Job Change

Those of you who know me personally probably have heard the news already, but here it goes: I've started a new job!  This time it's for real, unlike last time.  :)

The decision to leave the company that I'd been with for nearly five years was a difficult one.  There have been many frustrations over the years there, but the number one reason that I chose to leave (at least at the start of the process) was travel.  I've been travelling almost constantly for work for five years now.  I've had a couple of slow periods where I would get to stay home for a month or two, but overall, I'd say that I have spent about fifty percent of my time with Wyde on the road.  By itself, travelling isn't that bad.  I do enjoy visiting new places and meeting new people, but with a family (and especially two small children), travelling is very taxing.  Now, don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying that my family makes it hard to travel; I'm saying travelling makes it hard on my family.  I just couldn't live with it any longer.

The other thing to understand is that I wasn't looking for a new job.  One of the things that I hate the most in life is job hunting!  When I graduated from college, it took me ten months to find a job in my field!  Ten months!  Granted, that was at a particularly tough part of the recession, but the hardest part is getting your hopes up and then being rejected.  I couldn't count how many times I heard, "we're very interested," or, "we'll be in touch," or any other saying that leaves a candidate with hope just to have it all come to nothing.  A couple of times I had been told that they wouldn't give me a formal offer right away, but that I would get one within the week, but never heard back from them.  Well, I'm getting a little off topic here, so I digress.

My point is that I wasn't looking.  I've been getting a call from headhunters about once a quarter for the past year or two and I would go through the motions, maybe have an interview or two and then not hear anything.  I took it all in stride, not getting my hopes up for any of it.  This last time, about a month ago, I had another head hunter call that went a little differently.  The recruiter handed me right off to the interested company and they wanted to interview me right away and in person.  I was, unfortunately, out of town, but they were cool and we scheduled for the next week.  They acted fast and got me an offer the same week that I had the second interview.  Now, I'm not going to go into the details of what happened next, but there was a counter offer and then a counter-counter offer and I ended up accepting the new company's counter-counter offer.  That's another thing that I wasn't trying to do (get a bidding war over me going), but it's nice to feel wanted!

So, what's different now that wasn't when I'd gotten other interviews?  Well, for one, the new company has a different outlook on what it takes to be a good developer.  They feel, similarly to how I feel, that if you know the theory/concepts of object-oriented programming that a language is easy to learn.  It's surprising to me how most other companies don't grasp that.  I hadn't done Java programming since college and this company was willing to take the risk based on my interview and hire me as a Java developer!  I was amazed!  Another reason is that I am more experienced now than I was out of college.  Duh, right?  Well, I didn't really fully realize that until I started talking to this company and they asked me certain questions that a newbie might not know about.

You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned the name of my new company.  The reason is that I'm not sure how they would take me writing a blog about this whole thing.  Maybe after I've worked here for some time I'll share with you all that information, but for now I'll keep it quiet.

Another main benefit to switching jobs is that I get to work using Java again.  I've been reading training manuals now for a while and the more I read the more I remember why I liked Java.  It's also made me realize how important a good design is to having a successful product.  I'm just going to leave it at that.

So, it's exciting news!  At the same time that I'm sad about leaving Wyde and leaving the friends that I made there, I'm happy for this new opportunity to return to Java and do something different.  It's a good opportunity to grow my skillset and to see how other companies do this consulting thing.  Also, yay for no travel! :P

PS: It still amazes me that Word likes "travelling", but Firefox wants it to be "traveling".