Career Change
After three years as a developer in the ticketing industry, I have moved on. I just needed a change. I have never been a person that can follow a routine for very long. Just picking up and leaving is a big deal though! The two jobs are just as far apart from each other as can be.
The old job
- Point of sale and ticketing industry
- Near Philadelphia Writing in Delphi and a touch of C# Using Visual Source Safe
- Company of about 80 employees
- Development team of about 15
- Working in a cubicle
The new job
- Sports instant replay industry
- Near Pittsburgh
- Writing ASP.NET MVC and Silverlight
- Using Mercurial
- Company of about 25 employees
- Development team of 2
- Working in an office
It is certainly a change in direction for my career. A direction I have always wanted to go even with the old job.
I am into my first week with the new job and it was been wonderful so far. Of course first week reviews are always a bit skewed, but I did actually develop a lot this week. I think it helps when you can walk in and do File > New Project your first day
So it does not look like I would be qualified to do the new job. Thankfully, I have never stopped learning outside of work. I now know how important it is to do that, because I got the new job because I go home and write code for fun. I go home and write ASP.NET MVC 2.0 for fun and create some pretty awesome stuff too. In fact, John Nelson and I are working on something we hope to be releasing to the public soon. I wish I could talk more about it but I will in time. I am also a huge advocate of mercurial so that was and easy change.
It has been so nice to be given every tool I have asked for to do my job right and continually be asked if I have everything I need. Valuing my opinion is high on my list of what it takes for me to be satisfied with my job.
I guess the one bad thing about the new job is that the team size is drastically decreased from the old job. I thrive on other employees challenging me. It makes me want to do more and learn more when another teammate talks about interesting that I know nothing about. I think that in time this will improve when the company gets more team members in development, and what better place to be, than the first one there.