One of the hardest few weeks in a long time...

[BaconSandwich]

The last few weeks have been some of the hardest that I've been through in years. It has been a combination of things. It might sound stupid, but I need to talk about it.

• My uncle passed away unexpectedly.
• Opposite Lock was getting shut down
• And by far the most stressful - I got a new job offer.

I've been working at the same place for the last five and a half years. There have been good times and dark times, but the last year has been pretty good. Out of the blue, an old coworker called me up, and tried to convince me to throw my hat in the ring for a position working with him at the place he is now working at. He spent half an hour on the phone trying to convince me to apply. I sent him a link to my LinkedIn profile, and basically said "if you're so interested, send this on to your HR department, and have them set something up". Over the next three weeks, I went through a half hour interview with their HR person, a technical take-home assignment, a 2 hour team interview, and an interview with the CTO of the company.

It didn't help that I had this last week off (current company wants people to use up their vacation time), and was in the garage doing lots of woodworking, so I had way too much time to think about things. What if they made me an offer? How much higher would the compensation be to make me leave where I'm at? Should I even worry about it? Will they even make me an offer? What if the offer is higher? ... and so on. It's all I could think about while woodworking. What made it even worse is that it started throwing me into a mental loop. Roughly 9 years ago, I was unemployed, and in a similar situation - woodworking in a cold garage. My thoughts then were a lot darker then they were now, but I found myself falling into that same mental loop - always being pulled back to think about the same topic - employment. It was starting to mess with me.

The new place offered me a much larger salary than what I am currently getting. The offer was almost too good to refuse. It would be working with a new-to-me programming language and a new-to-me web framework, but everyone that I have talked to about it thinks I'll pick it up with no problem. That night that they gave the offer I could hardly sleep - not because of excitement, but because of anxiety - wanting to make sure I'm making the right decision.

I accepted the new position, and start it in early December. I'm both excited and terrified. Today I let my team know, and it was a bit rough. I think they're excited for me, but also it'll be more responsibility on them. After having a week off, I've got three more weeks of work to do a brain-dump for them.

[jminer]

@baconsandwich Congratulations on the new gig! I'm with you on the stress of a new job. I'm a month into my new job right now and it's a crazy amount of imposter syndrome, stress, overworking and so on as you get used to it.

You'll be fine I'm sure - good luck. What will you be programming in?

[Boxer_4]

Congrats on the new job. I was in a similar situation earlier this year and I’m ultimately glad I made the change. Leaving the previous place was definitely hard though.

My condolences for your uncle.

[BaconSandwich]

@jminer I'll be doing Ruby on Rails. I'm currently doing Python and Django, and prior to that have done C# and ASP.Net, so I've been around the block a bit.

[jminer]

@BaconSandwich Good luck - learning a new language is always fun. I'm not a dev - more an infrastructure guy but I know enough to be trouble

[BaconSandwich]

@jminer I am curious - what sort of monster of a video card do you have running for all that mad Folding@Home you've been doing?

[jminer]

@baconsandwich I had been running three: RX 5700, RX 5700 XT and a GTX 1050. The 5700 XT is out of folding commission right now as it's with me in my hotel room and I trip breakers if I fold on it here...

[BaconSandwich]

Hah, nice!

Is it bad that I wish I had a faster card - not for gaming, but for Folding?

[smobgirl]

I think starting a new job always involves more mixed emotions than you’d expect, especially when you weren’t working up to that point. Shit, I was miserable for a year and it was still depressing to leave my last one. Then add the general stress of 2020 and a death in the family...I’m sorry, and I hope it’s a smooth transition and all is peachy and promising once you’ve settled in.

[BicycleBuck]

Sorry for your loss. My family has reached that age where the older generation is passing on. It always sucks since they know all the history and it’s now lost. A lot like losing Oppo.

But the new position sounds exciting! I wish I were a better developer. I’m more of a hack, throwing together stuff to just get things done. More formal training would have helped. It sounds like the team likes you and is willing to get you set up for success!

[BaconSandwich]

@smobgirl Thanks. All in all, 2020 has been pretty kind to me, in general. We've definitely had it easier than a lot of other people. My family is (generally) healthy. I'm still employed. I've saved a bunch of money on gas, working from home for the past 10 months.

[RallyDarkstrike]

...er....I have an ancient Radeon HD7870 2GB....lol

[Stef Schrader]

hugs The new job is at least something good. Sorry to hear about your uncle, though. Everything else just seems rotten as hell lately.

If your coworkers think you can do it, I have some faith. I feel like I have impostor syndrome hard whenever I try to apply for anything, though. Maybe take a little bit of the extra time to get acquainted with the new language and framework?

[BaconSandwich]

Yeah. I'm hoping I can sneak in some time at some point to start practicing with the new language and framework.

I'm not sure I'll ever be able to top my first day at my first real job after university. On my first day, I had written a new feature to send messages from the server to clients in the app I was working on. I worked with a coworker on it (tag-teaming it), but everyone is impressed that I was able to do something that big on my first day. At least it sounds like expectations are fairly low for the first while. But man... 5.5 years of collective knowledge and history to give up and re-learn...

[pip bip]

@baconsandwich my condolences to you on your loss.