Never open your mouth at work…

So about a month ago I told my managers I was considering leaving the group — not because I didn’t like the people or the type of work, only because I didn’t feel I was getting to program (true) and there was very little in the way of advancement possibilities (also true). Apparently that stirred things up. Both managers individually took responsibility for the former, and both agreed wholeheartedly with the latter — and not just for me. So since that time, the projects I’ve been assigned to have changed a wee bit.

I was assigned to do a bit of work on a feature that was in line with what I’ve previously done (which I can’t tell you about, because I don’t believe the features have been announced yet), while finishing up some work for Office’s new file format (which has been announced). (The latter I did bunches of design work on… and wrote about ten lines of code.) Well, program management hasn’t decided quite what they want to do yet — there’s finally a meeting today. But someone else — and I like the guy, don’t get me wrong — already wrote a bloody prototype of the feature!! I get to write code where?

So yesterday I received a visit (after starting the day off talking to the same guy about what my work priorities are at the moment), and he told me they were considering lending me out to another team. I would get two weeks to get up to speed on the codebase, and then the same amount of time their top person would have, were he doing the work.

The words used were “high profile,” and “high risk.” And, the most important to me, “code.” I said sure.

I then came home and warned Mandrina that if I did get assigned to it, I would probably end up stressed. She promised to carry a water gun and throw the kitten at me as necessary. Isn’t she sweet?