This time last month, I was rounding out a 10-year career spent among several large organizations. During my first week at InterWorks, I met people with an eclectic mix of experience and common passions for learning, teamwork and creative problem solving. After some reflection, I’ve put together the top 10 things that set InterWorks apart from my previous experiences:

1. Upper management actually knows my name
2. Cool, new tech is met with eagerness instead of agony over yet another change
3. I’m surrounded by people raising, not lowering, the bar defining success
4. Other people get my jokes, and I laugh hysterically at theirs
5. I’m no longer the young’un whose opinion doesn’t matter
6. IT people quit talking to me like a trained monkey
7. I have yet to hear anyone ask for a “slide deck”
8. Not only am I allowed to be on Facebook, it’s a core part of our communication
9. Tech Support is now far more likely to fix my computer than to break it
10. I jumped up two versions of Office and Windows, spanning six years of development in just one day