Drsql.link

I sit here in Dollywood, at the same table where I had my first interview with Redgate, just over 3 years ago. It was a chilly April day, and I had to interview some of the Dollywood Hosts for an article for Dollywood (I was a Dollywood Insider at the time, though that program has since ended).

About five months later, I started working as the editor or Simple Talk. For a blogger/technical editor like myself, this was a dream job.

Almost every day I worked there, I had to pinch myself to make sure it was real. While there were times I wished I was writing code, analyzing the organization; writing and learning about technology was amazing. I got to go to a few PostgreSQL conferences and learn about their community (communities…not sure, the whole PostgreSQL conference community is interesting).

As I wrote in my blog about recognizing your price to change jobs (or stay at the same one forever), I had no plans of ever leaving. Ever. I honestly had no plans to retire ever either.

The best laid plans of mice and editors means nothing.

On a sunny day in Orlando (where I was working a day between vacation days at a couple of theme parks,) I get the word that there was a reorg. Later that day, once I had gone back to vacationing, I got the word I didn’t work there anymore.

At this point I have more or less made my peace with it. Not being a part of it anymore is going to be tough at times. For example, I do still have to get over missing my first PASS Summit for non-medical reasons!

Are you mad?

Like I believe every person every laid off ever… I was, it felt like a gut punch to get the call that I was laid off. I don’t really know if their end of the bridge is intact, but mine basically is. I would highly five, fist bump, help out, and even hug almost everyone that works there if I see them at a conference (or at Disney World, but a conference is considerably more likely)! I would ask that if you see me crying, like the Burt Bacharach song one said, walk on by :).

To all my the people I worked with (and the HR person who probably has to monitor my blogs for a while to make sure I don’t say the wrong things), I still like Redgate. I was employed there for just over two and a half years, and I have worked with them longer than I can remember now. I will always cherish the friendships I have with quite a few people there.

In fact, I will probably be using their software again in a few days at my next company. I absolutely will write a love letter to SQL Prompt if so (formatting my code by hand is TEDIOUS). I would even be open to doing some writing for them again one day.

If nothing else, I will be linked to them for the foreseeable future as I still have 398 blogs on the Simple Talk site!

What’s next?

Writing goes back to a hobby/side gig/learning opportunity. I am posting this to my new blog at https://drsql.link and I may end up changing my whole https://drsql.org site to my WordPress site when that comes up for renewal.

I will make another post early next week outlining my next exiting career adventure.

That’s it for now, more to unpack later

I plan to write a good deal more about the process I went through, because the editor job, with all the editorials I had to write, started me down a path of writing about this sort of thing.

I am thinking probably something along the lines of the Layoff Stages of Grief, which has been a really wild thing to experience.