I left an old job after automating it. It was insanely tedious and boring, so I built an automation platform. Went on to a job that I liked even less. About a year later I got a call asking me to come back and rebuild the automation engine into an official product for the company.
It was awesome and I got to make it a lot more robust. And since it was built directly into the platform instead of made as a hacky layer on top of it, it worked so much better. That was a lot of fun for me.
Sounds exciting. I hope you got a decent pay raise.
It was a decent raise at the time. Too bad I got into professional software development about 6 years before this latest market crash. Been unemployed since November because much more experienced devs are also out of work.
Was one of a big team of people doing a major redo of a host of legacy apps, converting to agile processes (this was like 20 yrs ago), greenfield stuff, major investment, cutting edge stuff with some great people, and imaginations allowed to roam. Had been given the role of infosec architect alongside a few other newly minted architects. Hell I even got my own office. Spent several months at it, loved every minute. IT had fairly mature processes, good reliability, and the new stuff was going to improve on that substantially.
Then we got bought out. Their CIO told us in the first meet and greet that IT processes were foolishness. It came as no surprise when we learned all of their IT staff were in constant firefighting mode. I doubt their uptime was even as good as “2 nines”.
I started job hunting that week and found a job soon after. Some say I’m still working there to this day … (mostly because I am).
Classic. Let’s acquire this company that’s doing really well, and change everything.
This happens with small popular food joints and it NEVER works out.
Yes. And it is our companies primary product series for over a decade now.
Beautiful. What kind of Product is this?
It is a conference system with interpretation and voting. Nothing a normal person would recognize, but common in parliaments worldwide, as well as board rooms, courts, etc.
Which one? I would most likely recognize it!
Yes, actually. After a few months as a process consultant at separate electrical distribution manufacturing operations, I postulated that their design process could be dramatically automated. Right now we have two working custom CAD systems in separate parts of the distribution pipeline that serve as the basis for the rest of the company operations. Chuffed to say the least!
Yep! As I continued with the project I realized it wasn’t going to work. Did it anyway, as I was told. Surprisingly (not), it completely flopped and the company lost a lot of money. I left and soon after it got bought out.
