I’ve been very lucky these past few years, both personally and professionally. On my current project I’ve had the pleasure of meeting some great people, and work with two of the best and more dedicated developers I’ve met. Still, I’ve known my share of companies driven only by politics in the past, which is why Pete Wright’s tale of why he has left Microsoft technologies behind is so familiar:
I dreamed of working at Microsoft. When Microsoft joined up with Accenture to form Avanade the word Consultant sounded so wonderfully romantic to me and I wondered if ever I’d make it there as one of the elite band of Avanade consultants, spreading the Microsoft message all over the world. I dreamed of systems that would change lives, help people, and do cool new things never seen before.
Somewhere along the way though, things changed. I don’t know exactly when or how, but the world I loved got torn to shreds, set fire to, then mooshed into a pile of horse manure.
I found myself working with ‘day coders’, people with no passion, people that knew how to program and had learned how to do so simply because the money looked good. I found myself working with Project Managers with little or no experience of the field they were working in, habitually making appalling decisions day in and day out and kicking their teams of programmers when things went horribly wrong.
[...]
So, today I resigned my job, and completely ended my Microsoft career. I have taken a role as Director with a company at the leading edge of the “Web 2.0” curve. My team and I will write Ruby on Rails code, use Macintosh computers to do so, shun Microsoft technology completely, go to work in shorts and sandals and blast each other with nerf guns. My team is devoted to being the best it can be, to learning, to improving, to pushing boundaries. And it’s not Microsoft.
I’ve never met you, but Go Pete! I’ve found myself in a similar situation, slowly growing more and more bored of the Microsoft world and their old British man of a toolset, and spending more and more time working on other technologies from my MacBook Pro, the Bond girl of laptops. An eventual jump now seems a matter of when, not if, and the when seems to be drawing ever closer.