Chillin Chillin...

Thursday, February 02, 2006

Does the Perfect Job Exist?

So it's been a while since I have been happy with my job. I find myself always looking for the perfect fit. When I was working up in Tallahassee with Company 3 I had a cush position. I was technical lead / project manager for a client. I maintained 8 or 9 applications with the main one being an ASP.NET/VB.NET intranet application with an Oracle 10g backend. Had three developers on my team, and ran a weekly status meeting with the executive officers and IT staff.

When we had projects in development I mostly managed the projects, and handled any "emergency" ad-hoc reporting requests. I liked being involved with the design of all of the applications, but once it came to development I had no problem handing it off. Just was not challenging. We are talking about building forms or reports, and calling stored procedures. Too easy. I would still be a resource to the developers for the business rules and understanding the database schema, but that's pretty much it. I found it more challenging when the executives would come to me and ask for specific data with crazy conditions. That stuff was fun to work on. For some reason I always found it more interesting and challenging to write SQL than to write ASP or VB.

Although I continued to gain more and more responsibility at Company 3, I was not happy with my salary. I was making good money, but expected an increase with the added responsibility. So I started looking for a new job. Found a place in South Florida, Company 2, that seemed like a good fit. I also was very interested in working directly for a company. Up until this point I had only worked for IT shops. Company 2 was definitely a company that showed big time growth opportunities. And they were looking for someone to come in and help them to convert there in house application from ASP to ASP.NET. Two big plusses. So the family and I made the move back home.

This was in the plan from when we made the move to Tallahassee. We wanted Samantha to grow up around the family. Both Leslie and I were brought up around our grandparents and wanted the same for Sam.

So Company 2 kind of sold me on the .NET conversion, but there was no buy-in from upper management for the conversion. Something I did not know when I came on board. Apparently they had been talking about moving to .NET for a year or two before I started, and politics always got in the way. Too make a long story short (too late for that now), after three months of updating Visio diagrams I was contacted by a recruiter. Told him I was not thrilled with the work I was doing, and he was able to find me a job with Company 1.

They were looking to re-architect there .NET Intranet application. It sounded very cool and exciting. But here I am now three months into the job, and I have been put on an emergency project, and I am doing updates to a VB.NET client application that has probably the worst design of any application I have seen... and I have seen some pretty bad ones.

So what do I do? I am now on my sixth job in six years of work. Would like to find a place I can call home. I have been considering the contracting thing. I would be interested to see if I could make more money doing that. Would love to open up my own shop, but just don't have enough contacts yet for something like that. I'm sure things will eventually work out on the job front for me. Will just have to wait and see for now.

* - See "Four Things" post if you are interested in the Company Names.

3 Comments:

  • Look at you! Blogging maniac!

    Don't worry, Bry... the perfect job WILL come along, and you'll be that much more appreciative when it does...

    If this finds you before I do tomorrow, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

    Doobie

    By Blogger LoveBoatCaptain, at 10:45 PM  

  • Thanks buddy.

    Lol. Yeah man, I am starting to like this blogging thing.

    I'm sure the right job will come along. I'm just not the patient type.

    By Blogger Anonymous, at 10:31 AM  

  • Well, the story is interesting, and I guess if one keeps looking and looking and looking, some eprfect job might appear. The truth is that there is no perfection, only getting close. 95%, 90% or 80% close. That's the usual, but what I can say is that it takes you to make up some of the difference. Mayhbe 5% or 10%. yeah, i am taking about you. You need to take up some of that slack and MAKE A DIFFERENCDE. That is what i think one should try to do and make it better. Please keep looking for the best job, but it still won't be perfect. Just try and get real close, and then you do the rest. Now you know how I operate, i try to MAKE A DIFFERENCE. try it...

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 10:51 PM  

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