So my current project's contract is ending at the beginning of February and I will no longer be working on-site at the client's location. I will be working from home 24x7. This in itself is very cool (however, it does tend to bring out the inner workaholic). The best part of this change is that I am now in control of where my career goes. Up until now, it has been a constant battle of mapping out where I want to be in the future, the direction I want my career to go, and what my current boss wants. Typically, about every three years or so my desires have diverged significantly from where "the man" wants me to go so I find a new gig and keep going.
For example, at my last gig I was hired on as "the linux expert" because the company was wanting to move their database servers to Oracle / linux (long before Oracle supported linux as their primary dev platform). So I thought, "Sweet! this is exactly what I'm looking for!" Initially it was great. I got to eat, sleep, breath linux/oracle. I got to figure out how to install Oracle on linux 7.0 and make decisions as to which linux distro was best suited for our environment, etc. Well, short version is I eventually became the Citrix admin and spent less and less time doing the work I thought I was hired to do. So three years later I found a new gig. Same ol' same ol'. I figured this is the plight of the techie.
I signed on with my current employer, packed up the family, and moved to Austin. I figured if nothing else, at least we made it to Austin way ahead of schedule and I was working for a company that would pull a lot of weight on the resume if it came to that. I came at the end of the project cycle so it started out very slow. Plenty of time to study outside of work and do stuff I wanted to do. The project was complete and we had nearly 4 months of idle time until the next rev of the project started.
Four months is a long time to sit on the sideline with nothing to do. You begin to wonder about job security, your skills begin to atrophy, and you get really bored. My boss kept telling me that the contract with the client will be up soon and not to worry about my job, there's plenty of work once we're finished with this project. OK, but how much longer until we're out? So the time comes for the suits to renegotiate the contract and we're in for one more rev.
So now the project is coming to a close and my co-worker and I have our team meeting with our manager. Our manager tells us this is it, we've made it through and we're finished with the contract and proceeds to ask us what we want to do. I look at my co-worker, he looks at me and we both are dumb founded. We are being asked what we want to do, not being told what we are going to do. Not only that, but we now work from home, our time is our own, and it is up to us to determine our schedule. HOLY CRAP! That's the coolest thing ever!
I am both excited and scared that I am finally in complete control of my career time. Now granted I am still bound by what my company does, but they do everything that I am interested in! A techie's wet dream come true!!!!
