Back Into the Work Grind

I’ve got to tell you, I’m afraid of working again. Biggest problem? Being bored. In my last job I had looooong stretches of just doing nothing, because of the way they assigned work. They were a big corporation that set a firm workload for every two week sprint and nothing beyond that. No backlog, no tech debt, because it was a tightly controlled financial industry. No unapproved work would pass their gullet for fear of breaking something else.

So that meant I got one task assigned to me every two weeks and nothing else. I would usually get done with it in a day. Sure there would be some maintenance work over time, but that was because the requirements would change mid-sprint. I don’t much approve of having requirements-hunting and development occurring at the same time, but at least I had plenty of time to change the code.

My point is there were long stretches of nothing to do. And I’m trying real hard to be good — no Reddit, no YouTube, no flash games. Being distracted by shiny things is why I’ve had to leave other jobs (sometimes voluntary, sometimes not). That’s why I read so many books this past year. I cleared my TBR list into single digits.

Beginning a job, no matter what it is, is always the worst. You don’t know anyone. You can’t remember anyone’s name or where they sit. You gotta sign up for benefits and PTO and intranet and software and you don’t know what the corporate proxy is going to block or whether you’ll be able to install your preferred software on your own machine.

And you don’t know how to do anything. All you can do is watch training videos, read HR documents, and stare into the abyss. You certainly don’t want to do anything time-wasting in your first few days. There’s nothing that makes a worse first impression than looking unproductive.

I want to be a good worker. Good workers keep their jobs longer than two years. My resume is starting to look like I’m a job hopper–I spend two to three years somewhere (sometimes one year) and change. If IT wasn’t so lucrative, I could have a good career as a resume advisor or employment assistant.

I won’t go into the reasons for why, but they all sum up to the same thing–I get bored. I get bored of going into the same office day after day. I get bored of getting up at the same early time every morning. Going to the same coffee machine while drinking the same coffee and seeing the same people and having the same daily meeting then leaving at the same time and driving the same road and seeing the same stores and signs. Every day.

Current studies show that people change jobs 10-15 times over their life. (Source 1, Source 2) and I’m on the high end of that average. So I don’t know why people balk at seeing so many companies on my resume, but balk they do. We’re not in the era of one person working at the canning factory for forty-five years and earning a pension.

I just haven’t found a job that doesn’t treat me as a number or keeps its systems updated or doesn’t try to save its bottom line by hiring cheap contractors instead of maintaining quality code. No one’s under the illusion that a company holds any loyalty to them. I know for a fact that if a company could save 0.1% of 1% of its budget by firing me, they would. I didn’t graduate college to work at a sweatshop table and get a 1.3% salary increase that doesn’t cover cost of living.

Fortunately, this new place doesn’t seem like that. It’s small, but it’s downtown, and it’s also international. But the development team is also mostly co-located, instead of one person being in India, one person here, and one person in Arizona just because he feels like being there. The first day, there was a bundt cake in the breakroom, and it’s a good sign when they provide employees with food.