Last Thursday I resigned from my current job. I worked there exactly 5 years this month. Not much boding ever went on the premises, but I do have a couple of friends and acquaintances that I’ll be missing !
I’ve been planning to leave for a while now, but I suddenly decided to resign as the start of a new project was approaching. It wouldn’t have been nice to leave in the middle of a project and, frankly, I was disappointed by the unrealistic time line (3 months to develop a game that is not yet well defined).
I was also disappointed by the fact that my skills have perhaps been misunderstood. I was going to be given a fairly difficult task, but definitely not one where I could have given my best. I think that things could have been better if the process of accepting projects and defining tasks were a bit more democratic.
So, I left in a heartbeat. The night before the day or resignation, I spent a few hours looking for a resignation letter template.
While it’s nice to write the whole letter by hand, that would have been a daunting task.
I took a quick 30 minutes course from a “native writer” to properly (form is important !) write just the 3 kanji for the envelope’s title..
I had quite a few days of vacation accumulated, that will give me time to breath and, most importantly, to find a new job and a new apartment. The current one is rented by the company and I will have to leave it !
I have already selected a few game companies which I think would be good for me. But, obviously my main problem is still the language. There are just too many words I don’t know and my grammar is just too poor. I doubt I can sustain a meaningful job interview in Japanese without any help. I’ll definitely need the interviewers to be patient.
The prospect to have to sustain tests also scares me a bit. I’ve never been very good at tests. I’m not a very sociable animal, I tend to be pretty nervous when meeting new people. I’m hoping that the resume and a couple of demos will speak for me. Because I don’t think I will excel at any tests or that I’ll sound too knowledgeable in Japanese.
I’m going to be 34 soon and I noticed that there is a recurrent 35 years old limit for being a programmer !! I guess that at my age one is generally some sort of manager&family-man and less of a programmer/researcher.
I may have to select companies which make some room for English or possibly even not in the game business. I have to admit that I somewhat envy those that work less and make more money. I like to work on the latest technology, do research, etc. But work is work, and more often than not, the most interesting research I do is on the subjects I pick, the stuff I make on my free time.. so I learned to value more free time.
Now I’m a bit worried. I think that generally my problem is that I like to be extra safe. I had to throw myself in a this situation, but by my nature I like to have all angles covered before making any step. That’s obviously not possible now, and it’s perhaps good: one also needs to learn to grab opportunities, to stretch beyond the safe limit to risk something in order to get more.
Fear is what locks almost everyone in place. Fear helps to stay afloat but isn’t going to propel any career.
wooo !!!
Addition: here is a song that sums up how’ve been feeling at work.. nobody should ever have to feel like that.
Posted by Davide Pasca in Diary