I Didn't Get the Seattle Job - RonO's Ramblings

After having everything go WAY better than any job search in 11 years (since the last one where I got a job offer), I got the response from the Seattle company, which was "we found a better candidate for the position."

To say I was disappointed is an understatement. I've gotten better, but I'm still a bit depressed. At least I am still employed and making a decent income. It is just that my job satisfaction is slipping knowing that my job is rapidly morphing into a nearly no-development position (all ClearCase support and possibly builds) and I want to be writing useful code. My concerns about our team, and company, aren't getting any better either. {Just before I left I overheard a conversation that sounds like the main customer for the main product still in development that my team supports isn't happy, and I'm not sure I blame them}.

All weekend, and for much of the last week, I kept telling myself, don't get too excited about the job. I kept telling myself, and praying, that I didn't want to risk being horribly disappointed, or even depressed, over not getting this. But that is exactly what happened, and that has added to my annoyance.

I do plan on replying to the e-mail, thanking the recruiter again, and thanking her for keeping my information in the database -- I still wouldn't mind working for that company -- and asking if she or the heiring department has any feedback. Beyond that, I guess I just need to keep up -- or increase the aggressiveness -- the job search I have going on. I just know that I'm LOUSY at job searching, and I don't know if there are many jobs that come close to matching what I want to do, and I'm afraid that if I compromise too far I'll end up back where I was 13-15 years ago when I was considered a poor employee mostly because I didn't have a good match to the job.

My ideal job would be a development position, probably as a technical leader, but with limited or no real management responsibility beyond partitioning work. I am becoming convinced that I really want out of the SCM area -- we get too much blame and don't do enough creative development. What I do best is designing and writing code, and troubleshooting problems. I can do some field support and training, but I don't want to be doing hand-holding support (which is the kind of stuff I'm pretty sure I'll be stuck doing if I'm in my same group in six months or a year -- I'm doing enough of it now with two other people on my team).