Back to Work – finally!
Today is my first day back at a full-time job since my RIF at Sun Microsystems (and the beginning of this blog).
It’s been a tough 19 months. I still can’t believe that it took this long to find a job, but I know a number of other folks still looking, and for those of us over 50, the IT job market has been very slim.
Fortunately, I’ve been able to pay my bills, due largely to the very generous severance package from Sun, and also to a couple of brief consulting gigs, several Voice Over jobs, unemployment benefits, and a few months of part-time work at Trader Joe’s.
Now, I’m back to being an SE for a hardware manufacturer. I started today at Isilon Systems, a maker of scalable Network Attached Storage for the Data Center, where I’ll be covering US Federal Civilian Agencies. This should be fun – I’ll be drawing on the basic skills I built over 17 years at Sun, but will be learning an entirely new product set to apply those skills against.
I like the fact that Isilon is a small company – fewer than 500 employees. I’ve always done well at small companies, and I often thought that the reason I did so well at Sun for so long was that Sun behaved like a small company until very near the end.
Of course, this advantage won’t last. Three days after I signed my acceptance letter, Isilon was acquired by EMC. Still, this should allow me to establish myself at Isilon while it remains a small subsidiary of EMC before the corporate culture changes to that of a big corporation.
One thing for sure – it will be an adventure. Thanks for sharing this ride with me, and keep checking in on this blog to see what happens.
