I Have Resigned

Last night I sent my resignation letter to Tiber Creek. It happened rather unexpectedly over the past two days.

I had been with Tiber Creek for just about a year. During that time I earned the trust of my boss and was able to work from home pretty often. My normal day would be in the office for about 4 hours and work at home the remainging 4-6 hours. Usually would take a day off during the week but would work some weekends. As long as I was making progress they put up with it.

Over the past month I started part of a project that is in an area I really struggle with. It was a user interface that required a lot of attention to detail and got down into the 'can you move this two pixels to the left' sort of stuff that just makes me want to jump off a building. Anyway, I really struggle with this kind of thing so my productivity fell way off.

I mentioned that I was struggling several times to my boss in several different ways, but I never demanded to be moved to another project. My intention was to get through a major demo (occuring today, actually) and then request a transfer. So I was sticking it out.

So Tuesday night I did what I normally do and fired up the VPN (a secure way to access their network from my home) and started to work. About two hours into it I lost my connection, which happens from time to time. I was unable to reconnect that evening and was getting Account Disabled messaged. I went in early Wednesday with the intention of making up for the hours I lost on Tuesday night. No Sys Admins were in so I ended up twiddling my thumbs waiting for someone to show up to renable my account.

About an hour into waiting the CEO comes into my office and asks if he can speak with me. He never speaks to me. So he sits down and starts chatting. To make a long story short, he basically expressed a lack of trust in the hours I've been writing down and said that my productivity just isn't matching those hours. I explained that I have been struggling with the project I was on and that is why my productivity had fallen off. I also explained that I am more productive at home than at the office which is why I prefer working from home. At the end of the conversation I thought we had an understanding that during the period of time I am struggling I'll come into the office more to try and address his misgivenings. After the demo I would request a move to a new project that I would be more productive in.

Well, around 5 pm or so I get an email saying that 'Per our discussion, I have disabled your VPN access for the time being.' That surprised me since, as far as I knew, that wasn't part of our discussion and seemed pretty counter-productive to trying to hit a hard deadline. After three attempts at emails I finally wrote a pretty long one laying out what I thought his concerns were, what my concerns were, and other factors and said that I hoped we could come to an acceptable compromise.

Thursday morning comes rolling around and I have a reply. I didn't read it until just before lunch because I wanted to try to knock out some more work before something came along that pissed me off. Turns out that was a good move for when I finally read the letter I really got my back up. Basically the CEO's reply boiled down to two points:

1) I don't want to hear any excuses.
2) I can only bill hours I work in the office until mutual trust and respect can be reestablished.

There was no attempt to meet me halfway or to address my concerns. Further, I know what works for and what doesn't and a structure 9-5 office job does not work for me. My productivity will go into the shitter and I'll be miserable.

So after thinking about it and talking about the pros and cons of leaving over lunch I decided it was time to go. I worked until about 8:30 last night to make sure my part of the demo would be good to go. I also sat down with the guy doing the demo to make sure he understood it. Finally, I sent a nice long email explaining the stuff I was working on and where I was going with it.

Last night around 11:30 I sent my resignation letter via email to the CEO, my boss and HR. I simply stated as my reason for leaving that 'I was unwilling to work under the scrutiny and restrictions placed upon me in order to restore mutual trust and respect'. And that's that.

I figure between the two contracts I have (or, really at this point, contract and a half) I'll be ok for a couple of months. Between now and Nov. 8th I plan on volunteering for Obama and get involved in the political process a bit. I also will be looking for another contract or two or a new job. After Nov 8th I'll see what happens.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes!