Monday and I'm done with this year already
Yeah, I know. Another change to the site. Kill me.
I went back to a set of fonts I had a few weeks back when I first started this blog. If this thing had a revision history, I'd be up to Version 10.2.25 or some such. I can't help it, I just can never seem to settle on one font that I like, or one layout, or one colour scheme.
It's kind of been the story of my life, really. I get bored quickly, and constantly want to change things. And I know the grass is not greener on the other side but it doesn't stop me from looking over the fence. But this constant need for change, or perhaps it's a constant dissatisfaction with the status quo, is driving me nuts. I wish I could be happy and content with what I have, rather than constantly being on the lookout for bigger and better. Whenever I am playing a game (by the way, this is my current obsession) I'm always restarting, loading old saves, or deleting all saves and starting from scratch. Restlessness, perfection, constant change.
Work is probably the best example of this. I work in IT, and have spent the best part of 25 years testing things, leading testing teams, setting up whole departments and helping some big companies around the world set up their test infrastructure. I've had a lot of jobs in those years, a sign partly of the industry, and also the times we live in, but also my own restlessness, the constant need for something else.
In my current company, I was hired as Head of QA. At first, everything was fine. Nice job, decent pay, nice office, a change to build my own team and processes in what was effectively a start-up environment. All in English as well, so it couldn't be much better.
Then about two years ago there was a bit of a reorganisation, and, to cut a long story short, my team was merged into the development team, and my role became redundant. I was given a new role, and a new team, Production Operations, and that was that. It's a great team, it's a great role, but I am sooooooooooooooooo bored. This team doesn't need me. They're completely independent, they know what they're doing. Their work is not my background, and I spend most of my day asking them what they're doing, or if there's a production incident, what I'm supposed to do about it. The last thing they need is to for someone to look after Grandpa there in the corner, smelling of wee and shouting at clouds.
It's complete helplessness. And I hate it. I hate not being on top of my game, having to depend on others what to do. It's like imposter syndrome on steroids.
I've lost my sense of who I am, and the value I bring to anywhere I work. I am a QA Manager, a Director of QA, a Program Test Manager, and I'm fucking good at it. I have receipts.
Now, I'm just ... lost.
Day after day of staring at dashboards, hoping to God nothing turns any other shade than green. Because then I'm expected to do something. Most of the time it involves calling one of my team asking them to have a look. Not exactly rocket science, right?
Sure, get another job. Not that easy. I'm 55, old for IT, and especially an area - QA - that is slowly being taken over by AI, or that has changed dramatically over the years. Automation and coding is everything now, and I am not a coder. I could learn, but pffff, there's loads of eager graduates and script kiddies that are better and cheaper. It'd be embarrassing.
I'm just so fed up feeling useless, and invisible. I wish I was back in my old job. At least I had purpose then. I knew what I was doing. I knew what I wanted to do, and how to do it.
A trawl through LinkedIn this evening reveals nothing new or interesting. I'll keep looking, looking for the next change.
Version 55.0.1 of me.