Unemployed Again

Well, that was a quick three weeks.

I haven't written much about my job since first getting it. I had hoped to get more settled into it first. But this afternoon I was laid off. I don't even have all the details as to why just yet, as I was informed secondhand. But I think there was a conflict between our owner and our customer about my role. The customer wanted someone in my position who can work into late evenings without notice, which I'm unable and unwilling to do.

I don't believe I was hired with this expectation. I'm not even sure the customer would have expected it at first. But I think the customer was acting under intense pressure from another customer of theirs and this project just became crazy.

Me, I kept hearing reassurances that this project is unusual, that normally projects are much saner with this client. I can't say. Maybe it was very bad timing for me to be hired and then tossed into such chaos.

And what a mess it was. Very little planning. One of our staff took on the role of writing specifications for the client - otherwise we'd have none. Requirements were fragmented across dozens of emails and one or two conference calls a week. I got one day of knowledge transfer from another coworker, and that was it. No designing. No modeling. No analysis. Just write code, write test classes, and move on.

This project also had external dependencies and resources that we didn't have access to. We coded our parts, but when things didn't work at integration, there were many late nights trying to diagnose problems. We worked under pressure trying to figure out what we could with our limited access.

I managed to get home at reasonable hours, but lost a good deal of sleep from anxiety. We never knew which nights the client would be working late to test our system, and expecting us to help fix things.

The worst for me was not knowing what to expect. The first few weeks of any job are tough until you learn the rules and patterns, who to ask about what, and what you can and can't say and do. And you might have a honeymoon period, but soon you have to prove yourself. I think I may have proven myself; I certainly got good feedback from some coworkers, and I think my competence is not in question. I think the issue in my case was my availability and not my ability.

I've done a bit of consulting - I even had a consulting business of my own, many years ago - but I've mostly worked on products and services and have managed to avoid such chaos. So one good thing from all this is that I know more what to look out for when interviewing. But I still think that if it hadn't been for this particular project and its demands, I'd be doing all right.

This is frustrating for me as it looks quite bad to lose a job after just a few weeks. I plan to get references from this attesting to my skills. It's also a concern as our field doesn't provide stability with age - there are always younger coders who will work longer hours for less money, and experience doesn't mean as much as it may in other disciplines.

So it's back to the job boards for me. But at the moment I'm not sad. More relieved; I look forward to getting better sleep and spending more time with my family.