Change team

TL;DR:

I have switched the team. And a field, to some extent. I am still writing code, though.

Where I work

Organisation where I work serves the Interned in different ways. One part is working with ISPs and IXPs and the other part is analysing of the Interned itself.

How it was

When I started here, 3 years ago, I was hired as software developer in the part of organisation that serves end-users directly. ISP accounts, their resources and so on was served by us. I was enjoying the work, I wanted to do something Internet related, more core level than creating services for businesses as usual web developers do and as I did before.

It was challenging and interesting — I had to learn a lot from the domain, I met a lot of interesting and bright people and worked along them and with them.

Though, after some time learning the domain was done, and work became familiar. And after some more time, I understood that what I wanted to do myself didn’t fit in this position I had here.

What did I want

It was hard to answer. Turns out, at least in developed country, it is one of the trickiest questions for an adult to answer — opportunities are broad, and one cannot easily pick a way without either clues or deep self-analysis.

So, self-analysis it was. First, I have tried to go process side, and became a Scrum master of the team I was working in. After some work on the path I recognised that changes are hard, and without political will in the organisation I couldn’t change anything or almost anything.

Then second came other part of Scrum master role — at least in our organisation it was a channel to represent needs of the team to the management and help team members work together and build healthy relationships. Retrospectives, you know. One can gather a loot of knowledge on team health from there. I ran anonymous surveys, I listened, I spoke to people one-on-one. We had somewhat uneven team, with different personalities and abilities.

And with half a year of effort it was changed to much more humane space. All big conflicts was resolved in one way or another. People grew, and many of them told me that I have served as a link, as a connection tissue of the team. I was happy for my mates, but I got tired.

And that wasn’t what I wanted to do.

After some people left and some new come we had the same uneven team again, and to the bigger extent. That served as a signal to me — either I have to do the same job again and maybe succeed, or I just step back and let them decide for themselves.

What was around

From the beginning I was aware of other part of the organisation, more of R&D part. And I was intrigued to go there and work in this field, but I was afraid — I had no experience with “Big Data” how it is known now. Somewhat big, petabyte scale, so you cannot store/process it in one machine. I thought that I need to learn the field and gather some knowledge, gain skills.

What happened next

I thought that I need to learn the field and gather some knowledge, gain skills. But the colleague of mine told me that there is an opening and the requirements aren’t that strict. I have applied and got accepted, after some interviews. After all, work is not only about work itself, it is about learning new things in the process.

And now

I am working as big data analyst/developer/whatever/call it as you wish — I deal with all this Hadoop things, with kafka and mapreduce and hbase you name it.

I feel more in peace with my inner self now. I have just started, so updates may happen.