andcurve.weblog - The weblog of Kevin Teljeur. Somewhere within all the noise, there is a note you need to hear.

I was blown away as I was walking down Talbot Street; it just felt fantastic to be walking down this street, the energy that was there, the feeling that anything was possible, and it was hard for me to believe that I was walking down a street in Dublin where I’ve been living and working, on and off, for the last thirty-three years. New shops, people from so many nations, and a real sense that a lot of these people were here because you can really make things happen here, there’s enough money and if you work hard you can have your share of the cake too. I thought that maybe the money in Ireland is now like a siphon effect, in that there’s a certain intertia which means after the whole economic boom of a few years ago the whole show just keeps itself going, drawing in more money and the people to earn it, which in turn draws in more money.
Talbot Street, recently; this is Ireland’s future, and it’s a hell of a rush! Also there are cheap clothes. Click image to view larger version
The other thought I had was more personal, and that was this: the way I feel about Dublin is actually a reflection on how I feel about myself. If I dislike it (which happens frequently) then what it really means is that I’m unhappy about myself, my circumstances, other personal issues, which I project onto the city and the people in it. If I like it, if I think it’s interesting, if I think I’m seeing it in a new light, or having new ideas about it, then that too is a reflection on my own circumstances, and I should really look to myself to interpret those feelings.

So, you might be wondering then what my conclusion was about my feelings last Saturday, why I was feeling so positive about Dublin and excited to be a part of it, and if you haven’t heard about it already, then read on. In fact, read on anyway, because you might enjoy the detailed explanation. I felt good because last Thursday I handed in my notice on my job.

I quit.

It’s not that big a drama in many ways, and if anyone hadn’t expected it then it’s because they don’t know about the job, the company or indeed read my blog much, or even know me. If you know me in any capacity then you know what I do for a living, and how I feel about doing that for the company I work for, which is that I build web sites (Or rather, I build the display or output for web-based content management systems, and web sites. I’m quite good at it.) and that I’ve been growing increasingly frustrated with my job, hating it even.

I think the biggest part of the drama is that for people over the age of about twenty eight or so, leaving a job voluntarily is a big deal, and you only do it if you’re guaranteed of a new job which is something I’m not, at the moment. I had been looking for a new job for a while but not terribly enthusiastically since I hadn’t seen anything which was substantially better than the job I’ve just left, but the thing I’d been overlooking all this time was that at my age, with my experience, with my contacts, getting a new job in Ireland won’t be too traumatic; when I was in Australia two years ago, I found a reasonable job in two and a half weeks in Melbourne under adverse conditions (No money, Working Holiday Visa, limited contacts, skills not very saleable) from a standing start. Conditions this time around are considerably better in every way, so I’m pretty confident in everything being ok on that front.

People have been both curious and concerned about this whole development (Me too, let me tell you!), and have been asking me a lot about it, and there’s a pattern to the questions so I’ll tackle it in a web-friendly ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ style. It’ll make your lives easier, I think.

• Oh my God! Are you ok?
  Yes, yes I am, I’m very ok and feeling better by the minute. Leaving a job is high and everybody should do it at some point (unless you happen to have a job you truly enjoy, in which case hang on to it! They’re hard enough to come by.). It’s all good.
• What happened???
  A number of issues built up over time, and working in Parallel became harder and harder to do effectively while still feeling relatively good about the experience. After yet another blazing row with Pavel over something fairly inconsequential, I realised that the stress we’re all under was making itself felt, and changing my personality and the way I react to situations. So where was all that stress coming from?
  • First off the working environment isn’t great (and do keep in mind that this is to a degree subjective, and others will have their own opinions on these matters). Now, it’s far from a bad place to work, but at the same time, in order to provide what we call ‘solutions’ to what are known as ‘problems’ (not in the day to day sense, but in a web development sense) a developer needs support, organisation, planning and infrastructure, all of which I believe were lacking for me and some of the people I work with. This leads to stresses and strains on projects and personal relationships, breaks morale and makes life very difficult. There’s a lot I could say about this, and go into ridiculous detail, but that is as much as anyone should need to know. I hate seeing things being done badly, when I’m involved with whatever it is that’s being done badly. If you feel your working environment is militating against you, then even the smallest tasks become difficult and stressful. Very stressful. And you know what they say: Stress is a killer.
  • Secondly, working in Parallel is no longer doing my so-called career any favours. I haven’t learnt anything new, which I haven’t actively pursued for my own purposes. There’s been no advancement, no financial reward, no expression of the experience I have in the field. That is bad. I mean, if I was hopping around between jobs and trying out different things, then of course I could expect to have little in the way of ‘career advancement’ but if I stay in one company for several years then either things should advance, I should get more responsibility, more pay, more training and experience, or things stop moving and I become obsolete. Remember that my work is primarily in the Internet field, building stuff for the Web. If there’s one thing which everyone knows all too well about this area, then it’s that things move fast. Very fast. I very much doubt that in Parallel I’ll be able to make a good case for making use of any of the new, upcoming technologies in my work, and that will fairly soon render my skills obsolete.

