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Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Moving On [Up?]

I put my two weeks notice in at work yesterday.  I've been here for almost five years, by far my longest stint (by two years) at any one job.  I'm leaving not because of a Gen Y itch or because I don't feel I'm adequately compensated.  Rather, I'm not really in the same role as I was when I was hired.  Let me elaborate:

When I started, there were ~20 of us and only 5 engineers.  We had two QA resources and the 7 of us reported to the CTO and COO.  We had one person doing support.  I was hired to essentially build a new and comprehensive web application from the ground up.  Being in that role made me the go-to person for support and any issues.  I never really realized how much I fed off the feedback and interactions that were required.

Something changed earlier this year.  I don't know if a bit just flipped in my head or what, but I just started thinking about moving on.  I dragged my feet for months before finally pulling the trigger and started looking.  Ironically, that week, I got two phone calls at work from head hunters.  I NEVER get calls at work.  They didn't really pan out and I stopped looking until another engineer, who was one of the afore mentioned five, left about 5 weeks ago.  At that point, I felt it was ok to start looking.

I wound up finding and applying for two very different positions and getting two very different offers.  One was for a $15K pay raise while the other was for a 10% pay cut.  It turns out, I took the pay cut for the promise of being happy and fulfilled again.  I wasn't wild about the pay cut; especially since my wife is almost 8 months pregnant and is taking 6 months off from work.  But I did manage to negotiate a 6-month review which will hopefully result in getting some of that back.

One of the better things that the new company will offer is that not only does my sister work there as well, but it's located in Boulder, 15 minutes or so from my house and 10 min from the gym.  Hopefully that will bode well for my training.

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