New Job is good!

The layoff has indeed been the proverbial blessing in disguise. I have definitely traded-up and see all kinds of brightness in my new employment-future. The work so far is similar to the work I did before; SQL reporting development, except now I will have many greater opportunities to learn new technologies and have my hands all over every aspect of database administration and programming - opportunities I did not, and would not have had at Fairview. I'm digging deeper into SSRS than I ever have before and building with SSIS for the first time, I expect to be getting up close and personal with stored procedure functionality and ASP in the near future and diving deeper into .net all the time. I had no idea the grass was so green over here.

Some other positive differences so far: I don't have a pager, I'm never on call, my phone never rings, I get less than 1/10th the email, no more crap-tastic-application support, my boss who is cool and understands development work, checks in with me every couple of days but generally leaves me alone to focus - he's pleased with my production. I make a bunch more money too.

To tell the truth, the first couple days I was completely freaking out - like on the verge of panic, on the verge of getting up and leaving and not coming back, because I knew that I didn't know all of the things that I knew I would need to know (sounds like a line from the Honeymooners), - like I was a liar, an impostor, and any second it would become obvious to everyone there that I couldn't do it. ...I guess all new jobs are somewhat overwhelming at first. I finally realized that this role is truly an opportunity to produce the work by using my strongest skills - the scientific method: by figuring it out, trial and error, learning as I go, researching it on the web, building on past discoverys and connecting the dots - it's called "software development" and it's my new job.