a result of my career; the move out of engineering to purchasing, the shuffling og commodities (packaging → plastics → electronics → whatever it is I do now); the move to B. Braun, etc. Another “opportunity” for change was presented to me unexpectedly this past Tuesday morning when my boss called me into his office.

One of the major projects my company makes and sells is the IV bag that you normally see in a hospital. The current product is called Excel and is terribly unprofitable to the point that we lose money on every bag sold. Te reason we still sell them is that we use it as a loss leader to get other business. Enter the $300 million+ Exceed project. It’s a huge investment by the company to redesign the bag to make it better and at a lower cost. The future success of the company essentially rides in part on this project. It’s scope is so large that the COO is personally overseeing and focusing on it. Essentially, they want someone from a strategic purchasing group to focus on all of the procurement activities for the project and the person suggested ended up being me. On one front, I was flattered that would ask me after I’ve been with the company for only 5 months bu on the other hand, it’s daunting because it was proposed that I would move out to our plant in Irvine, CA (the heart of the OC) for a period of a year perhaps more.

Initially, I was taken aback but as I thought more about it, it relly is an incredible opportunity. Irvine is in the heart of Orange County bordered on the north by LA and San Diego is 1.5 hours south. Disneyland, Universal, Legoland, Six Flags, the beach, the mountains, etc. are all a stone’s throw away; my boss describes it as the country’s playground. Perhaps the best part is the SoCal weather and that I would be able to be out there during the bleakest months of the Northeast winter. The downside is that my life would be disrupted for up to a year and that I would leave family and friends here. That downside however is mitigated because I would be able to keep my life (house, etc.) here in Bethlehem with the ability to travel back every so often to keep things in order while enjoying relatively expense free living in one of the most expensive parts of the country. The irony of the situation the weekend prior to the news, I was contemplating how lonely this upcoming winter is going to be and how much of a struggle for me it was going to be.

In the end, I would be foolish not to take it and exploring a new part of the country for a year (and an exciting part of the country at that). It’s a fantastic career move for me as it gives me direct exposure to the COO and makes me very well-rounded when it comes to our products and operations. It also shows that I’m willing to sacrifice for the company.

The details of the arrangement have yet to be worked out and of course are ever changing. Currently, I’m slated to split my time between here and there until the end of the year and then most likely move out for a period of 6-8 months. The timeframe is sketchy at best and it seems I have some vague input as to when I could move back based on workload.


So let the adventure begin!