Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

Last month, I mentioned that I’d once again been in the hot seat, interviewing for a new position at my firm. During the intervening weeks, it has been a situation of “hurry up and wait.” First, the supervisor was on vacation, then they had to interview more people. Then the supervisor took another week off (hey, it’s summer and, you know, kids), and then they had one more interview to do.

Two weeks ago, though, HR called and said they wanted to move forward with my application. That meant checking my references, and that meant talking to my current manager.

“He’s on vacation,” I said, “and really, I’ve only been with him for a couple of weeks, so maybe you should talk to my previous manager.”

Nope. Gotta talk to the one currently in charge.

More waiting.

This week, my current manager returned from vacation. He said to HR exactly what I’d said, but instead of pointing them to my previous manager (who’d inherited my team about a year ago), he recommended they talk to the woman who was my manager before that (which is indicative of the general opinion of my previous manager, one with which I wholly concur).

So my two-times-ago manager was contacted (luckily, she wasn’t on vacation), and she wrote up a reference note, sending it back to HR.

That was three days ago.

Without wanting to seem needy or desperate (which is exactly what I was), I emailed HR, asking if there was anything I could do to help things along. “Nope, we’ve got what we need. A decision will be made soon,” they said.

That was two days ago.

Then, today, I noted that the woman who runs the team I’ve applied to was out of the office for the rest of the week.

Perfect, I thought. Effing bloody perfect. I pinged my mole (aka a friend I have on the prospective team).

“Oh, she’s not on vacation,” I was told. “She’s just at HQ in all-day meetings. Let me ping her.”

A few minutes later, my friend came back and said that all the references were in hand and I should hear soon.

Within the hour, I heard.

Success!

I start in two weeks.

As I mentioned in the referenced post, this is not an IT position. It’s a position in the business side, so I will be effectively leaving IT behind me. I’ll still be programming, writing queries and crafting reports, but not within the IT Division.

From the IT perspective, these programming positions within business are called “shadow IT,” a term the business folks hate. Well, what else is business to do when the real IT Division keeps laying people off, reducing budgets, and cutting off all training funds (except for courses in “future” technologies which, by the time we’ve learned them, they decide not to implement)? Business will fill that abhorred vacuum with its own resources.

So, am I going into the shadows, into the dark? Or am I going to a place where I’m wanted, where they are excited to train me in new tools that I’ll use daily, and where I don’t have to be on-call ever, ever again?

That doesn’t look so dark to me. That looks pretty damned bright.

Now, I’m off to crack open a bottle of champers.

Onward.

k