The Switch

A little more personal than usual today. With the end of June I left a job on a long-term 40+ developers project in a large international company. I didn't feel underpaid, my job was not mundane nor exhausting. But I felt it's high time to move on.

I'm now working with the company that employs around a thousand times less people and focuses on projects that are much smaller in scope and much shorter in time than in my previous job. I can see goods and bads of that change. I have more opportunities to try out and learn new things and I can stay away from office politics that I hate, but it comes in lieu of probably reduced job stability and the lack of long-term projects maintenance challenges that I really enjoy.

The biggest motivation I had was to test myself against my own belief that the software engineering is much more the mindset than the pure knowledge. I've always wanted to be open to another programming languages and technology stacks than the one I was currently working. I think the language or the platform are just a tools and a good software developer should not be constrained to use only one particular toolset. I believe switching from one to another should be just a matter of getting familiar with the practices and conventions of a given platform plus some practice. And actually the experience gained on other platforms can be used to get the best of both worlds.

So here I am - I no longer consider myself a database-inclined .NET guy. Now I'll be working in a variety of technologies, centered around mobile and front-end web development - from iOS to Android, from Node.js to AngularJS etc. The key is I have virtually no experience in any of those stacks. Right now I feel a bit like a toddler - I'm learning hundreds of new basic things every day. And that's the fun!