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A bit of personal background to put this story in context. I was raised as a military brat, moving every three to four years, then joined the US Navy, again moving every two to three years for the next 20 years. I ended up in Colorado where I have been for the past 15 years, in the same house for the past 10 years. I was getting the itch to move.

I had a great job, lots of challenges, great boss, great co-workers, good pay and benefits, and I was learning a ton. But I had the itch to move. Not just move locally, but get new horizons. I started to send out resumes to different places. I heard back from quite a few, but the pay wasn’t even close to what I was currently getting. I finally heard back from a company in Arizona. Through the interview it sounded like a perfect fit, and place where I could get in almost at the ground floor as they were going through a revamp of the IT infrastructure and personnel. The old guard had been cleared out and everyone from the VP of IT to the help desk had all just been brought in in the past year and a half. The position I had applied for was a new position to help even out the workload. Sounds great! Even came with a 13% pay raise in a location with an equal cost of living.

So I put in my two week notice, put the house up for sale (it’s a hot market the realtor said), pack the house, and move to Arizona. I had enough savings for four months of rent and mortgage payments, shouldn’t be a problem as the house will sell at any minute!

I start the new job. Folks in IT seem friendly enough. Talking with them it seems there is a little micromanagement going on. I can deal with that, I’ve worked with some pretty bad folks during my military career. I get my admin account set up, and start poking around to get a feel for the network. I ask about documentation and am received with laughter. Now my account is limited during my 90 day probationary period, which is understandable. I get tasked with creating a couple of servers through VMWare. Not an issue, I log into the VMWare console, find the server templates, but then realize I can’t see any other servers, hosts, or LUN’s. Hmm… that might make it difficult to create a server from a template. I ask about it and its due to me being in a probationary period and they will need to get permission from the VP of IT for me to get access. What!!!

About a week into the job I came in a bit early to find there were some issues with Exchange. I start poking around and find where the issue is, its on one of the Exchange servers and only affecting the email database on that server. Great, just need to move it to a different server, get email back for the affected folks, then find the root cause for the issue. Before I have a chance to do anything the Exchange admin shows up, I tell him what I’ve found and ask if he wants me to do anything. I get a HANDS OFF response. Fine, I log out of everything and go back to what I was doing. That afternoon I get called into the bosses office and get chastised for finding the issue. What?!?! Turns out each person is responsible for what they are assigned to and are not to touch the others items, even if something is down.

So I struggled through giving the morning verbal brief of what I was going to do that day, and the afternoon written report of what I had done. Fighting through the limited access I had while trying to do what was asked. I was called into the bosses office at least once a week for issues with my performance, to include to much time on the internet. Turns out it was me researching an issue with IIS and not surfing pron, but the assumption that I was doing nothing was a little ego busting.

So after a month, with the house still on the market in Colorado, my old job still listed, the wife not happy in the new location, and me not happy with the new job I sucked up my pride and called my old boss seeing if he’d take me back. Turns out he’d love to have me back at my old pay.

So I quit the new job, pack my stuff again, head back to Colorado, and unpack once again. I think my wanderlust has been satisfied for a long, long time.

The grass isn’t always greener on the other side of the fence. It was an expensive learning process, but things have worked out. I still have a house and a job in Colorado, my wife hasn’t left me (yet, she’s still unpacking and cursing me out hourly), and I still have some of my sanity left.

There are times when you have to suck up your ego and admit that you’ve made a mistake. It’s hard to say I screwed up and go back to a previous employer and admit your mistake to them hoping they’ll take you back, but that bridge can be important. You never know when you’ll need to go back over that bridge, so not burning them when leaving is always a good idea. :slight_smile:

TL:DR - Interstate move for “better” job didn’t work, tail between my legs back to old job

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It’s great that your old job was still available for you. Good story, good learning experience, good ending, good on you for owning up to your not-so-hot decision!

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It happens; and you were really lucky that you realised the mistake early. You were even luckier that you could backtrack, not a lot of people get that chance.

But sometimes it is useful to look around and see what else is going on.

“A rolling stone may gather no moss, but it acquires a certain polish!”

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Did they hire you based on your phone interview or did you do an in-house interview as well? I can see where it would have been hard to gauge the new place based solely on an over-the-phone interview.

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At least there will be no “what if’s” in my mind now. :slight_smile:

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I did both. I didn’t get the feeling that there would be any tension or issues during any of the interviews. During the in house interview I sat and BS’d with the boss for quite a while and we got on pretty good. So I didn’t get any inkling that there would be an issue.

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It’s good to hear there is a happy ending. Even though it ended up costing you, sometimes you’ll never know unless you do it. It’s hard not to do something when the thought is there that you could live with that decision of “what if…?”

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Obviously you made quite an impression on your previous employer, so glad that it worked out that they were happy to take you back. I’ve done the old boomerang before, but it’s a good lesson to be learned by all of us at some point in our career.

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That place in Arizona sounds horrible.

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My dad used to say: Grass isn’t greener on the other side. The brown spots are just in other places.

Sad to hear of this expirience for you this way, but good you got it sorted in the end.

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I’m glad to hear that you were able to go back. That seems quite dumb that your being criticized for helping to solve the problem by being proactive. That’s why we do cross training with the IT team here so there’s always a backup.

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It’s good to hear you got your situation straightened out relatively quickly and your old job was still there waiting for you. Going back to the old job, they were so quick to hire you back because essentially you knew the job and the company knew that with little more than a touch-up it’s like going back into an old pair of shoes.

Not related to IT but related to the subject matter of old jobs and new jobs, it was right around 7 years ago I moved with my parents and left my job to pursue one closer to the new home. It didn’t work out and through a long list of crap, it took me two years to get that old job back. Sometimes it’s better just to stick with what you know, and that is definitely what you learned here.

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Been there done that. Years ago I left a good job for something “better”. After 6 weeks and realizing it was not what I was promised, I called old boss and asked about coming back. He was very happy to have me back, and I spent the next 9 years there.

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Wow. Thanks for the story, it’s the kind of experience that everyone needs shared.

When I aw your title, I remembered the title of another book “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence . . .Because it’s usually over the septic tank”.

Glad things worked out for you.

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Glad to hear it all worked out. I don’t know the distance between job1 and job2, but could you not commute the first month, while being in your *“*trial” period?

Also this is very true.

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It would have been a commute of about 850 miles. A little far to drive every day. :slight_smile:

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Would you be comfortable telling us which company to avoid like the plague when looking for a job, or did you sign an NDA?

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I too had the move itch about four years after I left the Air Force. Once I realized what it was I was able to deal with it and have never had it again. I can only think of one thing that would get me to leave Colorado - family. You were lucky you could get your old job back and I’m trying to figure out how your house didn’t sell. The average time on market in Denver is somewhere less than two weeks.

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No NDA, but again, in the interest of not burning bridges I’m not putting it out on a public forum. I’ll PM you the name.

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I’m out east of Colorado Springs and even though the market in Denver and the Springs is hot, it doesn’t carry out to the plains apparently. But in my case I guess that’s a good thing!

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