Pretty much how I roll these days.
I do need to figure out where all my archives are, and get them properly restored.
In many ways, I’m rebuilding from scratch.
This started this spring when my wife moved to pursue her new job.
About a month and a half later, I got laid off from the hell I was in. Our lease was expiring at the end of May, so off to join her.
I had a job lined up before I left. They were in the midst of a contract recompete. I would move, get settled, and travel to the company’s headquarters on the sinister coast for training.
I barely heard from them on the recompete progress, so I started looking at for other things.
I landed one pretty quickly, and agreed to take the gig. It paid slightly more than the thing that’d gone silent, anyway. I wasn’t thrilled with the location or work situation (no telecommute at all, versus full telecommute after the training week), but money was starting to get tighter than I’d like.
The final week of May I spent throwing darts trying to find something, anything, that’d let me back out of the thing to which I’d agreed.
I finally heard back from the thing with the west coast folks — they lost the contract, but still really wanted me for the role with the new company.
Um.
But they weren’t moving quickly at all, so I started the new job. People were nice, and I think I was trying to figure out what it was they wanted me to do. They, themselves, didn’t really have a firm grasp about what they were supposed to be doing. That I had some familiarity with what they were getting into helped, but I didn’t have a firm grasp.
Last week went okay, and I think I was doing some good work piecing things together.
Then Monday. Let’s do this day-by-day…
Monday:
I heard back from the recruiter for the left coast thing. They’re on Pacific Times, so it must have been about 1030 Eastern.
The message was along the lines of, “I’m not supposed to be talking to you, but email this guy who’s handling things for the folks who won.”
As I was composing an email to him, he phoned.
I had an offer letter by about 1330.
I start Friday. I guess some of the folks with the company that had lost the recompete, and had signed on with the winner, were really excited to get me on the team, still.
I told my supervisor, who’d told me that I needed to tell him if anything was going on, that I would discuss with my wife, and decide.
She gave the greenlight, so I accepted.
I SMS’d the HR manager where I’d been working that I needed to speak to him.
I’m resigning. Please work to figure out my last day.
Tuesday:
I got into the office a couple of minutes late. It’s almost as there was some sort of event going on in the District that rich white folks really wanted to see. After settling in, and getting coffee, I told my boss that I’d decided to accept the position. The HR folks still hadn’t told me when my last day would be. So this is probably about 0900. The HR people didn’t get back to me until probably 1330.
Oh, he can go now if there’s really not a lot for him to do. So a bit of tidying up, turning things back in, and I was out the door at 1600.
Fucking weird.
I’m writing this now just after noon on Wednesday.
I am supposed to start the new job Friday morning.
A grand total of six days on the job.
What is this, I can’t even…
But details on the new thing:
- I don’t have to travel to train, get support, anything else. The new overlords are within easy Lyft/Uber distance, but my role is still almost entirely telecommute.
- Yes, it pays a bit less than the short-term thing. But I also get paid time off, and paid Federal holidays. I also don’t have to spend $30 a day in ride fare.
- I’m somewhat excited by the company. It’s one of the fragments of one of the bigger companies that disinter-grated over the past few years.
On that last thing, maybe I shouldn’t be. In 2016, one of the major parties’ candidates railed against the “gig economy.” (Yes, that might have been the candidate who won all of Virginia’s electoral votes, even though the majority voted against….)
Nobody works for a company for thirty years anymore.
Things like health insurance maybe shouldn’t be tied to your very unstable employment?
But don’t mind me. My brain’s scarred, and I’m missing my treatment scheduled for today because I moved….