So after working for 1-3 years (depending on if you count mergers and acquisitions) and my previous job, I put in my notice and resigned, starting the next segment of the ArcterLife. I’m now an employee of Layer 7 as a “OS Developer”. L7 does interesting things with XML firewalls and gateways, and it is definitely something different and definitely something interesting.
The saddest part is leaving the guys at my last job. The best thing about working there (and I’m not alone in saying this) is the people. B and L were awesome and kept me sane (and I hope I did a bit of the same for them), the girls from marketing and finance were great, not only for not filing multiple complaints against me and the guys for…. well, being ourselves, but being fun to hang out with and bring an aspect outside the geek lives of boys. Everyone else as well, H and boss-J, were great to work with. I also appreciate those that I talked about this. It was a very hard decision, especially the prospect of leaving people you spend 8+ hours a day with!
In the end though, I decided to move on. Today was the first day of work, and it definitely came out in the “not-awful” category. At my previous job I was stuffed at a desk in between two other people, had no phone, and no computer my first day there. This was totally different…. well, kinda. No phone still, no desk (only an empty area with a large collection of desk chairs in it), but I did have a nice desktop computer to work with. I actually had to carry a spare desk through the office with the new boss to get a place to work until the nice cubical desk setup is brought in and setup by the building people. Not bad considering.
As with most new jobs, the first day (actually probably the first few at least) will be spent setting up, getting used to things, finding the URLs for the company mail/wiki/bugtracker/etc, getting mail and IM setup, configuring my workstation just so, and so on. This isn’t to say I haven’t been thrown into the fray a bit already of course! The new boss man keeps on mentioning things and following up with something like
“… and that’ll be yours now.” or
“… you’ll own that part of the system.” and
“… that part I’m getting to hand off to you.”
I’m only mildly petrified of course 😉
The new format of work means that (for now anyway) my hours are shifted a bit. Instead of getting on the 6am train in and the 4pm train out, it’ll be the 7:30 in and the 5:30 out, meaning I get back home at around 7pm, but on the other hand get to wake up a glorious 1.5 hours later than normal. In a fit of “go-getter-ness” I am even going to be going out running in the mornings to take advantage of a body that’s used to getting up at 5:15am!
That’s the theory anyway.
So, that’s what’s new. In the giant timeline of Alan this will be marked with a small note that says something like “June 2008, resigns from job for only the second time ever and starts working at Layer 7”. Sadly the historical and archaeological value of this will probably go mostly unnoticed by everyone but me.