Challenges and opportunities

I have a couple challenges and opportunities that I'm faced with.

I'm in the midst of a transition in my job. The systems that I currently support are in the process of being decommissioned. It isn't anything imminent...it will be years before the users are completely transitioned off of the system.

That said, I'm faced with the unpleasant reality that this particular job is not going to be long term. I actually enjoy my job, the commute is great, and the pay/benefits are very good. In short, I really wouldn't move if I didn't have to.

But it seems I don't have much of a choice, thus the first part of my challenge: I will need to make a career move sometime in 2010. (ugh)

I despise job hunting. I was recruited into this job by a friend, and I was at my previous job for 5 years before that. So I really haven't hunted for a job in over 8 years.

There are opportunities at my current company, but that is also a challenge. My company will pay for pretty much any technical training I could ever ask for, which is an amazing opportunity. But...I am a UNIX/Linux guy right now, and I love my job. The company I work for is completely non-unix/linux. In fact, it is pretty much the biggest non-linux company around.

So I can't really find a job in my current company doing the same thing I'm doing now. If I didn't love my job so much, it would be pretty easy to take advantage of the training and just swap jobs...and that certainly isn't off the table, by any stretch of the imagination.

If I was early in my career the choice would be easier. But in the mid-to-senior level that I'm in, its hard to sacrifice a bunch of experience and expertise and jump into something completely different. Not to mention that I'm used to being the absolute expert on the things I work on, and I'm not looking forward to that changing (even in the short term).

Anyway, I have a lot of work to do. From tidying up my resume, to taking advantage of a bunch of training...

If only I wasn't so lazy...

Training my replacement

So today at work, I'm putting together training materials for somebody who will 'be my backup for when I go on vacation'.

This has me worried somewhat.

Well, I should say that the economy has me worried. So far, every quarter this year, there have been substantial layoffs in my company. Last week we just went through one that cut deeper than any of the previous ones. We have lost all of the contractors in my department as well as two full time employees.

For those that don't know, my company is a medium-sized company that has now spun off to a wholly-owned subsidiary of a much larger company. (A...giant company that will remain nameless on my blog, but everybody reading knows who it is.)

The larger company is pushing a particular margin on my company, in an effort (in my opinion) to make it look attractive to potential buyers. In order to make the margins in a declining economic landscape, you have to cut overhead. IT is 100% overhead.

So, they've slashed. Projects, headcount, upgrade budgets, HR, travel, training, and anything else they can cut, they've snipped.

So it is with this backstory that I'm sitting down with my Manager for my 1 on 1, and she tells me that I need to train a 'backup'. Now, I'm 100% sure that she doesn't have any ulterior motives with this training. I'm 100% sure, that from her perspective, this is just creating some redundancy in the team so that I can take vacations without being called every 10 minutes.

I'm sure of that at least.

The problem is that I do not trust the people up the chain to be of the same mindset. I don't think that the VP necessarily has my vacation plans in mind when he suggested that someone on his old team could play 'backup' for me (he just got promoted to VP...previously he was a director in that department). I think there is a strong possibility that they are making this move so that when the next quarter comes around, he has another option, should they need to make another cut.

In the end, I trust him to do what is best for the bottom line to make the margin goals set for the company at that time, and I'm pretty sure that means cutting me next quarter, if they wind up having to make further cuts.

So I'm faced with this dilemma: Train the person well, and hope for the best? Train them poorly, watch them make mistakes, and make myself seem irreplaceable? Or, train them well and look for another job.

Yeah, I'm a professional, so I can't do #2, so I'll do my best while training (obviously). #2 still crosses my mind of course... :P. It is still a pretty crappy situation overall. Really have to make sure the old resume is updated and start putting it out there. ugh.

I guess I'd feel more comfortable if I were learning somebody else's job as well, so as to provide THEM with backup, that way I could feel like it was something happening around the company to everyone, but alas...I think it is just me.

I feel like I'm playing musical chairs in my job. This quarter the music stopped and I still had a seat. Next quarter I may be out of luck. Guess we will find out in August.

In the meantime, I'm going job hunting. In this economy, it isn't a great time for it, but don't have a lot of choice at the moment. /sigh...I hate job hunting.