Stick it to the man! Join a union! Buy union! Support union workers! Don't cross picket lines! Repeal Right to Work laws!

Google reminded me that 5 years ago this week, I was in Williamsburg - wee bit bittersweet since I should have been heading down there in a few weeks, but fuuuuuuuck the Delta variant.

Gif of the water lapping up on the bank of the York River
York River

And I realized looking at the photos, that was the real before times. Mango Mussolini wasn't in office, coronaviruses were something that only came up among scientists, and this was my last hurrah before rejoining society after grandma & grad school.

And this also means I'm coming up on 5 years back in the working world - it's been a mixed bag, and quite the example of how utterly different things can be in different departments in the same company. Support - "a few months" of being a contractor that turned into 18 months, 18 months as an FTE, perpetual understaffing, cranky clients, cage matches to get PTO on the calendar, too many on call weekends, ~500 hours of uncompensated OT in 3 years, and shocker - burnout. And from what I hear, nothing has changed since I transferred out.

Engineering? Holy shit. Better pay, better hours, I can take PTO whenever I want/need to, properly staffed, nice distance from clients, and no on call weekends. It's like night and day. Sure, work makes me crazy some days, but QC is far and away better than support. I still have lottery tickets, but all in all, not too bad.

And in February, I'll have 4 years as an FTE and my PTO accrual will go up! And I'm already having problems using all my PTO so I don't lose any, so with *more* PTO stacking up - well, that's going to be a weird problem to have. And hopefully next year I can go to Williamsburg and baseball games instead of this staycation bullshit.

I hope you have today off and it's enjoyable.