Growing Work Spurts

 My company in the last few months have been steadily working to add new employees to the mix.   With the proliferation of AI, my company's stance initially was to continuously reduce head count due to the perceived benefits of utilizing AI.    But AI isn't the end all be all when it comes to providing customer support.   Feedback from a growing number of customers has been the frustration of having to deal with an AI bot before they can connect to a human support agent.   A lot of times the recommendations from AI didn't correctly address the issues that customers were complaining about.  It does appear that the company may have finally heard the complaints and subsequently have decided to temporarily increase head counts.    Of course there's no guarantees that they won't reduce head count again at some point in the future.

One change is that my team is planning to add members to the Chicago office where I'm located.   I have been the solo Chicago member for more than two years.   But that ended when a second member named Boston was added in early July to my team.   Of course since I was the only Chicago member of my team, I was chosen to be his mentor.   Interestingly enough Boston's personality almost mirrors mine.   He is a bit quiet and he also has a tendency to want to retreat to quieter areas of the office.   In fact we don't always sit together.   I didn't interview him prior but I oddly felt like Boston may have reminded my manager of me.   He's a really cool guy and I look forward to him contributing positively to the team.

I also got pulled into doing a few interviews in search of more team members for the Chicago office.   They are wanting to grow our support presence in Chicago.    I hate doing interviews but I have to remind myself it's better doing them on the company side than me on the outside interviewing trying to find a new work home.    I performed three interviews so far (with more coming in the future no doubt).   Only one of the three showed potential promise.  Romero I learned actually is from Griffith, IN which isn't too far from where I live.   He spent some time working at call centers for tech support which I felt would be good for our chat cases.    He did wind up accepting an offer and will start work in Chicago on October 5th (though I'm guessing he may work from home initially that first week).

My manager also mentioned that a fourth person is planning to relocate to the Chicago area.   I met her last week when she briefly visited the office.   My manager wanted to meet with her directly but was busy with several meetings including an interview.    So since she wasn't available to meet with her, she had me take a photo with Padma.    My manager mentioned that she has some good experience working in Support.   I wasn't clear if she was a current employee or not but at some point she'll be starting work in Chicago as well.

So I've gone from being solo to having three new co-workers.   It'll definitely be an adjustment for me as I've gotten used to being alone.    It'll be interesting too to see how the new team members play off each other.