The beginning of change?

I might be at a cross roads sooner than I expected. I intereviewed for a new job at the company this week.

Let’s walk it back first. I will have 18 years at Software Giant in October. That’s a pretty good run. The company has always been youthful and there is a move toward that in my team lately. In fact, my department, Technical Writing, has been one of the gray-haired parts of the organization for a long time.

I was a technical writer for a long time, even before Software Giant. It suited me. It has provided me with a lot of what I hoped to get out of life. Good pay, opportunity to interesting work, interesting co-workers. It has provided ample business challenges, too. Sometimes these, in concert with my genetics, made me depressed. Software Giant also helped out with paying for therapy and even big medical expenses like heart surgery.

I have no complaints of the serious kind.

Two years ago, I moved from technical writing to technical production. I work on web sites, write code to keep things working, and generally support other technical writers in moving content from their heads to the web for other people to read. This was a great job too. Something new, and more than anything, a great boss and team to work with.

Technical writing had taken me a lot of places. In the period of 2008 to 2013 it took me to a type of documentation that mainly satisfied legal requirements. It was neither fun nor interesting so the switch to production was a welcome change.

Software Giant is making all of us in production re-interview for our jobs because they want change the personnel to be more technical. This is all delivered earnestly and fairly but it basically says we think you guys are part of the problems we have here and we need to upgrade your skills. Some of you are capable; the rest of you will be dealt with later.

As I prepared for the interview, I realized I didn’t want the job. I think I would fail the interview and I don’t even think that success would work out well in the long run. Instead I intereviewed for a different job. For the past 4 months this has been on my mind and that was shitty.

But taking the interview for the new job was a good catalyst for thinking about the future. Inevitably I will not be a Software Giant. Strangely that doesn’t bother me as much as the thought of losing my current job did, initially.

Maybe I needed to grieve the loss and that included denial and a little bit of anger. But it also includes, eventually, acceptance.

I hope I get the new job at Software Giant because it sounds cool. It also sounds a bit risky and pie in the sky. The idea is how do we best connect solutions that we have to people that are having problems? Can we monitor stuff like Twitter or Google and discover when people are having trouble and figure out a better way to get them materials that we know we have.

I’m not a perfect fit for the job so I might not get it. But that’s ok too. It is the beginning of transition. I don’t know when I will leave Software Giant but I will eventually. Strangely I am starting to have some peace with that already.