Neil Hopcroft

A digital misfit

Perhaps its a little unfair to blame all my current malaise on my my job, but making a move toward getting out of there seems to have lifted my spirits somewhat. The question becomes one of what happens next? I’m reasonably sure that my long term future doesn’t see me staying in the Cambridge area, this is not something I can really explain, except to say that I don’t really feel like I fit in. Short term, though, its not a bad place to be.

Something I do want is to do more travelling, and I don’t want to get stuck in a job where the paperwork is the biggest part of the job rather than the actual work I’m supposed to be doing. Going to conferences or customer sites would be interesting, but how do I find a job where I get to do those things? That would imply a permanent job rather than contract, but then its difficult to find somewhere where you aren’t bogged down in the mire of buearocracy.

Also feeding into this lassitude is my social situation – I’ve been somewhat slow at reintegrating into British culture after returning from Japan. This, maybe, is related to the feelings about Cambridge, which causes which I don’t know. Maybe thats something I need to sort out, but I suspect that fixing the job situation will make most of the rest of it fall into place one way or another.


15 comments

  1. My experience has pretty much all been in tiny companies, and always with no paperwork and plenty of engineering to do.

    But that doesn’t seem to generate much need to travel. What kind of work do you most feel like doing ?

      • That’s hard to argue with. I never understood how people could stand to work on projects that didn’t ship.

        What kind of tech ? What *does* your ex-employer do, anyhow ?

        • My background is mostly mobile/embedded stuff…this project will ship, just not be used or cared about by anyone it ships to….mostly they do consultancy work, so this, as more of a product, is a bit of a departure for them.

  2. dmh

    This sounds complicated. If it’s life in Cambridge that’s the issue, it raises the question of where, given the choice, would you like to move to…

    Either way it’s always nice to see you when I make it to the Calling — even when neither of us are able to get a word in edgeways… ;o)

    • Thats quite tempting – its the only place I’ve felt vaguely at home in, and theres some good people there.

      Copenhagen is still on the list, but it’ll have to wait ’til I get some more work lined up.

      • It’s the problem I’ve got at the moment – this weekend in Brighton proved to me that it is Brighton I’m in love with as a city, but Oxford is where the people are. Which isn’t to disparage my friends elsewhere, but the Oxford scene, small as it is, has some truly wonderful people who make for great friends.

        Cat’s really interested in the idea of Copenhagen too, so we could even make an Oxford trip of it, to really pull you back to the Spires!

  3. Theres two sorts of paperwork, the technical spec stuff you work through with the client and theres the wrestling with procurement system to get the three signatures needed to buy another box of paperclips. I don’t mind the former but the latter drives me crazy.

    I tend not to work for service companies, unless I suppose you consider being onsite with a customer trying to install your system as a service, its a bit difficult to draw the line around there. Mostly for the kinds of things I do they need technical people involved in the pre or post sales stages, which is kinda where I’m looking at the moment.

  4. what i do involves being on customer sites but i wouldn’t say i have much paperwork other than timesheets etc. Lot of travel options…

    Perhaps there is a consultancy/development shop that suits what you do / want to do?

  5. Software integration is something I’ve been doing for a while, but thats not on-site installation stuff, its more back office, bashing the build farm, turning the handle getting another broken build out stuff. Something in a more dynamic industry would be nice.

  6. Hm. I should tell you all about what we do, sometime. It might be the kind of thing you were looking for.

    Any plans to travel West anytime soon ?

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