long story. that’s a sun e10k in the hallway at work. it was such a symbolic posession for a company doing bioinformatic computing. but none of the IT staff ever had the right vision. the machine was misused and grossly underused. but i was lucky enough to learn how to run it.

anyways, i’ve decided to change scenery. starting october 16th, i will be working for a different company. my focus will be similar, but the equipment and software used will all be diffierent.

let me back up a little bit. when i moved to california, i started my professional career as a unix systems administrator. i was hired by a contracting firm. i was out on various contracts got great exposure to a variety of environments over the course of seven years. then i felt the hurt of the tech downturn. i was unemployed for a while. i was back on a gig i wasn’t too enthused about. that time, i looked for a new place. i quit contracting and went full time at a scientific company. i’ve been there for four years.

why am i making this change again?

that’s the most easy and difficult question to answer.

on my way home from work today i was thinking about how to answer that. of course this isn’t the first time. i certainly knew the answer when i started looking for jobs elsewhere. i had some answers when people who were interviewing me asked. and i had little to offer when my own employer asked me. now, composing this blog post, i’m at a loss.

the easy answer now is it feels right for me and that’s really all the answer i need. i have control over my own life. leaving my current employer both hurts and feels good. hurts, in the matter where i’m leaving some coworkers and a director i respect and enjoy working with. feels good in that my new commute will be half, the department seems more healthy, and the company looks stable.

every place has its good points and the bad. this new place will have its own matters-of-suck but will have some good points too.

i can say easily now, that job hunting sucks. most unix IT jobs are held by exclusive searches and headhunters. and they are all getting in the ballpark of 15% commission. they hold all the open jobs. and they all use the internet to find people jobs. why else would they take my reinvented, evolved resume and turn it into a list of keywords and product names. a lot of headhunting is likely off-shored too, as evident by getting lots of VOIP-like caller-id calls, some of which had such poor voice quality I could not make out information left in my voicemail box. another hint that these head searches are search engine based, is the fact that I mention a partciular product as a minor point on my resume. I was getting job offers where the crucial experience required was that product. If a human had actually read my resume, they would have overlooked it.

this job hunt has been an emotional experience for me. this year has really be emotional. dad. burning man. layoffs.

i have reserved some personal time for myself between jobs, but it will not be enough.

so for now, i will finish this post. put on journey and turn up the volume. and finish the last of this valrhona dark bitter chocolate.