I'm starting to be really tired, probably burn out, with my current work. I believe I'm doing a good work, but when it seems that the people in charge does not know what they want nor care about what is being done and the once supposed co-workers (now luckily transformed into customers) loose absolutely your respect after insulting your intelligence and, from my point of view, calumniate yourself directly (sending an e-mail) or indirectly (saying nothing about the message), things start to look bad.
I understand that we don't live in Wonderland, but it is difficult for me to work on a complex technical project like the development and deployment of a distribution without a real management:
- There are no written requirements. Well, that's untrue, there were some high level things, but nobody told me to use them as a base for anything and now that I've looked at some of them I believe that they can be used as a starting point, never as the final requirements.
- We have deadlines, but for me they are only dates. Until very recently I've only had very high level ideas of what was expected, but there was no place to look into a written document and know which were the priorities. Luckily that is not my task, but it makes you angry to see a lot of people telling you that you should have known and making it look like all is under your responsibility, when it is not (or I would have asked for a much higher salary).
- There is no real QA work being done, once the problem was that we didn't had the tools (IMHO a simple mailing list could have been enough for a while), but now that we have them nobody uses them until you force it.
Oh, well, I know I need a salary to eat and when you find one that looks is going to be the work, is sad to see that it is not; that is the second time it happens to me, the lack of interest on doing a good work of others, my real problem with sincerity (I usually say what I think, and people is not used to listen to it, I can be wrong, but at least I'm not going behind the back of anybody, as others do) and the climate it generates tells me that I have to move on, there's nothing to win and much to loose, at least on the personal side.
I don't know how long I'll stay on my current work (I'm not going to leave without a replacement, I have a family), but I'm going to look at the job offers again and to send CV's out. Wish me luck.
Ah, BTW, if someone has a decent offer for someone with experience in systems administration, programming in general or Debian development in particular please send me an email ... ;)
