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Moving on without making your old company feel bad...

Well, as you've probably gathered from recent posts, I'm seriously considering moving on to pastures new, this brings up a dilemma - how do I leave my old company (when / if it comes to that) without making them feel like they've done something wrong?
What I'm trying to get at is, the place I work right now is a great little company, very little politics, nice small team, in short if you like that sort of environment it's ideal, my problem isn't with the company, it's with my skillset and development. You seen, whatever happens with the company I'm at right now, they just don't have large teams / sturctured development plans / strong methodologies / test-driven development, why? The answer is simple, they just don't need it,  the clients don't want it and there wouldn't be much benefit from it (our projects tend to be quick, straightforward 1-2 man projects).
Problem is, I do want those things, I feel like I'm treading water right now just reusing the same skills over and over without actually learning anything new - for some that is just peachy, it drives me nuts!

So, in short, I plan to leisurely look for a new role, I'm not just going to jump ship with no warning and I'm not going to leave my current company in the lurch (in other words, I plan to finish all projects to which I'm currently committed if possible). Which leaves me with a problem, they probably already know what I want to do(I know at least one other person at my company reads this blog for starters...), and  I think I'm  a pretty valued employee - so, how do you leave a perfectly good job and leave things amicable between yourself and the company you plan to leave? (and why does this sound so much like marriage guidance?)

Print | posted on Wednesday, February 04, 2004 9:06 PM |

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# re: Moving on without making your old company feel bad...

You and I face are facing the same thing. In my scenario the position I am in did not exist prior, it was created by me after I proved the benefit of automation development to the bean counters. Now that I am looking for work elsewhere I feel guilty for leaving because I built this empire. Some people say people are replaceable but I don't believe it. Sure in certain jobs yes, but in IT the developer I feel is not a robot he's a craftsman.

Remember one thing. Your company is not the one who is living your life, you are. At the end of the day business is business. You don't owe them anything and vis versa.

Its important to be continually challenged in this line of work because the hours are long and laborous.

I sometimes feel like I simply am doing the same projects over and over. Kinda goes like this.

1. You are solicited with an idea or you come up with it.

2. Everyone agrees its good and the work begins.

3. Build some kind of data store or setup some interaction with an existing data store.

4. Build a web app around the data store.

5. Repeat.

6. Next year upgrade existing web apps.

7. Repeat.


2/5/2004 9:01 AM | Rob Walker
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# re: Moving on without making your old company feel bad...

Scott, I'm with you 100% on this one. I think it's something to do with the fact that us Brits always feel like we have to leave things amicably.

I'm in exactly the same position as you. I want/need to move on to continue my own personal skillset / development experience, as I'm being stifled here. I'm the only developer here with any .NET experience, and although I managed to get my current project started in .NET, it was met with resistance. The problem is that I'm not allowed to spend time doing things the way they *should* be done, and incorporating the best that .NET offers us. Instead I've found that I might as well have done this all in VB6 (the companies current and only skill). Now I'm in the position that if I leave, noone will be able to carry on my work... The other problem I have here is that noone in the company is interested in learning anything new. Before I joined just over a year ago, noone had even heard of XML before, let alone done any. I incorporated XML/XSLT into a crucial part of our main VB6 product, and now noone else will touch that part of it - purely because they aren't prepared to learn XML/XSLT.
Mine is the *only* machine on our network that any kind of service pack / hotfix installed. Yep - that's right - not even our servers (inc. RAS / Web) have any hotfixes installed....! The reason? We're still using a single channel ISDN line for all of our web access - therefore downloading even the smallest of SP/hotfixes will grind the connection (which email comes in on) to a halt. Therefore we're not allowed to download *anything*.

Oh, I give up. Sometimes it just not worth the bother.
2/5/2004 9:11 AM | Mike
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