New job

OK, first things first. Here's the long promised post about my new job.

It's quite a funny story how I ended up here. In this post from December about my 30th birthday, I mention the band I hired for the party, the Red Hand Blues Band. Between their sets we chatted and I learned that the double bass player, Martin, runs a development company. He mentioned, conversationally, that they were keen to find some programmers who were interested in working from home or part time. After that (and a tequila with tabasco and orange!) we both carried on with what we were there to do and didn't give it much further thought.

In January I sent my CV to the recruiters I had been working with ever since moving back to SA and, as an afterthought, to Martin as well. I heard back from the recruiters, went on a few interviews; eventually I was one interview with the CEO away from accepting a job with an online contract managment firm.

Cue an email from Martin to say that my CV had ended up in the junk folder, but if I'm still looking would I come for an interview. I almost didn't go, but he seemed keen and I didn't have anything to lose.

After the longest, most comfortable and most in-depth first interview ever, I was really torn because both positions felt like a good fit. Martin was also very keen to get me on board, and during the phone call where I told him I had to weigh my options and make a difficult decision, he told me he'd be buying a computer for me to work on in good faith in the meantime.

The biggest deciding factor that made me choose this job over the other is the diversity of projects they do (rather than maintaining one piece of software like in the other company) and the diversity of technologies they use. The focus is on my own core skill, ASP.NET, but there's a lot of scope for learning new things. There have been several occassions that showed me it was the right decision. Not least of all the boss' amazing attitude towards family and work-life balance when it transpired I was already pregnant at the time of the interview!

It's a small development company, doing mainly web stuff, but for an office with 7 people (one of whom is a designer and one a copy writer), we maintain some seriously heavy-weight clients.

I'm enjoying the work, I'm loving the people, and I'm seriously appreciating the very human and honest managerial style.

I am a little in danger of being that annoying new guy who thinks they should change everything to what I'm used to, but it can be a little frustrating to not have source control or coding standards. While it's a good exercise for me in relinquishing control and adapting, I like to think I do bring some good suggestions that at least give food for thought even if we don't implement them straight away.

So, that's the story of my now-not-so-new-anymore job, and what I believe to be the divine hand in leading me to it.

Lady of "leisure"

It feels like I'm busier than before I stopped working.

It's no-one's fault but my own, of course; I put off everything as something I can do "when I have more time", and now I have so many chores, errands and projects I don't really have any time.

I guess it's in part just the adjustment to having to actually manage my time properly! And then there was the first few days' battle to overcome the novelty of being able to sit in front of the TV all day watching downloaded TV series or playing Monkey Island.

I'm working on a stimulating and fascinating project which loads a Google Map, allows the user to search for an address; choose a radius and then returns geographic data for that area. It's been fun getting to know the Google Maps API and challenging to remember how to integrate ASP.NET with javascript, and I've got some other projects in the works.

I'm aiming to find another contract position for January; I don't know why I'm so reluctant to find a permanent post but I know that I very much am. I am extremely lucky to have the freedom to be that way, in that Steve's income is enough to cover our bills and he's awesome enough to give me the space and patience to figure out exactly what I want to do.

All that worry for nothing

In reference to my earlier post about not knowing how to handle telling my work I don’t want to renew my contract – no need, they don’t want me.

While it is a blow for the old self esteem it is understandable, I never really got my head around this project and it showed in my productivity.

Now, although I’ll put my CV back out there, I will have much more time for the increasing amount of personal projects I want to work on.

Post-September

My contract at my job expires at the end of September. I can't decide whether to extend it or not. When I first took the job I insisted on the shorter contract but the understanding was we'd extend it by another six months, as they were looking for a year long appointment.

I have no idea if they still feel that way, though; I worry that my trouble getting familiar with, and excited by, this project's code makes them not really want me there. But then again, I also know how prone my own insecurities are to making me project these kinds of feelings on others. There have been times when we've not seen completely eye to eye, though.

I fully intend to go to the UK in November to see family and friends and to attend ThoughtBubble, a comic convention in Leeds, with my friend Matt who runs our brainchild webcomic Moo & Keo. I haven't bought tickets yet so it's not an absolute surity, but that's only because the hospital bills upset the budget a bit and I really do intend to go. Some great friends I've made on the xkcd forums are travelling from far to attend too and I really want to meet them in person.

