This deserves every ounce of attention that it can get and I definitely know the feeling. I worked about as hard as I could for a little over a year to save a 15 year old company from going under. I was the only developer/infrastructure person because we couldn't hire anybody else since it looked like a sinking ship.
I worked 24/7 (with a wife and 2 kids) on this beastly mix of 10 year old Perl and very inexperienced Rails code. Despite the hours, I was excited because I thought this was THE big opportunity.
At my one year review, the owners told me I wasn't working hard enough. I went from a high point to a low point overnight. Wrestled with it for about a month. Then while I was riding in the car with my wife I got a snarky hipchat message from the owner of the company and showed it to my wife.
She looked right at me and said, "Quit. Don't worry about the money, we will figure it out. I don't want you working for people like that and it's obvious what it's doing to you."
So I resigned. Told them I'd stay on for 30 days for transition but that it just wasn't the right place for me. The weight off my shoulders from resigning was ENORMOUS.
For about 2 months I struggled with what to do. All the experience I'd gained at that job had virtually made my resume and after the experience, just like you I wanted to find something MEANINGFUL to do. Something I could wake up every morning and know that what I was doing made a difference for the right reasons.
And the opportunity came 2 months later. I ended up turning down a job for twice the pay for what I knew was best in the long run. So far it has been and my wife and I have never been happier. This company treats employees better than any I've ever even heard of. Not silly perks but actual, life balance, we value you as a human being, feel free to move about the company if you want a different challenge...perks.
The only downside is that I'm pretty sure my wife will kill me if I ever lose this job. :-)
Well done. Its not easy to move when everything depends on you even if people don't appreciate it. Great to see that you found real success and it shows what's possible when people aren't afraid to make a move.
I stabilized them over the course of that year and helped them transition to new developers. Company is doing fine as far as I know and should be for a while.
They've got a massive network effect which is why they were able to survive months of chaos from a bad rebuild. That's the only reason I came on in the first place. The network effect bought a lot of time to fix things and there was no clear "Facebook" to their "MySpace."
Really the only thing working against the company is that their target market is aging a lot.
Nah, it worked out. They had to replace me with 3 people. :-)
Besides, I didn't want the company to go under. I'd spent the last year making sure they didn't and didn't want all of that work to be for nothing. Plus, I didn't want the other people who worked there to be out of the job.
Eventually, everybody who worked there with me left on their own.
I worked 24/7 (with a wife and 2 kids) on this beastly mix of 10 year old Perl and very inexperienced Rails code. Despite the hours, I was excited because I thought this was THE big opportunity.
At my one year review, the owners told me I wasn't working hard enough. I went from a high point to a low point overnight. Wrestled with it for about a month. Then while I was riding in the car with my wife I got a snarky hipchat message from the owner of the company and showed it to my wife.
She looked right at me and said, "Quit. Don't worry about the money, we will figure it out. I don't want you working for people like that and it's obvious what it's doing to you."
So I resigned. Told them I'd stay on for 30 days for transition but that it just wasn't the right place for me. The weight off my shoulders from resigning was ENORMOUS.
For about 2 months I struggled with what to do. All the experience I'd gained at that job had virtually made my resume and after the experience, just like you I wanted to find something MEANINGFUL to do. Something I could wake up every morning and know that what I was doing made a difference for the right reasons.
And the opportunity came 2 months later. I ended up turning down a job for twice the pay for what I knew was best in the long run. So far it has been and my wife and I have never been happier. This company treats employees better than any I've ever even heard of. Not silly perks but actual, life balance, we value you as a human being, feel free to move about the company if you want a different challenge...perks.
The only downside is that I'm pretty sure my wife will kill me if I ever lose this job. :-)