Sorry, long post, but bear with me on this.
12 years ago, when I started in IT, it was fun. I worked in a small creative team making stuff that was useful and quite advanced; things were very informal; testers sat next to programmers and DBAs and we worked things out together, quickly and effectively. OK, so not everything was perfectly documented and nobody really knew what the ‘business value’ was, but we enjoyed it and the clients seemed to gain a commercial advantage from what we were doing (telecoms, mobile networks and so on).
It seems to be however that since then, our field of work has just become more and more boring. ITIL, Prince2, KPIs, company dashboards, corporatese speaking suits, 2.5 hour meetings like the one I've just sat in etc have now driven me to the point where I actually don’t really know whether I want to stay in this business any longer. I’ve got a long term plan to go into academia anyway, but as well as that I’m a qualified fitness instructor and personal trainer; that doesn’t pay all that much but I’m really considering packing in all this tulip and going and doing something I enjoy. The recession might just provide me the kick up the rear that I need to do it.
Is everyone else as bored as I am? I enjoy exploratory testing, working in agile development teams, doing something innovative. Any suggestions as to where I should be looking?
12 years ago, when I started in IT, it was fun. I worked in a small creative team making stuff that was useful and quite advanced; things were very informal; testers sat next to programmers and DBAs and we worked things out together, quickly and effectively. OK, so not everything was perfectly documented and nobody really knew what the ‘business value’ was, but we enjoyed it and the clients seemed to gain a commercial advantage from what we were doing (telecoms, mobile networks and so on).
It seems to be however that since then, our field of work has just become more and more boring. ITIL, Prince2, KPIs, company dashboards, corporatese speaking suits, 2.5 hour meetings like the one I've just sat in etc have now driven me to the point where I actually don’t really know whether I want to stay in this business any longer. I’ve got a long term plan to go into academia anyway, but as well as that I’m a qualified fitness instructor and personal trainer; that doesn’t pay all that much but I’m really considering packing in all this tulip and going and doing something I enjoy. The recession might just provide me the kick up the rear that I need to do it.
Is everyone else as bored as I am? I enjoy exploratory testing, working in agile development teams, doing something innovative. Any suggestions as to where I should be looking?
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