pmsumner

Once again my delightful employers have decided that the roulette wheel of future employment shall be spun. Yes, we're downsizing.

There is a positive side to it this time, at least: they've told us in advance. The last 2 rounds of redundancies came relatively out of the blue. This advance notice is a double-edged sword. We got a de-motivational speech from the owner on Wednesday, telling us that they were effectively closing a subsidiary company in the US, then sent an email (yes, an email) round at 1630 on Thursday telling us that there would be cuts. As of Friday evening, we are still no wiser as to how many they want to get rid of, what departments will be affected. No news on anything.

On a more positive note, I had an interesting discussion this morning with a chap from a recruitment agency (are they psychic?!), talking about a job in Chester that I might be interested in. I have to update my CV this weekend.

Speaking of which, how the hell do I describe my job?

Well by title, I am a Group Technical Support & Validation engineer within the development department.

I currently spend a lot of time on a specific project. Testing and assisting with the development of a bespoke web-based Linux, Apache, MySQL & PHP (LAMP) application which provides a health monitoring solution for our digital recording units. This includes master/slave synchronisation (written ourselves as MySQL doesn't support this natively) and all the problems this brings up. Dealing with mobile units and the problems this introduces (e.g. recorders on public transport), simplifying installation (automating the building of an RPM & installation scripts) and general Linux system administration.

I am responsible for testing and approving (or rejecting) hard drives, CD/DVD drives and any other 3rd-party hardware used in our units.

I provide an interface between development and anybody else who shouldn't be talking directly to developers. I need to communicate clearly and at the right level with end users, developers, directors, marketing, training, customer services and more.

I have specific responsibility for supporting and testing AoE RAID devices. I have worked closely with the manufacturers to learn everything I can about them, including initial configuration, maintenance and recovering from single/multiple drive failures.

I'm jointly responsible for testing and releasing new software on our digital recorders. Testing that new software doesn't introduce new bugs, that new features work as expected. I work very closely with development teams to resolve bugs.

On top of this there's whatever else needs doing. General dogsbody. If it needs doing within the department, and it's not specifically a developer's job, I'll probably end up with it.

Ok then, that wasn't as hard as I thought it would be to write down. It sounded like a lot when I was thinking about it but it's not that bad.

I look forward to seeing my CV when I am done...