decision
I’ve not made any secret about the fact that I don’t care for where I’m working very much. Today I found out something that made me like it even less.
Although I’ve not been overly happy, I do like my boss, who is a decent guy, and the project I work on is the most visible one on the company, at least at the moment. We had a team meeting this afternoon, at which point my boss’ boss announced that he had ordered a cell phone for the team for on-call, and that sometime in the next few months we would begin supporting the product 24 x 7. In retrospect, I don’t find this surprising, but this is very unwelcome news to me. I quit carrying my pager some time ago, as it only worked half the time and never got used. But a cell phone, that’s different.
Anyone who knows me understands that I get highly upset when work life intrudes into my personal life in the slightest. So for me, today’s announcement has simply strengthened my resolve to move up my timetable and get a new job. I’ve rather enjoyed the idea of becoming a Linux developer, and possibly developing an open source product. So, with that in mind, I recently bought a book on Linux certification and have started reading it. I’m anticipating that I’ll be able to take at least one of the two tests within a couple of months, and hopefully I can take the second one a couple months after that. Then what remains is to polish up my programming skills on the platform.
Long and short: sometime in the near future I’m leaving my current job behind for something better paying that doesn’t require 24 x 7 support. I’ll lose some of the flexibility I have now, some vacation and the like, but I think it’ll be worth it. I’m tired of the crap, and I think this may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. i didn’t say anything at the meeting, or to my boss, and I’m not going to until I resign. There’s nothing I can say that I and others haven’t already said to those that matter, so I’m done trying. It’s time to get ready to walk through the door and move on.