Li-Li-Lie In!

Today we packed up the office for the move to the new companies office tomorrow. As there are big strong men coming tomorrow to load everything into the van and unload at the new place I get a lie in of which I intend to take advantage. Packing up today was the end of another era of my life, working for a small start-up company. From tomorrow I'll no longer be working with 4 other people in an office we could kick a football around. Instead I'll be working for a manufacturing company with an engineering department of at least 30-40 people which is almost full circle. My first job in Manchester was for a similar size company. Looking back at the last 2 years there are some things I won't miss. Some of the late nights where excessive. There isn't a support structure like I'd grown used to at Marconi. Because of the way start-ups are funded there is a little uncertainty about money from time to time. However there are big plusses. I got to work on something from scratch, with a clean plate and lead the software architecture and design without any artificial constraints. I got to work with some excellent top-notch engineers who know what they are talking about (I know because I recruited one) and develop something I'm proud of. I also had a chance to work with Open Source software including the Linux Kernel and prove it can work in a commercial environment. If you of asked what my ideal job would of been in the last months at Marconi I'd of said "I want someone to pay me to be a Linux kernel hacker". I thought I was at least 3-4 years from that and I was doing it within 6 months. So basically despite what other ups and downs I've had over the last 2 years I've really enjoyed my job.

Now things are changing, its natural. Different companies work different ways and certainly in acquisitions there will be some adapting on both sides to the new work culture. A lot of things will be the same at least initially. The people I work with are all coming across to the new place. The technology is ours and still based around free software. However other things will be different and I guess over the next 6 months I'll be finding out if they are good or bad differences and how much I'll be willing to adapt. And of course at the moment I'm probably in the most flexible position I could be in having no particular attachments to hold me back from another life change. Hmmm I can see much pondering to be done.