Frobozz's Journal

Yesterday, I was listening to Nick Offerman discuss Wendell Berry (a topic upon which Nick has much good to say and has a very compelling way of talking about it); one of the things he discussed was Berry's attitude towards work. The part that struck me was his thoughts on 'pretty work'; in the sense of someone looking at what you've done and saying 'that's very pretty work'.

That's part of what I like about being in the field I'm in. When things are at their best is when I'm able to devote myself to making things not just function but function well. There's a satisfaction to writing code in a way that will prevent the need for a future refactoring... to get it right the first time, structurally. There will always be days when I have to go with whatever's 'good enough'; but when I get to put polish on my work, I get a sense of satisfaction out of what I've done and I can feel very proud of that day's work.

It made me realise that I'm lucky to be in a job that allows me to take pride in what I do and affords me the chance to put a craftperson's care into the end result. I'm not very good with my hands; I've never had a talent for woodworking or painting or anything else like that... but I can still experience that satisfaction day to day. I should really never complain about my job again.

I mean I will. Let's be honest. But I shouldn't.

My jobhunt has come to a successful end! Today I inked my employment contract with Dell. It's going to be exceptionally strange to be working outside of education; but I guess this is how we grow.

It feels like I've been hunting for a new job for months; but in reality it's only been about a single month. I'm so tired of interviewing! Selling myself, over and over again... it's tiring. Also, finding places in San Francisco via public transit is also exhausting. But it's aaall done.

So, the thing that I didn't mention before... a little ways into my job hunt, which I kept on the QT, I received a completely out of the blue layoff notice from my department. It was... really odd. My department was trying to hire more people to do the things that I was already really good at doing and they laid someone off who was doing those things. The mind boggles. Fortunately, it only took me a few seconds from receiving the news to put this together in my head:

1) I'm already well into my hunt for a new job
2) I'm hunting for a new job because I -hate- what my department has become
3) I'm getting stressed out just coming in to work
4) I'm burning all of my vacation time going to interviews
5) Since it's a layoff, I'm about to get the generous severance package that Stanford University provides

Summary: I just got handed a lot of money to stop coming to work and I've been given plenty of free time to do my interviewing.

Ca-ching.

So I was smiling throughout my layoff meeting. It was weird; I think everyone else in the room was expecting me to become disgruntled and start yelling. I like to think I injected a little bit of weirdness into their otherwise dreary day.

Unfortunately for my former group, my departure has put them into some dire straits.
unsure emoticon
There were far too few people for all the work being done when I was still there; now there's even fewer and people are being snowed under. There were services that I ran for which I didn't have time to do a knowledge transfer; that's not going so well for them either. I really hate that management put them in the position of having to deal with my rather sudden departure. I wish them the best and I hope they onboard people who can take the load off of them soonest.

As it turns out, the project on which I've been working for the past year (moving my department into AWS) was the key to my success in interviewing. Even with just my minimal 'I've used EC2 and nothing else' experience, I got a metric tonne of interviews from people who wanted my skills. Combined with the fact that I do DevOps, which is hot and in demand in NorCal, and I wasn't hurting for interviews. I was even in the odd position of having to turn down a couple of offers (and sadly, having one pulled out from under me just before I could sign). All in all, it's a good position to be in and a good problem to have.

So we'll see how things go. 2016 is going to see a lot of changes to my life. I need to settle into a new role at a new workplace; I'm going to need to find someplace else to live once my current lease is up. I'm going to need to develop new skills and face new challenges. It's daunting; but fortunately it's not terrifying.

And that's really one of the biggest silver linings to all of this: the job hunting process has taken away a *lot* of my fears that I'm just a poseur in the IT field and shown me that I have a lot of impressive, marketable skills to offer employers. Technical interview questions helped me test myself in real time and let me score some pretty big self-wins. I'm a worrier by nature; having had my worry reduced like this is a huge deal for me.

Doing upgrades at 5 am on a Saturday... why am I in IT again?