Hired

That job interview early last week, despite the difficulties with the travel and all, has panned out nicely. Late last week they extended me an offer, and I have accepted.

Because of the nature of the company, the fact that a lot of their work is done under contract for other companies, and just prudent blogging practices, I'm afraid I'll have to be oblique about my new employers and my new job. It's a medium-sized company of a few hundred, with excellent resources and a lot of smart people to learn from. They do engineering R&D for hire, some of it pretty high profile, and a lot for medical device manufacturers. This dovetails nicely with my current job. I'll have a chance to get back to doing electronics and controls, something that I have decent training but little professional experience in. Their contract work, and the ongoing royalties they get from it, gives them the financial stability to take on riskier projects.

In stark contrast to my current job, it seems that jeans and non-dress shirts are the unofficial dress code. My suit-wearing days are numbered.

It isn't all sun and rainbows, though. The move will come with a 10% pay cut to start, though with good prospects for growth and profit-sharing. I'll have a 20-minute driving commute, rather than my current 15-minute walk. The atmosphere at this place is much more intense than my current job - more like a startup - and so it could mean some pretty long hours at times. On the other hand, so long as the work gets done, no one seems to care exactly when it gets done, so there is good flexibility. In the grand scheme of things, this reads more like a list of quibbles. It's a solid job with a good company doing good work, at a time when there's plenty of people unable to find work of any sort.

So, in spite of all the current uncertainty, we have lucked out on the two biggies: we've sold our house, and I've got a new job.

Now there's just that matter of moving halfway across the country...