Why I’m Looking For A New Job.

I’m looking for a new job.

Firstly, isn’t the image cool? I’ve got access to Dall-E’s AI image generator, and this is what I received from “unhappy software engineers, pained by Gustav Klint, in a Marks And Spencer’s shop”.

Yes, M&S has finally pissed me off sufficiently to hit the feared button on LinkedIn – the “open to new positions button”. Yes, an influx of recruiters has begun.

What happened?

Well, I’ll tell you what happened.

I was merrily coding away on my Outfit Generator project – using the new tech stack, a project that was promised to me in 2021 to stop me either going to the new tech stack migration team, or leaving M&S altogether. So my current team, and general area (personalisation) would get to keep my JavaScript expertise whilst I worked on something with new technology.

And I have to learn this technology, otherwise I won’t get the best jobs in the industry – namely React, TypeScript and GraphQL.

My work had slowed down in recent weeks – not my output per se, but trying to organise with the migration team to review my code was gradually getting more difficult – and I have to have my code approved by two engineers – we all do. So if nobody is reviewing, I get stuck. And hence the project slowed down.

Alas, more importantly, we have become behind on department revenue targets. And our team provided much of the previous incremental revenue. And guess who was doing the front-end work for much of that…and has instead been working on a project that isn’t yet released for the last 6 months?

Aha. Me. Not just me, but a fair portion. So now I need to go back to working on boring projects, with an old tech stack – and I’m just going to go stale. I absolutely have to develop my skills, otherwise I won’t get the best jobs in the industry going forwards. I’ll fall behind my peers.

There was no option other than to click “open to opportunities”.

So close to completion…

And the Outfit Generator was 80% done too.

I just need to hook up the endpoints to GraphQL, sort out all the mysterious Dev Ops stuff, do some design tweaks, hook up the analytics tracking stuff…alas…it is paused. Until. Further. Notice. Sigh.

I understand business priorities. However I also have career progression priorities. They are no longer aligned.

Part of me wanted to hand my notice in, and go fuck off to Europe for a while – at least then I could build some cool personal projects, using technologies that I’m learning. I didn’t, but I did start writing the letter. I can afford to have some time off…I have plenty saved for my alleged house deposit yet house prices can just keep fucking off into the stratosphere.

Part of me now thinks that I should just get offered any old job, as long as it has a pay rise. There aren’t as many opportunities as a year ago, but there are plenty – I had 20 approaches on the first day that I changed my LinkedIn profile, though most of them I put off with my demands. Getting any old job might force M&S to firstly give me a pay rise, but secondly think about where our goals can be aligned – ie a team using the new tech stack. Win win.

Then again…they might call my bluff and not counter-offer. I’d be surprised, I’m pretty confident that they’d want to keep me, but maybe they’d have other priorities.

So maybe the best option, and the one I am going for at the moment, is only to go for really good jobs, at really good companies – with a jolly inflation-busting and then some kind of pay rise. Jobs I cannot turn down, and ones M&S couldn’t match.

Maybe I couldn’t stretch that far…maybe my relatively limited React and TypeScript experience (proficient but not expert) won’t quite get me what I want? I feel like I am being quite demanding, but I am also a good software engineer, especially considering I only have 5 years experience.

Possibly exciting but sad times ahead. We’ll see. The process has begun.