In the technology world there is a class system that casts a shadow across all the work we do. When it comes to operating systems it works like the seminal teen flick "The Breakfast Club". Linux is the bad boy Judd Nelson character – rebelious, uncertain about the future, a little bit sexy and smart even though he looks stupid. Windows is Anthony Michael Hall, a geek, uncool, tries to fit in and be liked by everyone yet his overeagerness puts the cool people off. Apple’s OSX is Molly Ringwald, a prom queen who is beautiful yet unobtainable – so pretty that everyone thinks they should have her yet so intimidating that she still remains a virgin. IBM’s OS/2 Warp is the crazy Ally Sheedy character that everyone ignores but I can’t think of a jock operating system.
Anyway the point is that when you work with those operating systems your coolness factor is rated in the same way. When my primary work was revolving around Linux I had a kind of rebelious naughty aura around me, but when I moved to supporting an application that primarily ran on windows my credibility dropped. i didn’t have access to the production systems anymore so whenever I walked over to the System Administrator guys for a service restart or something I felt like the uncool kid asking if I was invited to their wicked party.
Now, I’m moving in to a new social strata. About two weeks ago I went for a job interview in middleware which is one band level above the one I’m in now. Today I discovered I got the job, so other than a very handy pay rise I’m also about to get my hands dirty on a lot of new technology. However, the new technology is only new to me as it is actually old technologies such as Oracle. Oracle is kind of like the school principal in the movie. Old, does it’s job well, tries to adapt to the new kids but is still a little bit staid in it’s ways. For me, it’s kind of like growing up. This kind of work only gets done in a very large organisations in Australia and is very specialist work. This is exciting for me as a career opportunity. I feel sad that I won’t be working as closely with my current team anymore, but it’s not like I’m moving to another country, I’ll probably just be around the corner. I’m looking forward to learning the new stuff, but I won’t get to do any web development work anymore which sucks. I’ll have to do it all here now. 🙂