Working and Stuff

I started my career in technology more than 10 years ago. When I got hired as a level one technical support engineer at Bluehost in 2008, I had barely any idea what a domain was or how the internet worked. My experience to that point had been installing and playing various video games. Through the graces of the hiring department, I got a job and managed to stick with it.

Several years and a few title changes later, I found myself working at Insidesales.com as a test automation engineer. And I loved it. I got to write code and test. During me tenure at ISDC, I came to discover how much I like to just sit and write code. And how much I just liked working with technology in general. It was a hard decision to leave when the started doing layoffs back in 2017. I saw several of my friends leave, and it really stung. In hopes for more stability I reluctantly started looking for another job.

I applied to a lot of places. I interviewed at nearly all of them. Some seemed great, others not so much. Throughout this process my boss asked me to stop looking. So I did. Or so I thought. About a month after I started looking I got a call from Sorenson Media to come and interview. I had completely forgotten that I had even applied there. But I went in and interviewed. After a few longer interviews I was offered a position making significantly more than I was at Insidesales.com along with benefits that are nearly impossible to beat.

I took the offer.

That time was a rather hectic period of my life. We had just had a new baby, had sold our home, and moved to a new city. Needless to say, I had the new job jitters for a while as I learned the ropes and drank from the firehose. But I eventually got comfortable and managed to learn and grow significantly as not just a tester, but as a developer. It was something I loved doing. I was taking part in and contributing to code reviews. I was making a real difference.

And then the first round of layoffs came. I panicked. I hyperventilated. But I kept my job.

Things felt fine for a while. Then came round 2 of layoffs. And these were much more significant. The announcement came in June that they were doing layoffs in August. Everyone should start looking. I went on garden leave as I started furiously job hunting. I polished up my resume and went to work. There were days I spent as much time at interviews as I would have at a normal job. I spent over 4 hrs on the road one day.

By week 2 I had three job offers. All of which were good and generous. But none of them truly felt right for me. After much thought, I did accept an offer to do automation for Bluehost. My first day back at QA for Bluehost was to be exactly 6 years to the day, August 13. from when I started QA back in 2012.

I was nervous, but excited to start working with old friends again. I kept in touch with the recruiter through the whole process to let her know how things were moving along. I had most of the paperwork filled out, even.

The Friday before I was to start my boss at Sorenson messaged me asking what it would take to get me to stay. Bear in mind that I had previously been told I was getting laid off and that there would not be any QA presence at Sorenson when the dust settled. I voiced my concerns. If I stayed, I was told, I would get a raise and be promoted to full developer. Something I had wanted for years, but did not know how to break into it.

This put me in a very tough situation. What do I tell my boss? What about Bluehost?

I called and left a message and emailed the recruiter at Bluehost. But she never got back to me. I talked with Ashley and several of my friends in the industry about what they would do. Ash and I prayed about it. Multiple times. The answer came back quite strong, multiple times.

I stayed at Sorenson.

Future uncertain, not knowing if the company would last the next few months, let alone a year, I stayed. It was a very difficult decision, but one we felt was the right one.

On Tuesday of this week, Sorenson Media filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. They are working on setting up a KERP of which I am a part. However, the future of the company is dangling precariously near the edge of the precipice. Benefitting from the KERP requires that the company gets purchased. There are several interested parties, but no solid offers yet. We have 4 weeks until our fate is determined.

So now I have to decide: do I stick with Sorenson, for better or worse? Or do I look for another job, likely as a QA Engineer/SDET? This situation stinks. But I feel confident that no matter what, things will work out for us in the end.