Well I've been at this new job for almost two months now so I think I can finally give a fair assessment of it now. When I firt arrived they were in the middle of a (sorry parents) shit storm for lack of a better word. The team was two weeks late on pushing something out the door and were working crazy hours to get things done. Little weird jumping right in on my second day and making vital additions to their codebase but hey if you can't live on the edge you aren't living. Well for the first month I worked long hours like the rest of the team and I was really worried that this was what I had signed myself up for but I refused to believe that I could have put myself in such a bad situation. Well after we got it out the door the company took us for lunch/dinner/piss up fest. It was awesome this company really takes care of you when you do something nice for them. They threw around the money like it was going out of style. Every month my division goes out for an outting and this month it was bowling followed by a bunch of beers all bought by the company. Man I really like working for a company that has tons of cash in the bank.
Am I enjoying my job was the question that was raised by Sonja at dinner tonight and the answer is yes and no. Had I still had the job that I had in Victoria I would be really upset moving to this company as I really liked working for GenoLogics and I really believed in what we were building. The reason I left was not because of the company but the job that I had didn't really appeal to me. I wasn't learning and I wasn't meeting many new people because I had to travel a lot. I really enjoy being part of small company where you have no choice but to learn all the technology or the company fails as the new company I am with has almost a thousand people so some of the crazy technology is hidden away from me.
The things that I like about the big company:
-Security: knowing that I will be able to move up in the company and won't be held back because of my age. The old job I often thought they brought people in to manage the developers when the smarter thing would have been to promote internally.
-Crazy technology: Even though I complain that I don't get to learn the ins and outs of everything that this new company does I do get to speak with the people who have built it and I get to understand why certain decisions were made.
-New Challenges: My team is leading the way on transforming how the company produces software. When your team is moving a large iceburg it is exciting yet very difficult. This is a plus and a minus.
Things that I don't like in a big company:
-Communication: I think in a large organization communication is done poorly. Part of the problem is people just don't know who to ask so they have to get their manager to ask another manager to get something done. If you could eleminate those two managers the job would get ton three times faster.
-Managers managers manager: Too many managers (I've made a move to get myself in position to be one pretty quick)
-Time for things to change: In the old company it would take 4 months max to push something important through the business but with this new company it takes a whole lot longer than that.
Ah thats about all I want to say today.
later,
g
