Double entendre….on darn, already off to a poor start.
So, as 11 month ago, I took the leap, signed the papers, and volunteered to leave my former employer. This came with some stipulations. For one year, I may not:
- Try to recruit anyone actively employed at Lexmark or assist any new employer in same.
- Besmirch or otherwise criticize Lexmark.
- Return to work there.
That’s right. In the course of one afternoon, I went from a a fully-employed Software Architect at a (nominally) Fortune 500 company to 4 weeks from out-the-door on the job market.
Today marks my first day of official unemployment. As it stands, I have no job offers outstanding, but that’s certainly not been the case through the past 4 weeks.
So, the first week, I got offered a job at a startup. No interview, just say ‘yes to the dress’ as it were. I was so excited I nearly leaped out of my skin. A STARTUP! There’s nothing more exciting for a developer than the opportunity to go your own way, to be a founding part of startup. I put that one in my back pocket and decided to test the waters a bit more.
The next week, I had several phone screens and landed an interview at The Other Big Place in town. Good group of folks, but it felt just like my old gig–software group amid a massive Hardware company, large legacy codebase they were trying to modernize. Honest work, and a much more technology-focused group. Representative quote: “We code here. Basically 95% to 100% of your job will be coding. Are you okay with that?”
Long interview later, offer #1 was on the table. I chewed on it for that next weekend and turned it down. I didn’t want to go back to the same place I just came from, proverbially speaking.
Through a contact at work, I got an interview in a place up in Cincy that had exploded in growth over the past 3 years, with a culture that seemed like a cross between Google and Thoughtworks. (Turns out, Thoughtworks was a consultant of theirs, so seems natural they’d adopt some of their policies.)
Need to pause here for emphasis–it’s hard to imagine a better fit for me than this place. Something like 300 engineers, all staff- to senior-level, with Coding Dojos, Hack Weeks, Scrum, Pairing, and Linux development. Interview was a joy: Intense 1-hour deal with their senior folks, good vibes all around. I had an offer in hand by the next day. But, it meant a move.
So, local startup or move to Cincinnati?
Neither.
So this is where I must introduce the architect of all this change: God. My prayer life had been pretty consistent since January when they announced the voluntary exit program: This is your time to go.
So, from there, I was in denial right through the last day of the voluntary program, when I finally filled-out my paperwork and submitted it. Listening to God isn’t exactly something I do quickly, but I do get around to it.
So, praying over both opportunities I had, there were a couple of directives:
- You’re going to be moving.
- You need to be patient. Basically, I got the “Love, Joy, Peace, Patience…” verse running through my head.
Thus the verse, Proverbs 14:12 –> “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.”
But such….good….jobs! One exciting without requiring my family to move. The other only a moderate move to a place we generally like, Ohio.
It wasn’t to be. Upon discussion with several people trying to choose between the above the dichotomy, it became clear there wasn’t a real winner because neither was where God had me going. I was praying about jobs, not about where He wanted us.
Praying over the map, I felt the pull to Texas. Whitney laughed because her prayer life was just the same. So, I look.
So, here I sit, back in the Ensor LRC where I was 18 years ago. Yep…kids born that year are now here at Georgetown College, and here Old Fart Me sits, re-embarking on the job search.
Dear Reader, this is going to take me some time to work through. I poured much (too much?) of myself into that old place, so now I have to find-out who I am in middle age. This will likely be my forum.