New Job Title

The Big Reveal "Software Engineer".

The big reveal for what's been stressing me at work... Redundancy, specifically the retirement of the system I had worked on for the last 8 years and the disposal of the department I've worked as part of for the last 10 years.

Now, working anywhere for 10 years is a big ask in this day and age, so to suddenly be told you're going is a big worry.

All the members of the department were basically redundant from the roles we were all in, however, one new role in a different department was to be created... So was there going to be a big race for this one new role?

The answer is no, I was the only applicant from the old department for the new role, and  early last week all the other members - all my old troubles - departed with their cheques, and today I got my new job title and indicated where I'll be moving to.

The only real rub is, for 10 years I've worked with a pair of headphones on, listening to music, my iPod or whatever, rather than the quite loud office ambience in here.  I mean I work in a gaming area, so there's squawks and chirps, whistling, shouting, swearing and banging all the time... But the new department no headphones.  Now I'm a big believer that headphones are a bigger pro than a con, I accept you can be isolated from talking to people - or rather not listen in on whatever they're up to, but as soon as someone engages with you you can whip them off and be there... But their main pro is that they afford a level of self, a level of separation, especially important for a developer concentrating on code.

I strongly believe in the results of studies proving music creates stable brain waves allowing concentration to improve, literally you are able to zone out your audio senses, which otherwise would have you jump or skit at any thump or bump.

Apart from that however, the new role consists of working on supporting lots of systems created over time, but also some new little bits and bobs which seem to be excellent.

This has, of course, been bothering me, and until Thursday last week I was still only getting between 2 and 4 hours sleep a night with worry.  However, I've since cleaned out all the junk left by my departed colleagues - thanks for leaving so much shit - and I've been set about new little challenges before Christmas.