Quite a bit has changed since my end of December post. The first two months of 2020 were a blur. {Redacted} went into a full change-over, a new CTO, and a new org structure early in the year, just as I had received word from a regional credit union that they wanted me to be their new, and only, Principal Software Engineer. I had to make a excruciating decision; to leave a company and people I loved, to move over to a new-idea-to-the-org position. Instead of building things and fixing things, I would be responsible for fixing the org’s developers and development processes.
One of the things I will take away is {Redacted}’s dedication to making the customer right, if there was a mistake or error.
Nothing is more freeing than the knowledge that, no matter the mistake, we will make the client right.
Knowing that we would always make the client whole allowed for experimentation and mistakes. Engineers are free there to do the best they can. There are many orgs who strive to be the very thing that {Redacted} has been.
Still, careers should not stagnate, and there was no place for me to go at {Redacted}. I had reached a space that the only place to go was if my superior retired or quit.
It has been three and a half months since I left, and I still miss everyone terribly.
Well, with the whirlwind of changes that occurred in February, naturally, a pandemic ensued which caused me to get a whopping three weeks of face-time with my new team. There are some outstanding people at my credit union, and with this past three months, I have been working to carve out my new-to-the-org role.
Some notes from the first
- Larger organizations have larger org problems. Each subteam has its’ own micro-climate.
- Empathy, empathy, empathy. You simply have to assume everyone is trying their best.
- TDD is nowhere near as ubiquitous as I assumed that it was.
On item three, I have been a TDD practitioner in spurts and starts since 2005, and I was later than I should have been to the game. It has simply been a part of a majority of the code I have dealt with. When folks describe it as new, it is a bit of a shock.
The elephant in the room clearly has to be the same thing everyone is dealing with. The big CV19. Here’s the high points.
- My kids have been homeschooling since March.
- My wife was furloughed from the Y, but still teaches the occasional ZOOM yoga course. We are blessed, in that the income from my new job covers what she was bringing in.
- I do Crossfit at home, either on ZOOM, or simply by myself, and work from home completely. My outings are walking the dog, or going to the grocery store. I have visited a few wineries for club pickups, and recommend everyone go visit a local winery and support small business!
Stay safe!
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