I’ve never felt so wanted — and confused at the same time! My current employer did a counter-offer. While I can’t say specifics about the numbers, I will say he included an offer to work on a cutting-edge project that’s being done from the ground up. By cutting-edge, I mean Oracle + JSF + AJAX. Tech-wise, that alone was enough to make my inner geek salivate.

Then I go to chat with some of the managers with my future employer later this evening; the meeting was already previously scheduled, and I hadn’t had a chance to tell them I’ve gotten a counter-offer. Turns out, I’m going to have a hand at systems design and architecture! And, I’m going to lead a team, too! Again, I can’t talk about the specific renumerations involved, but I will say that doing systems design and leading a team appeals to my inner senior geek. I have done management stuff in the past, always out of necessity and unofficially, but this is the first time I’ll be doing senior stuff officially. That, and I’ll get to paid handsomely for it.

In the end, the pasture on the other side is just so much greener, and not just in monetary terms, but in actual geek work, that I’m still sticking with my future employer. My resignation stands. I gave my current employer a fighting chance to retain me, just like my boss asked, but I will still have to leave. Sorry, boss!

Yup, I got to talk to this managing consultant yesterday. He described some of the projects their teams are working on. They all sound good. I’m not really picky with whatever projects I’m given to work on.

But.

I’m still standing with my resignation.

Why? It’s a job. Java, J2EE (or Java EE nowadays), technology in general, is only a job. I get paid to code, and I code. While I may draw the line at touching VB, and doing  the clerical work of manual data updates for 300+ records, coding is just a job for me. It’s something I do to make an honest living. There really is no compelling reason for me to stay on now, even if they offer me a project that’ll get me to the US or whatever. I could just as well code in the new job waiting for me, as code in my current company.

So why leave in the first place? Long story. Basically I got stuck with no-brainer production support stuff, like bug fixes I can do in one day. And the bug fixes don’t come often either. That and I’m also left to do clerical work, like cleaning up the aforementioned 300+ records.

Besides, all other things being equal, money still talks — and I’m already looking forward to that new and greener pasture I’m set to go to in a few weeks!

I filed my resignation last Friday. I stated that I was given a chance to work with really technical and challenging projects, and that I’d accepted this offer. My boss was caught off-guard. He asked me to see him anytime at his office, and I did so late afternoon yesterday.

He was really grasping for the right words to say to me. In the end, he offered to give me a chance to work with another team, a team that handles US-based projects, and that would give me travel opportunities to the US. He set me up with a meeting this coming Monday with the manager for that team. My boss asked me to give me a chance to “fight for me”, so I agreed to the meeting.

I hate it when some manager dangles that “US travel opportunity” in front of me, thinking that I’d bite. I don’t know about other Filipino geeks, but money and travel (even if it’s to the US) have never been very high on my priorities. Modesty aside, I’m already earning what would be management-level pay in other companies, and just saying that I’ll “have a chance to work in the US” just doesn’t appeal to me anymore.

To a geek, what matters is the technology. Now unless the offer is to work on some military project that requires top-secret clearance, I doubt if any US company uses that much different tech from whatever companies are using here in the Philippines. I mean, Java is Java wherever you work, whether it’s in the US or in the Philippines or in Singapore or whatever. Solaris is Solaris, wherever it’s being used. Oracle is Oracle, whether it’s installed on US servers or RP servers. Besides, with US companies outsourcing to the Philippines, there’s practically no difference whatsoever with the technology, whether you work in the US or just here, locally.

So. I’ll ride along with the meeting on Monday, just to give my boss a “chance to fight for me”. But I doubt I’ll be convinced.

Well now, I haven’t been able to blog as much as I want to lately. The reason being, I’m about to change jobs and I needed to tie up some loose ends before moving on.

It’s still a Java dev job, but the projects sound lots more interesting than what I’m working on now (or not working on, depending on how you look at things), and the pay is definitely way better.

The project I’m set to work on when I start with the new company is really cool, tech-wise. I’d blog about it, but it’s one of those ‘if I told you, I’d have to kill you’ kind of deals. No, seriously!

Yes. Seriously.

I always was a headbanger, what with my taste in punk and indie rock, but I never thought I’d ever bang my head literally!

Yesterday on the way out of an office, while looking down to my shirt pocket and reaching for my ID tag, I ran headlong into a freakin’ glass wall. I banged my head and my knee and made a loud “thud”. I’m sure everyone in the vicinity heard that and I could feel their eyes on my back as I hurriedly went out the door and ducked into the elevator hallway, muttering under my breath, ow ow ow ow.

Man, that hurt!

I actually got a bit dizzy from the impact and I had to take the rest of the day off. It would’ve been really funny, if it weren’t for the pain and the dizziness. Actually, as time goes on, it does seem funnier now, but yesterday I was really out of it. I had to lie down and I only started feeling ‘normal’ later that evening, sometime after dinner.

The big lump on my head is now practically gone, but it was only towards the later part of the day that I realized I’d banged my knee even harder than my head. My knee still has some swelling now. Hopefully though, by Saturday my knee should be fine, so I can work out without any problems.