This raises the issue of leave, as well. I have already taken almost two weeks unpaid leave shortly into my contract at the current job to go to Singapore, and have as it stands accrued 3.75 days of annual leave; I don't really know if I can go on another holiday. And that's without the 10 days of sick leave (when the HR system shows I only have 3 available). And the two days I took around the long weekend to go to see the folks (wonderful time, subject of the next post).

Steve knows I'm not totally fulfilled at this job and supports me if I don't want to renew. I have some pet web projects on the side that I could devote my time to if I only started looking for a new contract to start beginning of next year. Then again, our income would almost halve. We're blessed enough that we could pay all our bills on Steve's salary but we wouldn't have much by way of expendable income (and going to England for a week or so isn't cheap when you're taking SA Rands!).

Decisions, decisions. I will have to gather the courage to ask the Head if Technology and the project manager (aka my immediate boss and her boss) for a meeting next week. The last time I had a meeting with the two of them, it was to (very unfairly, in my opinion) give me a tongue lashing on attitude so it's not the most pleasant of prospects for me. Will have to grow a pair, though, I guess.

Wish me luck.

Working Girl

So I started my new job on Tuesday (because Monday was Easter Monday) at Investment Solutions (a subsidiary of Alexander Forbes).

It has been really good so far. We work along more or less the scrum programming methodology, although not strictly. In short: work is divided into "sprints" which is a period (2 weeks, usually) in which you complete the tasks assigned to you by the Project Manager.

Tuesday they had a Sprint planning meeting (always occurs at the start of a sprint) and it was good to see how the whole thing worked and the team interacted. I didn't get assigned any real tasks and the system's architect had something urgent he had to finish before being able to tutor me into doing something useful.

So the result is that I've been using the time to read up on the project and company. Documents in my laptop bag I'm currently battling my way through:

• Online Project Wiki (well, this one is obviously not in my laptop bag)
  
• Functional Requirements Document (aka Spec) -222 pages
• System Architecture document -70 pages
• Build Process guide -53 pages
• User Interface Design -39 pages
• Design Guidelines and Coding Standards -82 pages

BUT the team is really nice and it's excitingly different to my previous job in its type of project and working methodology. Your tasks are all granular pieces of work that should take no more than 6 hours to finish; and you are required to do 6 hours of programming a day. You have to check code into the source control system at least once a day, and before that you have to make sure it compiles and all the unit tests work. What's nice is you work together with the Project Manager to work out what tasks you're to do in the next Sprint and how long you think they'll take. I'm not saying this or my old job is better or worse but it's very different so it's a good learning experience and that's always good for personal and professional growth.

Now I'm just itching to do some actual work so all the technical jargon I've read can start making some sort of practical sense.

On the practical side we've still got one car but my office is literally 5 minutes from Steve's and we work on flexy time so we've worked out a schedule that allows us to travel together. The very excellent upshot of which is, I finally get to control when Steve comes home! :D

More about our epic power and water problems next time.

Go, brain drain, go!

I can't help but be surprised by the amount of positions available in SA's business capital for someone with a pretty standard Windows development skill set that can be at best described as an intermediate developer.

I had a technical interview (test, really) yesterday and have been invited back for a panel interview next week despite not finishing all the questions. I have another technical test tomorrow and another late next week. That's just from two recruiters who have had my CV for about a week. The one especially has sent me a list of over 10 companies they think I should interview at.

Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled! Scared of the technical tests but thrilled. Face to face stuff I know I can do, bigmouth that I am :-)

I'm going for contract positions at the moment, I'm just not sure yet what I want to do in the long run and we're thinking of starting a family, too. I don't want to be someone who can look a prospective permanent employer in the eye and lie about how long I'm likely to be useful to them.

The other benefit of course being an excuse to go out shopping; what a great time for Woolworths* to have their anual Quality Sale ;-) Most of my grown-up clothes are still in boxes so I need to spend some money to look the part.

Wish me luck!



* nothing like the UK Woolworths, our version of M&S.