What I do for a living

Believe me, I don't kid myself that anyone who reads this is interested in anything other than pictures and cute stories about my children. In fact, I often refer to myself as a Laura and JiaJia delivery system. I know, though, that there have been times when people ask me what exactly it is I do professionally and I just answer, in the vaguest possible way, "Oh, its computer stuff."

And it is, sort of, but I thought it might be fun to try to describe to you what my real job is and see if I can do it in a way that anyone actually understands. My title is Process Engineer, which is a bit misleading as I never got an engineering degree (my BA is in social and behavioral sciences, which qualifies as both nebulous AND impractical - could you find a better double whammy?). What that translates to in real world terms is that I work with groups of people who have a business problem (like "why can't we get a bill out the door in a reasonable time frame?") and help them identify where the issues are (like "we require our computer technicians to get a signature on a form that nobody needs then they have to mail it in to an office where nobody files it but we won't send the bill out until we realize we have it...") and come up with ways to streamline the process. After that we usually identify opportunities for automation (like "if the technicians had a handheld device like the FedEx guys use that could transmit the signature to us immediately, we could get the bill out the door the same day the service was provided"). In the best possible scenario, I can help the people I work with to save money, make money, and do more with what they have.

No, I'm not solving world hunger but on a good day I think I'm making peoples' jobs just a little bit less insane and making computers actually help instead of creating misery. Plus I usually get to work at home, in my cozy little office with my Jim Hilleary Fountain Series painting over my head, accented with a collage by my friend, Claudia Bogart, my Ugly Dolls, and a very small subset of what was once the world's largest pig collection. Who could complain about that?

But now you know why I usually just say I do "computer stuff."