It’s Mostly Work Drama This Week

Well, on Monday it occurred to me that I had 2 weeks left in this contract. So, I poked my manager, expecting to get one more extension, but later that afternoon I got the news that weren’t going to extend me. Frequent readers - if you exist - will know this has been on the cards for some time. I’m the last contractor standing, and their new finance person clearly doesn’t want any of us any more.

So, I instantly went all-in on job hunting. I applied to a few places, dropped posts on LinkedIn, Bluesky, and Mastodon, got my CV out to some folks, networked, and made some calls. All in all, a productive first few hours of job searching. Later that day, my manager messages me to say that they might have a way to renew. Good lord. I replied frankly that I was already looking, and if they wanted to renew, they needed to do it quickly. I also noted that 3 month contracts are not ideal, and that finding out with only days left to go is stressful.

But here’s the interesting bit… Got a message from a previous colleague at Tide, who’s now working in the public sector. They have a permanent role in AI security that sounds interesting, pays well, and he wanted to chat. I had an application in the next day. Yesterday, we had a call and I ended up feeling really positive about it. I don’t want to get too excited because there’s a LOT of competition for it, but this would be a great opportunity and frankly a lot of fun. It would also be a chance to step back from contracting for a time - or maybe permanently? I don’t know. Watch this space.

Between you, me, and the wall, I’m going to admit something cringeworthy… This country’s given me a such good career, a good life, and the BEST of times. I’ve worked with the most amazing people and learned so much. Of course I work for myself right now, but in the private sector, all I’ve ever really accomplished is to make other people rich. With the public sector, I kind of like the idea of giving something back to the country that gave me so much. I know, I know, cringeworthy. But there it is.

Outside of that, it was a smashing week at work. I managed to detangle a heap of bugs with our integration to Dynatrace for version 2 of the architecture. I think there’s like 1 more pull request to get merged, a quick test later - and touch wood - that’s the ticket done. I’ve got a one day spike to evaluate something else in architecture v2, but other that than it’s gonna be nothing left but handover - unless they renew me.

If they do renew me, I don’t think I’m going to stop looking / interviewing. I need something more stable.

Minor Bits in No Particular Order

  • I got the kitchen door hung up. The Dewalt 18V Brushless Planer made quick work of getting it fitted into the door frame, and the Dewalt 20V Brushless Router let me cut the hinge recesses perfectly. Now it’s just the handle and lock to fit.

  • Finally got our 12 year old Sky box swapped out for a shiny new Sky Q box. The old was giving off vibes of imminent failure, and I knew the Sky Q boxes supported 4K, so it was a no-brainer. Better yet, when the engineer came round, because I share my mini-dish with the neighbour, he had to fit a new dish. The old one tended to stop working in bad weather, so this should help on that front.

  • I’ve given up and subscribed to a year of Github Copilot. The code suggestions were just too convenient.

  • And lastly, I’m trying Visual Studio Code once more. I’ve tried it several times before, but have always gone back to Vim. Problem is, it’s starting to feel like that’s aging me a bit, and certainly making me feel like I’m missing out on some cool stuff. So, I’ll be forcing myself to use for at least 7 days - the rest of this contract. I’ll report how I get on. I must say, editing this post, whist the Hugo server is running in the terminal, is pretty sweet.

That’s My Week

As always, you can add my RSS feed to your reader of choice and if you made it this far thanks for reading!

Chris