temp8675309

Hi, all -

This is kind of bizarre, but I hate responding to e-mails. If I can't respond to an e-mail immediately, I get this sort of anxiety that the person on the other end is angry at what will be a "late" response. That makes it even harder to work up the nerve to reply later on, and so begins a sort of vicious cycle. I woke up this morning with 17 e-mails in my inbox, and I honestly don't even have the energy to check and see what they are because I am that anxious that it's 1 e-mail that was sent yesterday and 16 angry followups asking where I am. Every so often, I'll work up the nerve to just plow through a large group of overdue e-mails, but that drains me emotionally for a couple of days, and just reinforces my negative thoughts about e-mail. This is irrational, but it's really getting to be a pain.

Does anyone else feel similarly or have any experience with something like this that they would be willing to share?

Hi, all - I have had 4 jobs in different fields and tech stacks (enterprise - J2EE, web startup - RoR, health care - Java and web scrapers, and technology - Groovy with Swing), all of them lasting about 2 years before I get itchy feet and decide to move on. At first, I figured it was just a matter of outgrowing the positions I was hired for, and as I kept getting increasing levels of responsibility at each new position, that seemed to make sense. However, I'm starting to see a pattern where I take a new job, dig in and learn everything I can about a new tech stack and problem set, get bored and then move on, and I'm not quite sure what to make of it.

I started my current job 15 months ago, and yet again, I'm starting to get itchy feet. What started out as a challenging job has become routine - it's just a matter of banging out features as quickly as I can. There's always the option of overcomplicating features to steal a chance to do more challenging work, but that's a temptation I do my best to resist. I've mentioned this to my boss and asked for a chance to do something new for a few months (mobile development, devops, even some design work), and she's been less than receptive. Hence, I'm starting to look around, and I'm wondering if I'm going to wind up in the same cycle. I'd like to find a place I can stick for a while, if possible, without winding up in the same rut.

Is anyone else familiar with this sort of pattern? Anyone have any tips?

Hello, all -

I've got an interview with Google coming up, and I don't want to jeopardize my chances by asking this at the interview.

I live in Boulder at the moment, but I've always wanted to experience living abroad. I know that Google has offices all over, and I'm curious whether Google employees have the opportunity to transfer without having to re-interview or anything like that.

If I got a job, which I know isn't a piece of cake), would I have to leave Google to move abroad or could I continue to work for them out of another office to scratch my itch without taking an extended break?

Hi, everyone -

I know it's somewhat frowned upon to do this, but the next Who's Hiring post isn't for two weeks. To save some time, I'm looking for a software engineering job in/around Denver because my current job situation is rapidly deteriorating and I don't really care to see the death spiral through. I'm a long-time HN contributor, but I can't use my real profile right now as I was hired through it.

Basically, I started a job as a software engineer as a very early stage employee with a startup in the Denver area in August. It was two guys, one of whom was handling the business side of things (and bankrolling it), and the other who was the CTO. I was highly impressed by the business guy, and while the CTO didn't have the same "wow" factor, he didn't say anything obviously stupid in the interview process and I saw no reason we wouldn't be able to work together.

At first, things were going pretty well. They were extremely flexible regarding things like sick days and working from home, and even said that they were both family men and understood that things happen and that there's no reason a software engineer can't work from home in that event. The pay was good for a startup, there were decent benefits, and I had a decent amount of flexibility with how I did my job.

Now, though, it's like night and day. Today, we were told that there is no such thing as sick time, effective immediately. If you're sick and didn't get advance approval, it's a vacation day. Their vacation policy went from "we can be flexible - let us know when you need time off and we'll work it out" to "you have two weeks a year and no more." I've gone from being a full-stack developer who prefers working on the server side to being told that I'm supposed to be an on-call web developer in case the business folks decide we need website changes. The CTO's attitude towards myself and the other software guys has changed from "I want smart people and want them do their thing" to "I want code monkeys who won't question my judgement." I could go on, but the point is that it feels like the company has a form of manic depression, and I don't have enough pull to fix the things that are broken.

Is there anyone out there looking for a software engineer? I've got 6 years experience with Java, 2 of which involved Groovy, and I'm currently experimenting with a graphics application in Clojure as well as a simple game I hope to release for Android at some point in the future. I don't mind doing front end work, and in fact gave a presentation to the engineering staff on AJAX earlier in my career that sparked a big initiative to revamp all our UI's from static JSP's to more dynamic content. I'm not much of a designer, per se, but if you tell me what an interface should look like I can make it happen. I have worked as a tech lead before this and have mentored junior developers and interns in previous jobs as well. I live in Denver, and can't relocate right now, but I've worked remotely in the past and am capable of doing so provided a healthy level of trust.

You can either get in touch with me by replying to this thread or by e-mail at denver8675309@gmail.com - I'll be monitoring both. I'll be happy to submit a resume, LinkedIn profile, etc. but for privacy reasons can't do so here. If you want to know who I really am, so you can read my previous comments and get some idea of whether I'm someone you could work with, I'll be happy to pass that along as well.

Thanks!

Hi, everyone -

About eight months ago, I started a job at a defense contractor that I was extremely excited about, at first. I foolishly thought that the defense world built a lot of cool stuff, which I've since found is only true if you're an aeronautical engineer. The software is bog-standard in my limited experience. I'm working on a system that displays data onto a Google Earth globe from many feeds. When I was interviewing I was told that there would be substantial amounts of work coming up in Flex to replace a Swing based UI that is getting clunky and difficult to maintain. This excited me because I haven't got any Flex experience, and since my Java is pretty solid, I figured this would be a great chance to build the resume and add something more modern.

I found out recently that, not only is the Swing UI staying, but Flex development is not going to happen and the program is going into what's called "operations and maintenance" mode. There will be bug fixes and minor enhancements but no new development. The project is deemed "finished", and most of the good engineers who built it are moving on. Since I already know Java, and none of the work has been terribly difficult, I feel like I'm wasting my time. Due to the nature of defense work, I'm not even allowed to clean up other code unless it is directly connected to a specific bug record.

Within the company, I'm not allowed to transfer until I've been in my current role for two years, so if I stay here it looks like I'm stuck for a while with the dregs of the team who chose to stay behind and make time on this project. This, frankly, pisses me off, because it's a waste of time and talent that I feel I could put to greater use elsewhere. I stayed at my previous job for 4 years, and was in school before then, so I don't think I'm a job-hopper.

What's my best course of action at this point? Should I tell my manager that this isn't what I signed up for and ask for the transfer restriction to be ignored? Should I go get another offer (I have friends at Mapquest and Amazon who have both asked me for a resume) and explain to them why I left this company so soon? Would this sort of thing be seen as legitimate grounds to leave a job so soon after starting?

Thanks.