> did you feel like your work never helped the company or only helped marginally?
The product was cancelled before it shipped. (Basically, the market window ended and the product was my first career example of architecture astronauts and the consequences.)
But, to make it interesting: The HR guy who hired me bumped up my rank to get me a pay increase. They didn't tell me that I was the most experienced engineer on the team, nor did I have the leverage to push back on some serious architectural mistakes.
1 year in, I realized the project was an exercise of "architecture astronauts," although I didn't know the word at the time.
> Or was it a role you could purely coast in
I could have done that. I consider that generally unethical. I did coast a few days before I gave notice; I gave notice the day before a scheduled vacation, and then came in one day after the vacation to meet with HR.
To make a long story short: I decided to quit a few days before the Employee Stock Purchase Plan grant date, and I was afraid if I gave notice, I'd loose the stock. To put things in context, my manager wanted to walk me out the door as soon as I gave notice, and I had to tell him that would make him look bad.
I just wanted to add to my comment about coasting, which I generally consider unethical.
When my project at VMware ended, I was assigned to a team that I really, really didn't like. I was advised to find a new project, which I did: The rewrite of the VSphere UI in Flex. At the time, it was a 1-person exploratory project. I could have been #2 in that project.
Well, we all knew where Flex went. At the time, I was eager to do work in HTML & CSS. I was planning quitting to start a startup in a few months, too.
I spent a few days trying to get a Flex development environment running, and decided that it just wasn't "worth it" to spend any time with Flex, or the VSphere UI rewrite. If it had been HTML & Javascript, I would have stayed, at least for a few months longer, or possibly even longer, because the guy who was starting the project was kinda cool.
Instead, when I decided it was time to leave VMware, I realized that I only had ~2 days before the employee stock purchase plan grant. This was quite lucrative, so I costed for 1-2 days, (also to give me a chance to change my mind,) and gave my notice.
The product was cancelled before it shipped. (Basically, the market window ended and the product was my first career example of architecture astronauts and the consequences.)
But, to make it interesting: The HR guy who hired me bumped up my rank to get me a pay increase. They didn't tell me that I was the most experienced engineer on the team, nor did I have the leverage to push back on some serious architectural mistakes.
1 year in, I realized the project was an exercise of "architecture astronauts," although I didn't know the word at the time.
> Or was it a role you could purely coast in
I could have done that. I consider that generally unethical. I did coast a few days before I gave notice; I gave notice the day before a scheduled vacation, and then came in one day after the vacation to meet with HR.
To make a long story short: I decided to quit a few days before the Employee Stock Purchase Plan grant date, and I was afraid if I gave notice, I'd loose the stock. To put things in context, my manager wanted to walk me out the door as soon as I gave notice, and I had to tell him that would make him look bad.