In case you missed it I’m leaving my job. I’ve been with the company one year and its had its ups and downs, I thought I’d share some of each.

Things I’ll Miss

1. My colleagues. It took them months to speak to me at all, and more months for me to realise this is a function of a truly dreadful office layout and not because they are unfriendly.
2. Oracle. My new job doesn’t involve use of Oracle and I’ll miss it. I have worked with this database quite a lot and although I’m looking forward to polishing up other database skills I’ll miss the confidence of knowing the odd tricks of syntax really well until I get to the same standard with the others too.
3. Walking to work. Its a very civilised way to live.
4. Walking home from work (I’m running out of things I’ll miss)
5. No I really can’t think of another one

Things I Won’t Miss

1. Office facilities. There aren’t any! I drink warm tap water and scummy instant coffee made with sweetener and longlife milk; everyone eats at their desks. I haven’t actually checked but I’m hoping my new workplace can better that.
2. The “recruiting girls” joke. My manager insists he will only interview women if he can see their photo first. It isn’t funny.
3. The software assembly line. The company makes kitchens, and they are good at it. To make a cupboard, you need certain pieces which can be found in set locations. They get delivered to a production line where each set of cupboard bits is turned into a cupboard and moved along, then placed in the correct bay to get allocated for delivery. The software gets made the same way: A non-technical person thinks of a new page they’d like added, they write about it, I type the code to make that happen, they test it and then we put it live. No iteration, no architecture and certainly no input from me.
4. Clocking in. Its not that I mind clocking in as such, its that with our system you can only get negative points from it. I’m sure its a helpful, non-judgemental system for people who are doing jobs where everyone must be there at once for the job to get done, but for knowledge workers let me tell you that it just doesn’t work.
5. Restricted internet access. A bit like clocking in, I can see the point but as my job is primarily web development then reasonable internet access allows me to keep up with new developments and the community as a whole. The assumption that anything collaborative is always employee insubordination or timewasting is kind of scary … technical information on forums and even Google Groups is unavailable as a resource to the developers here. Perhaps its an internet generation thing but I find it unnatural to restrict open resources.