A Permanent Fixture

Today I got the official confirmation that I have passed probation and am now employed in a permanent capacity at the COBOL factory. Needless to say, this pleases me immensely.

The odd thing is, a year ago I'd sworn I wouldn't go after a job like this. After hopping around through various temporary and retail jobs, I'd finally settled into something I thought I could see myself pursuing as a career (online marketing and SEO, if you must know). And so I'd told myself that I was going to do exactly that. The job I was in wasn't exactly brilliant in terms of pay and conditions, but I thought I could take the experience and use it to get a better job doing the same sort of thing somewhere else.

But life's a funny thing, ain't it? As soon as I decided to focus on looking for marketing jobs, an advert in the local paper for this position caught my eye. I was done with trainee positions, I thought, but as previously discussed I've always had a hankering to code. So I took the plunge.

There were certain provisos. I wouldn't have taken the job if there had been any suggestion that a job wasn't guaranteed at the end of the six months. If the four of us who were taken on had been competing for a single position when it was over, I'd have stayed in my old job. I'm too old to take that kind of risk these days, especially with a mortgage and Small Girl to consider. Fortunately it was made clear that if we were all up to scratch then we'd all be kept on (and indeed that's exactly what has happened).

The time between accepting the job offer and actually starting was tense, to say the least. First there were the hurdles to jump; a ten-year background check that had to be completed before the job offer would be absolutely concrete. Then there was the general fear of the unknown, the panic that making this leap would turn out to be a bad idea. That disappeared as soon as I got here and started learning. The phrase 'duck to water' has seemed fairly apt over the last six months.

I got some very nice comments on my final probation paperwork today. In particular, it was nice to see an acknowledgement that, although I may make it look easy, I'm actually working damn hard. I'm blessed with a good memory (for things I actually want to remember, anyway) and the right sort of mindset to approach a coding problem in a reasonably structured manner, but those things alone don't get you through. I have a folder packed with notes that I refer to regularly, links to useful sites for researching commands and syntax, and a certain amount of dogged perseverance that often leads me to spend time looking for elegant solutions rather than just taking the easiest route. I've been less likely than the others to ask for help from others in the office, but that's not because I don't have the same problems as them. It's just because I prefer to try to solve the problems myself and hopefully learn something in the process.

In some ways, I can relax now. I've passed, I've got the job, panic over. In other ways, the hard work is only just starting. Now is the point where I really need to prove myself, to get myself established as 'programmer' and not just 'trainee'. I can see a lot of rungs on the career ladder above me, and I'm ready to start climbing.