Change, frogs, and hot water
Have you ever had one of those moments were everything seems on the verge of changing, but then nothing does, and then it dawns on you how much things have been changing all along?
Two weeks ago, I had the prospect of two big potential job changes: one was an offer from another company in Barcelona, and the other was a company with offices in London and Tallinn that wanted to talk to me about a product manager position. The offer I had in hand was for a salary identical to what I'm making now, but as a full-time employee, which meant more stability and lower social security payments, but less flexibility to do other projects on the side. The other company is one that I'd really like to work for, but the position was more managerial and less technical than what I've done in the past, and I would be doing it remotely most of the time.
I've been working at my current job for almost four years now, and it's rapidly approaching the point of becoming my longest stay anywhere, something I never expected when I got hired as a recent immigrant with no idea what to expect of the Spanish job market. It's had its ups and downs, and at times it's seemed on the verge of consuming my life in a vortex of demanding customers and 80-hour work weeks, but it does have something that I swore I'd look for when I left Excite@Home, which is a sense of social purpose. The blind user community can be pretty hard to please, but at the end of the day I feel like I've done something useful for actual people (well, most days anyway).
So by the end of the week I had decided to turn down the offer for the Barcelona company, the other company had told me that they really needed someone on-site for the position, and I was more or less where I'd been at the beginning of the week.
Then last night I had dinner with my old boss Scott and his family, who are visiting Barcelona for a few days. Scott was my second and third boss, having worked for him at both FTP and Coronet back in the early 90's. One of my lasting memories of those days is playing with his four-year old son Alex, chasing him around our office with our huge arsenal of Nerf weapons. Alex is now 18 and leaves in a few weeks to start at NYU, and Scott and Lynn now have a 9-year old who is scary smart (as in developing her own crypto system and talking about string theory smart). I suddenly feel very old.
There's a overused analogy that talks about a frog in a pot of water: the frog sits in the pot, blissfully unaware as the water grows hotter and hotter, until the frog is boiled without ever noticing it. Although this sounds like a story invented to put a humane face on the growing sport of frog-boiling, it's a good analogy for the sudden realization of how much time has passed since those early days at my first job. Maybe it was just naiveté, the rush of excitement at moving to the Big City, or an innocence that I've since lost in many ways, but I still look back at those days as the happiest of all of my jobs. There must be something to it, though, because Scott said the same holds true for him. Before the dot-com days of foosball and free ice cream, we had something that was already special and irreproducible, a time that I'll always look back to with fond memories.
I think I might go buy some Nerf guns.
Two weeks ago, I had the prospect of two big potential job changes: one was an offer from another company in Barcelona, and the other was a company with offices in London and Tallinn that wanted to talk to me about a product manager position. The offer I had in hand was for a salary identical to what I'm making now, but as a full-time employee, which meant more stability and lower social security payments, but less flexibility to do other projects on the side. The other company is one that I'd really like to work for, but the position was more managerial and less technical than what I've done in the past, and I would be doing it remotely most of the time.
I've been working at my current job for almost four years now, and it's rapidly approaching the point of becoming my longest stay anywhere, something I never expected when I got hired as a recent immigrant with no idea what to expect of the Spanish job market. It's had its ups and downs, and at times it's seemed on the verge of consuming my life in a vortex of demanding customers and 80-hour work weeks, but it does have something that I swore I'd look for when I left Excite@Home, which is a sense of social purpose. The blind user community can be pretty hard to please, but at the end of the day I feel like I've done something useful for actual people (well, most days anyway).
So by the end of the week I had decided to turn down the offer for the Barcelona company, the other company had told me that they really needed someone on-site for the position, and I was more or less where I'd been at the beginning of the week.
Then last night I had dinner with my old boss Scott and his family, who are visiting Barcelona for a few days. Scott was my second and third boss, having worked for him at both FTP and Coronet back in the early 90's. One of my lasting memories of those days is playing with his four-year old son Alex, chasing him around our office with our huge arsenal of Nerf weapons. Alex is now 18 and leaves in a few weeks to start at NYU, and Scott and Lynn now have a 9-year old who is scary smart (as in developing her own crypto system and talking about string theory smart). I suddenly feel very old.
There's a overused analogy that talks about a frog in a pot of water: the frog sits in the pot, blissfully unaware as the water grows hotter and hotter, until the frog is boiled without ever noticing it. Although this sounds like a story invented to put a humane face on the growing sport of frog-boiling, it's a good analogy for the sudden realization of how much time has passed since those early days at my first job. Maybe it was just naiveté, the rush of excitement at moving to the Big City, or an innocence that I've since lost in many ways, but I still look back at those days as the happiest of all of my jobs. There must be something to it, though, because Scott said the same holds true for him. Before the dot-com days of foosball and free ice cream, we had something that was already special and irreproducible, a time that I'll always look back to with fond memories.
I think I might go buy some Nerf guns.
posted by greg at 1:09 PM
2 Comments:
FTP makes me smile. The days of lunch at Carl's or Villa Pizza. Meeting my best friend Greg. Wearing a brown polka dotted dress on Muni and learning the importance of big balloons. The almost riches of the board game "Win-Win With Backstab" (I still have the prototype.)
Strangely, I work a few blocks from the old Humboldt Bank building and lunch in the same spots . Hate to say that the days of lunch at Carl's Jr. are long gone. (My poor arteries.)
I'd forgotten about "Win-Win with Backstab"! You know, there might still be riches to made with that...after all, if Scott Adams can milk Dilbert for a decade, there's plenty of disgruntled-worker angst to go around.
Those were seriously good times. If you get a chance, and your arteries can take it, stop by and have a skillet cookie for me.
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