So I had a video interview today with a company an old coworker is at and it went surprisingly well... better than I had hoped. The role is using a language I have limited experience with, and something I haven't used in awhile, but I talked around that a bit. The (very simple) hands-on test they gave me I solved in about a minute... and apparently they expected it to take me about 20. *shrug* Additionally I have a bunch of experience in some things their team is currently learning, so that's a win too. I'm going to be scheduled for another interview with the entire team sometime in the future. I wasn't expecting this interview to be a win, more just a learning experience, but I'm now hopefully optimistic. Wish me luck.

That sounds really promising Satis! I know it isn't that simple but back from my days of dabbling in coding (obviously nowhere near the sort of stuff you do) once you have one language you're comfortable with it's generally simple to apply those basics to others with small tweaks if those languages are similar in origin at least. So if you have some out of date knowledge I'm sure you'd soon pick it back up. And if you're solving stuff 20x faster than they expect, they'd be stupid to turn you down. So sending masses of luck your way!

Sounds very promising! Good luck!!

Question: did you ask what their policy was re: working from home during the pandemic?

ok, so an update.. after the first interview, I was immediately scheduled for a followup-interview a week later with the full team. This was 2 hours long. I guess I did pretty well, because later the same day I got a job offer, which I accepted. I put in my 2 weeks notice with my current company on Friday and will start my new job on December 4th. So yea, I'm done with my company (17 years....wtf) and moving on. Wish me luck.

Awesome! Good luck!

Fucking amazing!! Congrats!

Did you manage to give your current company a piece of your mind about how they handled the last year or so?

Gonna be a stressful period establishing yourself at the new place but it's also going to give you a lot of energy I think. At least that's how it goes for me when I change jobs.

Yay fantastic news Satis! Here's hoping this one treats you better

hah, thanks. I'm pretty excited (and nervous). I have 2 days of work left and I'm done... I happened to have scheduled a week off, so with Thanksgiving I just have today and tomorrow and then I'm free.

Regarding giving them a piece of my mind... tempting, but no. I kept the resignation letter short and sweet. There's nothing to be gained by venting. I think the fact they lost one of their most knowledgeable people is punishment enough.

I'm sure they'll soon realise their mistake. The thing is, will they learn from it?

In a similar vein, I had an upsetting but sort of uplifting conversation last week at work with a member of the engineering team. He's worked there for years and definitely knows what he's doing and he said the transition team (i.e. my job) has gone downhill in the last 2 years and is back to where it was 6 years ago. I.e. before I started and it was a shambles and since I went off sick it's gone backwards. So kind of gratifying that I was missed so much and no surprise really as I left a team of 3 who hadn't done the job properly before; 2 had come back from maternity leave from other roles and one had joined the team in theory but had in fact been working on the new system we were getting installed so we didn't see any point in training her up.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that they definitely won't learn anything from it. The amount of turnover of talented/motivated employees I've seen at most places I worked was astounding. Not so much in that it was a thing - the best people are more likely to find other opportunities - but in that it was completely ok with management and HR and nobody ever made an effort to keep these people. They were treated as being just as expendable as your average crappy employee.

The effort of going through recruitment, getting a (probably worse) replacement and having to train them up and show them the ropes over and over again instead of trying to keep the good people you have never made any sense to me. The whole process will cost you a lot more than paying the good employees you have a little more, both in time spent getting this person there and in the loss of efficiency that is to be expected when you lose a valuable employee who knew his job inside out. I guess HR departments need something to fill their days with?

Nice to hear that they miss you at least Pev...although I can imagine you feel bad for the team and the situation. Not your fault though, obviously.

HR depts spend their days bullying the shit out of everyone and ass licking their boss (can you tell I dislike my HR rep?) I agree they probably won't learn. If they're like my company they don't bother with the training up part other than the bare minimum so a decent employee like Satis leaves, they get in a cheaper, crappier person who'll eventually make up what they're doing just well enough to keep them ticking over. Our place is exactly the same, the good ones all leave. I'd have been long gone if not for Cushing's, once that was underway I needed to stay to get the sick pay!

Gotta get those dollah bills! Or euro bills. Or whatever they pay you with in England. Ounces? Pounds? Pfennigs? Fish?

Anyway, no, my company won't learn. They're idiots. They push their talented people out and have ever since my current boss took over. He's still convinced that getting rid of our quality assurance department was a good thing. It took a week for my HR person to actually reply to me putting in my notice, and she never bothered to address my question about returning company equipment. When I finally did get emailed, it was on Black Friday (day after thanksgiving and a big holiday here) and it was with a form letter asking me to fill out a employee exit survey. Which is a trap and nobody should ever fill out unless they're contractually obligated, so I'm just going to ignore it (like she ignored me).

So... in a week I'll be at a new job.

Pounds Sterling I'll have you know! None of that foreign euro crap in here (coz y'know, even when we were part of the EU we pretended otherwise. Otherwise we're with the likes of Ox). Did they answer your question or do you get to keep some free stuff now? I think one of our project managers tried that once and they sent a guy from IT round his house to get it back.

haha, no, my coworker/boss (not sure, because my company got too lazy to even make org charts) volunteered to get my crap on Monday, so I drove in and dropped off my laptop and other stuff I had. It's fine.. it's all crap. I wouldn't want to keep it even if I had the option.

On a negative note... I drove into the office (about 20 minutes or so) and only after pulling into the parking space did I realize I forgot my back with all the stuff. So I drove back to my house... and got pulled over for speeding (91mph in a 70mph zone). So, I got a ticket... went home, grabbed my stuff, went to the office, dropped it off and bullshitted with the guy for a bit, then went back home again. I hate doing dumb stuff like that, especially when it ends in something dumber like a speeding ticket. Oh well. It's really overdue.. I speed a great deal and haven't had a ticket for speeding in like 5 years or something. I'll pay my fine, do the driver's training, and be done with it. Otherwise, though, it was a great day.

LOL sorry Satis but that's just funny. Should've tried to say you were running away from the virus or something, get out of the ticket