New Gig: March 19th

With my contract at Big Corp coming to a natural close (they’re shutting down the site completely), I hopped back into the job market back in mid-February and landed myself a sweet position at Mid-Corp.

I start on Monday!

There are a lot of things I’ll miss about working downtown: it’s a thriving area, full of people and energy. I also liked taking the bus, despite the occasional shenanigans. Needing a tank of gas once a month or so ain’t bad, either.

I’ll have about a 45-minute commute to Mid-Corp (busing would have been 1.5 hours, with two transfers). I don’t consider 45 minutes terrible, but then, I used to drive all the way down to Fort Mill (a full hour each way). I won’t be able to walk across the street to Amelie’s or to grab a slice of pizza or get Indian food, but my body will be more than okay with this. As will my budget, although I suspect the gas costs will more than counteract any food expenditures.

I’m very ready to move on to something new. My work here at Big Corp has been deconstruction, limited to front-end work aside from where I created opportunities for .NET/Python/anything-else-dear-god work by creating tools for myself. The IP agreement here is the most draconian I’ve heard of: it covers all concepts, designs, and work, on or off the clock, and on or off of company equipment.

I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t stand up in court, especially since I’m a contractor, but I’ve played it moderately safe by avoiding working on my retirement app idea, which would be directly of interest to them.

More than that, though… it’s hard to put into words that aren’t unprofessional, but this isn’t a healthy work environment for me. Physically, it’s cubes as far as the eye can see, institutionalized security, and no flair or flavor or color. People-wise, there’s an annoying division between contractors and permanent employees, I don’t have much in common with my coworkers (and I have no colleagues who are developers), and there’s a whole lot of negativity among the personnel here. It’s been a nearly daily struggle to avoid internalizing that negativity.

The last several months, I’ve been working from home a couple days a week, and that’s made many of these things easier to deal with.

But I’m also avoiding looking at the Mid-Corp position as a series of “doesn’t have x, y, and z” comparisons. I was put through a wonderful-but-tiring 2.5 hour interview–30 minutes with 5 different people–and the thing that impressed me most was the sheer enthusiasm of the team. Line of business, manager, both senior developers, all crunk about the work they’re doing. They’re experimenting with newer technologies, they’re agile (and somewhat Agile), and they have a work environment that encourages interpersonal connections.

I’ll be doing .NET development again (woohoo!), along with a healthy mix of more traditional front-end work.

I’ll be building something. I’ll be optimizing using all the tricks I’ve learned at Big Corp.

I’ll be interacting with line of business (real people!) to figure out feasibility and timelines.

I’ll be working with a sharp team who seem to love their work.

If the position is what I’ve signed on for, it’ll be so much more in line with my experience and interests.

Monday the 19th. So ready.