#174

Work

This week, I arranged to leave GDS. My final working day will be Wesnesday the 9th of February.

I’ve been there working on GOV.UK for almost four years now, but over 2021 I began to feel in need of a change. I’m sure I could have changed teams if I’d asked, but the team wasn’t the issue: I still enjoyed working on accounts. I wanted to do something more different than just changing teams within GOV.UK, or GDS, could give me.

There are also some issues I have with the organisation, like how GDS blends people management and technical leadership: all senior developers are expected to be line managers, and that’s just not something I enjoy much. Mentoring is fine, performance evaluations (and so on) less so. So I also wanted to find a job with opportunity for growth without dipping into management.

I’m kind of picky with jobs. I don’t just want a job, I want an interesting and enjoyable job. The recruiter-spam I get every week on linkedin is almost totally irrelevant or uninteresting, so I had to try to think of companies that seemed like they would be good to work for, and submit applications the old fashioned way.

Here are my job hunt stats:

• I picked my first candidate in August (but ended up not applying after chatting to someone I know who worked there).
• I sent a total of 8 applications, of which:
  • 2 never responded
  • 5 rejected me before an interview
  • 1 rejected me after a technical interview
• I responded to one linkedin recruiter in December, and that landed me my new job.

The new job is with GoCardless. My previous line manager at GDS actually moved there during my job hunt, so I was aware of the company and thought it sounded interesting, but didn’t really consider applying until they reached out to me (it seems they’re hiring a lot lately).

Interestingly, I’m going to be a mid-level developer there. It’s funny how you can go from leading a team at one job to just being a regular dev working on tickets at the next. Getting promoted to senior again will be one of my short-term goals.

I don’t know what I’ll be working on yet, but I’ll be starting on Monday the 8th of March.

Miscellaneous

I’ve done almost nothing outside of work this week but play Dyson Sphere Program.