I was working on a project that was a government contract. A new company won the re-compete of the contract. So I inquired with the new company about joining them. I have a lot of years experience on this project. The new company said I cost too much.At this point I considered staying on with my own company. They had another huge project which seemed to fit my skill set. I got a letter from Human Resources confirming my switch to the next project. Then I got a message from that project stating that I needed to schedule an interview. That seemed odd. I called them up and told them that Human Resources was already reassigning me to their project. At that point I found out that I did not have a position on that project. They were only considering me.
Well I went to the interview. I showed them I knew my stuff. My only stipulation about joining their project was that I was not planning to work overtime. This project had a lot of problems. The default means of confronting those problems was to have everyone work crazy hours. I wanted to be sure from the onset that I was not going to engage in that madness.
An old coworker of mine had joined the new company that won the contract for my old project. He told me that he could really use my help on the project. I informed him that they balked at my salary requests. My old friend said he would talk to the top manager on the project. He said he would try to convince him of my value.
Eventually I met the top manager in the new company. He said he could not pay me my desired salary. However we made some concessions and I decided to join the project. My old buddy was very happy. I was also pleased since I really liked this project, and it would not require any overtime to speak of.
I got the real confirmation when I heard the customer was phasing out the big project I was thinking about joining at my previous company. Being the new guy, I would have been the first to go probably. There was no way I could have guessed this would happen. Well maybe I knew something was up when every developer was working crazy overtime. Sometimes you just get lucky with your employment choices. I know I sure did.
