Ok, It’s been a while since I’ve updated the site. I’m going to try to do more blogging, but we’ll see. However, I feel the need to fill in the gaps — at least work-wise.
My last work-related post was about a month in at BCBS FL — back in late 2010. Initially, things where going well until the main developers that started the mobile project left for greener pastures in April of 2011, and more so when the project manager was promoted into another department. All these folks shielded me from middle management and let me develop the mobile web project without many issues from above. Once these folks were gone, I had no buffer from middle-management. I guess it takes a special kind of tact to deal with folks at that level and I have a new respect for a well defined management structure. Anyway, I ended up leaving due to a lack of work — I literally spent the last three months reading books on iOS development or Mobile Web with only an occasional line of code to write. I knew my time was limited, I just didn’t know the last day until it came.
After leaving BCBS FL, I spent about a week and a half looking for work and ended up with 3 good offers. I choose to return to BCBS SC to work on Tricare. I thought I could commute the distance — leaving on Mondays and returning on Fridays. My desire would be to do that for some time, perhaps a few months or up to a year and then relocate the family back to South Carolina. In retrospect, I should have done that once my lease was up at the house we were renting at the time. However, the family really enjoyed Jacksonville and seemed opposed to relocating back to Columbia, even with a great salary increase involved. With that realization, I decided to find something back in Jacksonville since commuting weekly wasn’t going to work long term.
I decided to work for Crowley-Maritime in Jacksonville. It seemed like the perfect job — 7 miles (about 15 minutes in traffic) to work with familiar, yet some new technologies in the mix. It was a 6-month contract-to-hire and things were going so well, they converted me to perm right at the 3-month mark. I’m not sure what happened, but just 3 months after full-time conversion, they let me go. I wasn’t given any specific reasons and I tried to contact my former-manager for specifics without a response. I also contacted some former co-workers to see if I could get an inside scope on the decision, but they all assumed I quit due to too many crazy hour weeks. My former co-workers were more than willing to give me good references. I did find out another entire team was let go and outsourced and given the same vague treatment just a few weeks prior. In the few weeks after my termination, the same job posting wasn’t re-opened (at least to the outside) so I suspect some type of business decision was made.
My job search took nearly two weeks this time, but I was ultimately landed 5 offers. One in Jacksonville, two in Atlanta, one back in Columbia, SC and one remote (work from home) — I chose the remote position with a start-up company. I’m honestly not sure how this is going to work. They have funding, at least for a little while, but that’s not what I’m concerned about. I’m a software engineer — I design my applications before coding them. I’m also a more thoughtful coder when I am coding, preferring quality over quantity. I’m not sure I can keep up in a fast-paced start-up. Especially since I will be doing everything technical: designing, coding, testing, documentation, etc. There is no QA team, no formal process, no real test servers or even development testing info-structure — just code and deploy to production — that’s it (and pray you don’t break something). The cowboy development philosophy is fine until you go live, after that, I hope the quality argument is considered — otherwise, I”ll be looking for another opportunity soon. On the positive, I’ll be exposed to super cutting/bleeding-edge technologies and I can stay in Jacksonville (family is very happy about that). I figure the worst case looks like I’ll be on the market in a month or so with an even stronger resume, so I figured it was worth the risk and it just may turn into a great learning and growing experience.
Well, that
