Believe it or not, I started off my career as a Development Engineer, who wrote code, tested it, did telephone customer support, triage customer issues and fix them - an all-in-one package. That lasted about a year not because I couldn't handle it but because I found the technology and the company's medium-to-long prospects quite career limiting.
I moved on to a test engineer job in a large company. The initial period was quite rocky as I soon found out. As I was getting a hang of things, people around me were leaving the company left and right. :) Soon enough, I got used to it even though the company lost hundreds of employees through attrition. I liked the job I was doing and over the years I did quite well for myself. I was well respected in the organization and wielded significant power.
Y2K and the startup bug bit me and I went off in search of riches. Spent 4 years chasing a dream at a very dynamic, fast paced startup where the work changed from day to day. It was exciting and satisfying. Finally the dream turned sour as I realized that the big guys had screwed up over $180 M in investor funding.
Not willing to give up on the startup dream, I joined a second startup. That stint lasted about 10 months before I gave up and moved to my current company. The warning signs were right there as I saw (with horror) remarkable similarities in the first and 2nd startup. This company was headed for doom as well.
At this point I still found the test engineer job fun (I had my moments of glory in the past when I came TL and manager etc). Coming here, there was quite a bit to learn. The first year or so was fine even though I felt a bit stifled and suffocated by the mountain of process and slow moving giant. As much as I hoped that a big company culture would be the safety net, found that it was probably a well kept secret that it is a dark hole where people's careers disappear into a black hole. Long story short, over the years I observed lots of politics, frustration increased and the work became more of a mundane burden.
Finally, fed up with lack of career growth and increasing frustration, joined B-school in order to take charge of my own destiny. 2 years later, after long hard effort (school and home, sustaining effort at work), the test engineer in me died. I had no passion left for testing. I hung up my boots and moved out of testing and into Marketing. It is ironic that the last three weeks of my test engineer role were the worst of my entire test career with certain people around me falling to extreme low levels .....
Now that I am out of there, I can breathe again now. Don't know what the future holds for me but the sun is shining again and the dark night is gone.
Onwards to the next milestone....