    There are knowledge areas which I have some very advanced knowledge in which won’t become obsolete any time soon; for example, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) because although it’s a simple technology which takes a day to learn, it takes years of painful experience to master. On the other hand, that’s one small part of the whole Web Interface skillset, and some other areas can change rapidly; an old technology which has suddenly come to forefront is something known as AJAX, which I’ll need to become skilled with if I’m going to keep working in this area and stay competitive with the ten-year-olds who learn this stuff at school. Then there are bigger jumps, such as moving from the User Interface stuff to different areas such as application programming with an actual programming language such as Java or C#.

    The other aspect of career development is that as well as knowing more and gaining knowledge, there’s the aspect of vertical career movement, whereby I would be managing other guys who know this stuff, and for several reasons I don’t see that ever happening for me at Parallel, from lack of opportunity to typecasting. So, apart from getting better at what I do, I’m not going to progress in any other way.

    To summarise; if I’m going to keep doing this web stuff for a living and take it further, then Parallel is probably not the best place to advance my career.

  • Lastly, there’s the small issue of the shares. Some people know about it, some don’t but here it is in a nutshell. Five years ago, in the heady days of the Internet Gold Rush in Ireland, everything related to the Internet was worth it’s weight in gold and diamonds and when the opportunity came up to invest in Parallel through a Government tax incentive scheme (known as a ‘Business Expansion Sceme’) a number of us jumped at the chance and put money in. Like some others, I took out a loan to finance it, over a similar period of time, to the tune of €7,300 or so. All good. However, things turned sour, the Internet bubble burst and Parallel did badly. Better than some which sank quickly but even so things were rough and this is a story for another day, suffice to say that the company survived and soldiered on. The shares recently matured, and so far appear to be worth nothing. At all.

    As you can imagine, having a fair idea of why exactly the company and therefore the shares might be worth nothing, I have no intention of sticking around to watch any more of the show unfold, given that in my mind I’ve paid for this. My money, funding a situation which I certainly wouldn’t allow if it were my company, evaporating (closer to the truth is that it has long since evaporated). At the end of the day I learnt a lesson and the hard truth is that investments are a risk and that’s life, you win you lose, it’s only money.

  So, last Wednesday I thought about it one last time, and then I wrote the resignation letter, and resigned on Thursday morning. It’s a cracker actually, one of my better pieces of prose recently and it’s a shame I can’t post it. You have to do these things with a sense of humour if you want to stay on the same page, that’s all I’ll say, because there are no silver bullets.

• What did Tom say??
  Tom is the CEO of Parallel, which makes him my (former) bossman. I think he was slightly caught off guard but I can’t imagine that he wasn’t expecting it in the long grass. Not with the granularity of the way things have been, and the way we haven’t been getting our ducks in a row. At least now that we’ve squared the circle and engaged with the situation, we’ll be able to decouple and kick it to touch.
• Really am I ok??
  Yes, really! Buzzed man, buzzed!
• How do I feel now?
  Slightly jittery, in a way, but truly free. Empowered. I can make decisions. It’s scary and yet exhilarating. I’ve been saying to people it’s quite a buzz, an adrenaline rush and I should do this more often. It’s like an extreme sport. I guess it’s why people gamble with large sums of money.
• What did Annette say??
  Annette is my housemate/landlady. Well, Annette knew that I was thinking about it but like everyone else probably didn’t expect me to do it until I had the new job in the bag. It’s the Guerilla Career, ladies!
• Do I have a new job lined up?
  Not yet, but there are a number of possibilities, some which were about before I did this, and some which have cropped up in the last couple of days. It’s not looking too bad, I just have to decide what to do. Full-time, part-time, contract, freelance, maybe something completely different altogether (writing, anyone?)… The possibilities are actually the problem, there are so many.

  If you have a suggestion of any sort or a job lead either comment below or call/text me (+353 86 856 2978), or email me!

• Bxx5!
  Yes, very much so. But it could go the other way too, and that mightn’t be a bad thing, unless it collapses. hUxx0rz!

So there you have it. The best move yet of 2006 and fully in line with the master plan, so expect more daring and surprising moves quite soon. There are plans afoot…

In the meantime, I’ve seen ‘Dig!‘ the riotous, messy story of the Brian Jonestown Massacre and the Dandy Warhols, which is great demonstration of how not to pursue your creative dream; I thoroughly recommend it to you, especially if you have any interest in the creative process or music. It’s a rollercoaster. I also went to see ‘The Devil and Daniel Johnston‘ a week ago which is a movie treading a similar path and again I recommend it, rivetting stuff about the fine line between creative genius and madness. I’m not a creative genius, and never will be, but it’s humbling to see how people who do have it can make a meal of it in one way or another. I need to be happy with what I have and just work hard to get where I’m going to.

(Continuously re-edited to solved a line-break problem. Am I the only person who hates Internet Exploder this much?)