6:11 PM// I quit my new job!

Well, that didn't take long. Today I officially resigned from my position as Project Manager at Virtual Reality Aids, Inc.. Read about that job in my previous news post.

But why, you ask? First of all, permit me to explain my feelings towards this job. It's a decent job. It pays well (average salary for a recent BS graduate in a computer company). I'm interested in what I'm doing. But it's not a life career. For one thing, I can stand it, but I don't love it. For another, the company is so small (3 people, including the owner/president) there's nowhere to go. I can't get demoted or promoted; I just am. Again, decent experience for a first job for a recent college grad, but not a major career move.

However, these are not reasons to quit. I don't know what I what to do with my life…grad school maybe…blah blah blah. But no reason to quit after only a month. So here's the real reason: my first day on the job, I heard back from 3 places at the top of my list I had applied to months previously (I'd heard back from no one since then). I took the interviews, but the copious amount of "time-off" I had to request from my current job became conspicuous, and I told my boss my reasons after she asked.

Well, I will spare the reader the details, but in short I received a lecture on loyalty and commitment and an ultimatum: stay on as Project Manager and tell the other companies that I'm taken or resign. Now an interview is not a job. Quitting my job just to see what's behind door number three is a big risk. On the other hand, I have no family to support; I'm a young guy in good health. And after six months (the end of VRA's current project) I have no guarantee of a job. In fact, the owner of VRA has a history of only running her company for about three years and then laying everyone off and going on holiday. So basically, I traded an ultimately dead-end job with zero job-security for a chance at a job in the major leagues. And if I don't get that, then I'll start my own company. I'll take the mystery box…door…whatever.

Initially I felt very guilty for quitting. I felt that I had let the owner down. It was a very small company (3 people) with much of the work being contracted out (see happyshow.tv). But I had made a commitment to build video games that could really help some kids with serious disabilities. One the other hand, I was not the talent. If the Unreal Scripter or character designer/animator quit, we'd have to get another; the position was not expendable. However, the project manager contributes no direct game material or talent -- it's just a coordinating position. Still important, but the position itself is ultimately expendable. The owner told me how disappointed she was in me and how she took a chance of a recent college grad and that was clearly a mistake. It nearly brought me to tears. But that's life. People quit jobs. People move on. I had to move on.

There are some publicly available images at happyshow.tv of VRA's main character "Buddy" (a dog) and his favorite weapon: the Pixie-B-Gone dusting gun. See http://www.happyshow.tv/client/vra/.