Monday, April 18, 2005

xwave on a roll

I noticed my former employer xwave has been doing well lately. They've posted more jobs in the last two months than in the previous three years.

I've sometimes wondered about leaving xwave. I wonder how things would have turned out if I'd stayed there. It was a good place to work and I was well treated there. I didn't leave for any real good reason. It was kind of a strange time, around mid 2001. Like most IT companies, xwave went from high flying to struggling. They did their first round of layoffs in the former PRIOR office on Spring Garden Road. For myself though, I didn't have anything substantial to complain about. I just had it in my mind to make a change.

I've done well with my current employer. It's a good job and I'm happy with it. I'm not looking. The work is interesting and the cubicles are nice. They bring in free lunch and snacks often. Still, the jury is still out on if the xwave jump was really a good move. Perhaps it always will be out. Now if my employer's stock price would rise a few ticks and get those options nicely into the black then that might bring about a decisive verdict.

If you're thinking about leaving your job then I'd suggest to consider this
  • Don't quit to make a lateral move. Don't go from programmer at company A to programmer at company B. Get ahead in more ways than salary.
  • In general, don't quit a good job.

Where I work, I know of people who quit to go somewhere else, then asked to come back after things didn't work out as hoped with the new company. You can always keep your job and be unhappy, at least you're gaining seniority and accumulating benefits.

Sunday, April 10, 2005

Programming

I like to program. I get paid to program. I like to talk about programming.

I started programming in grade 8 with the good old Commodore 64. Those were the best times for progamming.

After those C64 experiences, I went on to university. Eventually I finished a CS degree from TUNS. TUNS is now Daltech. I have all good to say about TUNS and the old TUNS CS program. I consider a TUNS degree prestigious and I am pleased with myself to have one.

After TUNS I joined PRIOR Data Sciences. I liked PRIOR. Like TUNS, I consider it prestigious to have been part of it.

PRIOR was taken over by xwave in Feb 2000. xwave didn't quite get untracked with me and I left there in July 2001 and joined Core Networks. In September 2004 Core was acquired by SupportSoft which is where I work now. If I write anything grouchy about work then to yourself think "he must be talking about Core"

Luckily for me I've never been out of work in high tech. I'm confident that if I was out of work I'd be able to get something comparable to what I currently have. However, I'm not eager to test that theory.

Right, back to programming. I just want to mention the different languages and stuff I've worked with over the years.

1997 - 1998: Ada 83
1999 - 2001: Oracle SQL, PL/SQL, Oracle Forms, Oracle Reports. MS-Access.
2001 - 2004: C, C++, PHP, HTML, Javascript, Oracle SQL, PL/SQL
2004 - 2005: Java, J2EE, Oracle SQL, PL/SQL

Also I've now converted to Python, and I use that for scripting. I still have to work with Java though most of the time.

I expect the list to continue to evolve. I'm not convinced that Java will be the last stop on this line.