So, I landed in China Town!

cpatti — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 23:15:00 GMT

It has been forever and a day since I posted here. I apologize for the fade, my 4 or 5 readers must be thinking I'd joined the silent masses of bloggers who can't overcome the inertia and fail to post ever again...

As I described in my last post, January was not the best of months for me, and neither was February for that matter. After the layoff, I launched into the job search with zeal and quickly remembered (It's like riding the bike :) the familiar rhythms of the horse and pony show that is any job search.

There was definitely work to be had out there, but much of it was well outside the city, only barely accessible via a bus line that dropped me into the middle of a very pedestrian unfriendly industrial park. Eek. I interviewed a lot, and even had a close call at MIT but in the end analysis they had further cuts and couldn't hire for the job for another month or so which put me out of the running - I have a hungry mortgage to feed after all :)

In the end, a recruiter from a company I'd never heard of before - The Trizetto Group called and said they were very interested.

They're a Windows shop, which initially made me shy away from the idea, but they do a LOT of Perl for their core process automation stuff which I'm reasonably fluent in, and it would be an opportunity for a total technology reboot - not something one gets a lot of chances to do in one's career. So I interviewed there a couple of times and it worked out.

In a lot of ways, it's been really great. They're right across from the Chinatown gate in the picture above, so I can just hop on the bus outside my door for a short ride to Sullivan Station T, then another reasonably short subway ride to the Chinatown stop on the Orange Line. I've been enjoying the chance to explore Chinatown more fully. Where else can you stop off at the market next door before work and grab a can of white fungus drink, or some dried cuttlefish snack? (Why you would want to is a different matter altogether, though I do enjoy the cuttlefish :)

The work has been exciting and challenging as well. I was really, REALLY out of touch with the modern Windows environment. My last real experience working in depth with it was back in the Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 98 era and it has come a long, LONG way since then.

The hours have been long at times (I joined toward the end of a release cycle and it's a major crunch) but I've been learning a ton about Installshield, .Net, ASP.Net, Powershell, the registry, and in general the vagaries of working in the Windows environment.

I'm not suggesting that everyone should ditch the comfort of their Linux or Mac environments. Heck, if I had my druthers I'd be hacking on one of those for a living.

In my opinion, many geeks (and I was very much guilty of this) have institutionalized the hatred of all things Microsoft, and in so doing have had their heads in the sand for so long that they've failed to notice a truly powerful environment evolving out of the muck.

I'll get off my soapbox now. I guess that's about it - life is generally pretty good. There are times when I wish I could be spending time with my lovely wife or my friends, but I'd rather deal with that than the alternative!

Hopefully I'll have something of substance to say again soon. Stay tuned!

A Short, Sharp Shock

cpatti — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 09:20:00 GMT

One morning a few weeks back I was told to get in early to meet about an upcoming release that was happening...

Unfortunately, we were in for a big surprise.

Three of my co-workers and I were laid off that morning, along with 23 other unlucky souls from different parts of the lab.

In some sense I can understand the necessity for this kind of overt deception - there are certainly a non trivial number of people who would not react well to "Hey, be sure to be in by X time, because we're doing lay offs and we don't want your tardiness to clog up the gears!", but I can't help but feel there has to be a better way.

For some reason this one was a bit harder than most for me to accept, because I loved working at the Broad and had no desire to leave. I don't harbor any ill will against anyone over it - everyone was just doing their jobs, and in truth save for my misgivings about leading lambs to the slaughter like that, I think everyone handled the whole process with a great deal of professionalism, which is all anyone can ask.

I had the pleasure of working with a bunch of incredibly bright, talented, friendly people for 4 years. In high tech that's a pretty good run actually!

So, I'm doing the job search thing again. I chose to eschew the job placement seminars and such they'd set up for us - I know how to polish my resume and how to interview, and to my mind that 2 or three days was much better spent trying to find a soft place for myself to land while the incredible shrinking job market vaporized before my eyes.

I've been very lucky, things are actually going very well thus far - I've had 2 first round interviews and one 2nd round, with another set for today, and two more first round interviews set for tomorrow.

So, we'll see where all of this leads me.

I can't say enough about how amazing my wife has been through all of this - I'm a very lucky guy indeed :)

Blind Not Dumb (Posts about job)

So, I landed in China Town!

A Short, Sharp Shock