Some major news this week. When I went into the office Monday morning I saw my SVP (my boss's boss) had on Sunday evening scheduled an early morning meeting with myself and my boss as the only attendees. A bit odd, obviously. Turns out my supervisor/mentor had decided over the weekend to accept an offer and was about to give official notice later in the day.
Now, to a typical analyst this might not be a big deal - so you get a new boss and continue doing what you do. In my case, this is not true. First, my supervisor is Director level and I am the only person that reports to them. We work very closely and it was quite a stroke of luck to be trained 1-on-1 by a seasoned FCAS. Secondly, our team or unit (predictive modeling) works quite autonomously compared to the pricing or reserving teams. A typical pricing team will do the same thing from quarter to quarter and year to year - calculate indications, file rate changes with state insurance departments, rinse and repeat. In contrast, my boss would determine what projects we would undertake (new tiering models, retention studies, research projects for the marketing department, studies of deductible strategies, and so on) with some (but limited) input from other areas of the company. Whereas a pricing analyst can, after 3 months, more or less do what they have to do for some time, I am sort of useless without someone making decisions and designing research projects for me to work on. Finally, my boss was just a really cool person in general and fun to work with.
Now I find myself feeling a bit insecure about the future, mostly because I am unsure how long it will be until a replacement is hired. People say things tend to move slowly around the company and 6 months is an optimistic guess. While I have some projects to complete in that time, 6 months is about the limit of how long I can last without the real guidance of someone designing new projects and teaching me what they know, given my current knowledge base. That means I would have to do some serious reading on designing studies/modeling experiments myself starting now. And while I am sure I can bring myself up to speed in this timeframe, it would come at the expense of exam progress and I am not sure if my capability would be recognized.
The other reason to feel insecure is that everyone else realizes the work I get to do is so interesting. It seems like 1 or 2 other analysts suddenly want to spend their Friday afternoon attending some meetings with myself and my boss instead of the usual early departure. This is some added pressure to gain recognition as being competent without close supervision - so that my job duties are not divided up amongst whoever reaches. I am less worried about this factor given that I have much greater resources and time invested in learning about the actual modeling work, but some others have seniority, stronger relationships around the office, and deeper knowledge of their own product lines and data.
So the possibilities seem to be either that I get moved to another team where expertise exists in the near future, that my responsibility for analytics over all product lines gets divided up amongst the eager analysts, that a replacement is found quickly, or that I gain enough expertise to work independently for an indefinite period of time while also establishing my credibility and defending my turf.
Honestly, more than anything I'm really going to miss the good working relationship with my boss and their coolness on a personal level. As I mentioned in earlier posts, I may be looking for a different company in my preferred geographic location in 9 months to a year from now anyway. The past 3 months have gone by really quickly and I am hoping that whatever the coming months hold does not radically change my experience for the worse.
Current Adapt EL: 5.75
Remaining Study Days: 8
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