Moving On

I just tendered my resignation at Raytheon, after eight years of employment.  My last day is Friday the 13th.

I have accepted a position with Medical Decision Logic (MDLogix), a small but growing company located in downtown Baltimore.  They make web-based software for managing hospital clinical studies.  They also host Baltimore’s monthly Ruby on Rails users group.

This is a decision that has been a long time in the making.  I started actively looking for new employment in January.  I’m very happy to have found a company which is, in many ways, the ideal match for my requirements.
The rest of this entry will be conducted in convenient question-and-answer format.

Does this mean you will be staying in Pennsylvania?

This means we will not be leaving the Baltimore vicinity anytime soon.

But what about Google?

Yes, as many of you know I was also interviewing with Google.  I have chosen not to pursue that opportunity any further.

What are you, nuts?

Quite possibly.  Here are some of the factors which led me to make this decision, in increasing order of importance.

• The Google interview process is long and drawn-out, and I wanted to leave my current job now.   I was just recently placed on a short-notice project which would have had me living in Kansas City for three months starting on the 9th.  Coordinating a job transition and a cross-country move while I was in Kansas City would have been an incredible strain on me and my family.  Not only that, but it would have been a lousy thing to do to Raytheon, having them set me up down there only to have to fly me home and find someone else to do my job.  This way they have some time to alter plans without too much upheaval.
• Google has been dawdling.  After telling me they would contact me with solid plans about an on-site interview by evening last Friday, they still haven’t gotten back to me with anything firm almost a week later.  In the meantime, MDLogix asked me what it would take to get me to forget about Google and start working for them immediately.  I named terms, which included my original asking salary, and they accepted without hesitation.
• Above all, though, it came down to the question of what I really wanted.  When I first started looking for another job, I had a specific set of qualifications in mind:
• A small company, without too much bureaucracy.
• A team of passionate programmers who really enjoy what they are doing.
• The opportunity to work with modern, high-level, dynamic languages, especially Ruby.  I am far from a one-language programmer, but there is no denying that I’ve been getting a lot of joy from programming in Ruby for the past few years, and I would love to be paid to do it.
• The ability to work from home part-time.
• Tuition assistance for school.
• More money!

The Google job would have given me some of these things, but by no means all.  In particular, Ruby is not one of their “approved” languages; and regular telecommuting would not have been an option.  After giving it some thought, I remembered that the whole point of this exercise was not simple career advancement, but rather to move towards a working environment that I found more enjoyable.  Viewed in that light, MDLogix seemed the right way to go.

Does this mean any changes in your summer plans?

No.  I will still be going to the Heinlein Centennial on the 7th (in, ironically, Kansas City).  All my other plans also remain unaltered.

Any other questions?