Change

Normally, I don’t really like change. Change is unpredictable and can make comfortable things turn into uncomfortable things.

I started looking around for another job. I was starting to feel a change coming on; it’s been building up over the past few weeks. At work, things were different. My boss hasn’t been as critically dependent upon me, which has been great stress relief and allowed me to do my job the way I thought it was meant to be done, but I could see why: he was now critically dependent upon the consultant he’d hired. Fair enough.

As I’ve ranted in previous posts, I’m not all that happy in my current job. It’s been said before, so I won’t repeat why. But, I do have something to add: I was being limited intellectually, I think. My degree had nothing to do with my position, and it showed often. However, I kept on keeping on, because I had to.

So, with a sense of small relief, I started looking for other jobs over the weekend. Not just talking about it, but actively seeking them, taking notes and writing cover letters to send with my resume. I hadn’t actually submitted any over the weekend, though. So I rock up to work on Tuesday as normal, and things are pretty normal. Our typical afternoon meeting isn’t on, but that’s normal too. My boss swings by and pulls me into an empty office, and he says: “I wanted to talk to you … basically, Stuart [the aforementioned consultant] is going to work here full time. And you’re leaving.” I would have been flabbergasted if (a) he wasn’t usually this straightforward (b) I hadn’t seen this coming and (c) I actually cared.

So now I’m looking for a job. A systems administrator position at UQ has caught my eye and luckily through some friends I have been able to make contact on the ‘inside’. Whether it helps my cause or not I’m not too sure, but I put my best effort into the cover letter anyway. It’s full time and the pay is a shitload more than what I’m earning now. The position itself seems promising, and although it’s entirely Microsoft, I think my hopes and dreams of working exclusively with open source (at least for the time being) are going to have to wait until I have more experience under my belt. Unfortunately there just isn’t an employment market for people like me.

I might even end up back at my old job at Nokia, which is pretty ‘lol’ but not really what I want to do with my life. No harm working there while I find something else, though!