It's one of the few truisms of what we do. Give the industry five years and those people who have been treading water will be w-a-y back there. It's why continuing education is so important, both the on-the-job kind (I read manuals) and topic-specific training. It's why the recent IT certifications all seem to require some continuing-education to maintain the certification (no it's not just a scam to get your butt into a cost-bearing class).
It's also why the IT workforce is so highly mobile. I don't know how many peers I've heard say, "Pfft, I'd just quit and get a new job," in response to some horror story of bad IT management. It's also why drives to create IT unions are met with such withering scorn; one side effect of unions is that they get in the way of paying a person with god-like skills the god-like amounts of money they deserve, and they also make forcing stupid people to be mobile harder (sysadmins in general have a low tolerance for stupid, which is where our reputation for being grumpy trolls comes from).
This time it includes me.
My last day at WWU will be tomorrow. In the next couple weeks I'll be moving to the OTHER Washington, to work for a company with offices about a mile east of the White House. I'm not going to say who I'm working for until after I actually start there, but they are a night-n-day difference from who I've worked for before. They're a 20ish person start-up who was founded in 2004 and has been turning in profitable quarters. They also have a very interesting storage problem that I'm really looking forward to tackling.
This also marks the first time I'll be working in the private sector since 1996, when I was temping around just out of college. This also means that downtime is money, not just lost prestige and a lot of calls to the helpdesk. This is a decided change from what I've worked with before, and I'm looking forward to it.
What does this mean for the blog?
I'm not quite certain. I'll be blogging less about what I deal with on a daily basis since I'll be working on stuff that is most definitely a trade-secret. Exactly how much less remains to be seen. Working for a place where any interested citizen can request a detailed breakdown of what I did on any given day really frees a person to be wordy in public. Working some place where such things can only be compelled through a subpoena? Different.
But I'm still going to keep blogging. Some things I deal with are generic to the industry and are quite topical. Posts inspired by things I run into elsewhere on the Internet aren't going to stop.
There are going to be a couple weeks between tomorrow and when I start at the new job, which will be filled with uprooting my life and transporting it about 2800 miles. I'm likely to be a bit quiet during that period.
IT is change. Sometimes you have to make it yourself.
It's also why the IT workforce is so highly mobile. I don't know how many peers I've heard say, "Pfft, I'd just quit and get a new job," in response to some horror story of bad IT management. It's also why drives to create IT unions are met with such withering scorn; one side effect of unions is that they get in the way of paying a person with god-like skills the god-like amounts of money they deserve, and they also make forcing stupid people to be mobile harder (sysadmins in general have a low tolerance for stupid, which is where our reputation for being grumpy trolls comes from).
This time it includes me.
My last day at WWU will be tomorrow. In the next couple weeks I'll be moving to the OTHER Washington, to work for a company with offices about a mile east of the White House. I'm not going to say who I'm working for until after I actually start there, but they are a night-n-day difference from who I've worked for before. They're a 20ish person start-up who was founded in 2004 and has been turning in profitable quarters. They also have a very interesting storage problem that I'm really looking forward to tackling.
This also marks the first time I'll be working in the private sector since 1996, when I was temping around just out of college. This also means that downtime is money, not just lost prestige and a lot of calls to the helpdesk. This is a decided change from what I've worked with before, and I'm looking forward to it.
What does this mean for the blog?
I'm not quite certain. I'll be blogging less about what I deal with on a daily basis since I'll be working on stuff that is most definitely a trade-secret. Exactly how much less remains to be seen. Working for a place where any interested citizen can request a detailed breakdown of what I did on any given day really frees a person to be wordy in public. Working some place where such things can only be compelled through a subpoena? Different.
But I'm still going to keep blogging. Some things I deal with are generic to the industry and are quite topical. Posts inspired by things I run into elsewhere on the Internet aren't going to stop.
There are going to be a couple weeks between tomorrow and when I start at the new job, which will be filled with uprooting my life and transporting it about 2800 miles. I'm likely to be a bit quiet during that period.
IT is change. Sometimes you have to make it yourself.
This was not prompted by a layoff notice. I've worried about that in the past, and as it happens after I announced to my boss that I was leaving it was revealed that Technical Services was very likely to take a layoff once the Legislature got done with the 2011-2013 budget and WWU found out the size of cut we'd have to endure. Apparently I saved them the decision of picking someone to cut.
This means that I'm not leaving a hole behind me that needs filling. They're eliminating the position. I feel for my immediate co-workers in this who will have to endure coordinating vacations so they never overlap (I frequently was by myself during the Holidays), and having to take longer to do the same kinds of things thanks to work-load.
If you're in the area, me and a bunch of coworkers will be at Boundary Bay today at 5pm.
Congratulations on the new gig!
Finding something that is interesting and exciting is always a plus to a new job. Good Luck!
Great news, and don't forget to ask if I can help with any of the storage issues you face - I'm often on the East Coast.
Very happy for you! Hope the upheavel isn't too traumatic to your family. I made the trek from the Pacific NW to the midwest (OR to OH) and was decidedly not happy about the change in cultures and climates.
I hope you continue blogging about troubleshooting and etc. I also hope you own a good snow shovel and can find a good drive-thru car wash that does underbody sprays. =)
Well, I've always enjoyed your blog, and I hope you bring the same flair to whatever it is you're going to be doing. ...and then turn around and bring as much of it as you can back to us...
;)
Yes, every day you do not advance, you die a little bit. It sounds like you have risen to an internal challenge.... I applaud you! May you ever advance...
Congrats!!! Thanks for all the info you've passed on, hopefully there will be more to share down the road.