I’ve decided to leave Pythian. <\/p>\n
It’s been one of the more difficult decisions I’ve made in my career and, as people seem very interested in my original decision to work for Pythian (probably because I blogged about it and they’re well-known in the community), it’s only fair that I comment a little on the reasons why, otherwise I have a feeling people might read between the lines and arrive at the wrong conclusions.<\/p>\n
The simple fact is that it’s not the job for me. Pythian are definitely the company for me, but the two things are different.<\/p>\n
I’m not sure I’m suited to the remote DBA support game. Multiple client environments, managing the billing and time management aspects and having less direct contact with clients have all been challenges. Timezone differences are also a factor in the latter, which is to say the guys in the Ottawa office have more opportunity to chat to clients. In fact, I wonder whether I’ve grown out of ‘support’ work full stop. I know at a previous client a few years ago that I loved the intense front-line support role and was told I was good at it, but only did it one week out of four and the rest of the time was project-related work. I still think I can cut it on the pager, but I just want a little more out of my work than that. <\/p>\n
In fairness, my team lead recognised that and gave me as much project work as possible. Even then, I always felt like I was working against the clock, trying to minimise the client’s bill which I think is good for the client but I got far too stressed out about it. Again, several people tried to help me not see things that way, but it’s just the way I am, I suppose – taking things too seriously and personally. As a result, I’ve been incredibly tired at the end of the day, with no desire or energy for the usual extra-curricular blogging and so on. I never worked long hours at Pythian, but I always felt very tired and wired at the end of the day. (If you think about it, that’s a strange combination!)<\/p>\n
One of the joys of the job has been working with technology which still isn’t very common in UK enterprises – RAC, ASM and Linux to name three – but learning more also adds additional pressure and the rest of my life (because I have one) is starting to be affected by me being too stressed out, and that’s never a good thing. <\/p>\n
An additional difficulty, that Paul Vallee was concerned about from the outset, is working from home. I don’t think the working from home bit is difficult actually although it probably adds to the stress levels because I find it hard to force myself to take a break. I like my own company, like the working environment and had a lot of success working from home at a previous site, so I definitely wouldn’t discount that in future. However, working alone, five hours difference apart from my colleagues brings additional pressures because there are times when it’s difficult to know whether I’m doing what someone would want me to or not. i.e. There’s no constant communication flowing back and forward. Alex Gorbachev and others have been excellent in trying to help me overcome the difficulties, but it remains difficult. Oh, and it’s not great for my nicotine consumption rate either, which probably hasn’t helped my stress levels 😉<\/p>\n
I hope I’m leaving on good terms, have met some wonderful new friends (and I don’t use that language lightly) and I wouldn’t discount me working with Pythian again in future in a different capacity but I think, for now, I’m better suited to the UK consulting market and bigger enterprises. Another way of putting that is that I imagine I might be a Pythian customer<\/em> in future because I haven’t changed my opinions of their services or overall objectives. There are a lot of great things going on at Pythian but they’re different to what I’m looking for in my working life.<\/p>\n Even as late as Friday, I was still wondering whether I’m doing the right thing because I would have loved to have made a success of it at Pythian. Still, you live and learn, eh? Maybe it was just all too much change in a short period of time – I’m an old man, you know 😉 Actually, Tim Hall wrote a blog the other week which really resonated with me<\/a>. Maybe it’s time for me to go back to what I’m best at for a while.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"