I recently changed job. I was a developer at Gibe who are based in Bristol and I loved the team, I loved the job, the company perks are probably the best I've ever experienced and I know a few of you were surprised to hear that I had left the company. Sometimes you need to make hard decisions when it comes to your own career and mental health.
I joined Gibe looking for a new challenge and I got that. I knew there would be a steep learning curve joining the team and I was up for the opportunity to grow as a developer. Up until joining the team, I had mainly been an Umbraco specialist - building Umbraco websites, doing some custom work with APIs and some backoffice customisation but I'm a self taught .Net Dev. I have a degree in Software Engineering but that was mostly COBOL, C++, Java.
I wanted more experience of working on .Net projects where Umbraco was "just" the CMS.
While at Gibe I can honestly say that I was learning every single day from my fellow developers. The PR reviews were detailed and the projects I was working on were challenging. Ranging from big Umbraco 8 to 13 upgrades, making updates to ecommerce API integrations or building new websites for clients. No day was the same.
However, I was aware that my tasks were taking longer than estimated, I was stressing about this on a daily basis. I was trying to learn via courses in my own time to better my skills. I was given a mentor. I was stressing that things weren't sinking in. Everyone was really supportive but I'm old enough to know when things just aren't working out. The more I stressed about things, the harder I found it to learn or do things. I was burning out.
I'd stopped organising the Umbraco Meetups, I'd taken a step back from helping with the Edinburgh .Net Meetups, I wasn't sleeping properly and I got in a bit of a spiral.
I had a few chats with the team and it was agreed maybe the job wasn't for me. It was time to take some time to myself. Gibe were amazing, they supported me during this period and I'd like to thank the entire team for being top notch people.
I left with many tears and a heavy heart and the feeling that I'd failed as a developer. I'd let the team down. I'd let myself down. However, I knew I couldn't continue the way I was going.
I took 4 weeks off. I did some DIY, some gardening, a small amount of coding but mostly just got my head in a better space.
I considered a career change. I looked at a few options but most required a substantial salary drop and / or many years of training.
After a few weeks out, I realised that I enjoy coding and being a developer, I just needed to find a role that maybe suited my skills better. I had a few chats with different companies, I considered getting back in to an office based job in Edinburgh and I had a number of leads. After a couple of good chats, I got a job offer at Initials CX.
I've been there 2 weeks and it's a great team. I'm currently working on a brand new project with a relatively new team. 3 of us have joined the team within the past 3 months and it's an exciting time to be part of things.
I miss the Gibe team but I couldn't have continued feeling the way I did. I never want to feel like a burden on a team or a company and I encourage anyone who is struggling in their job to have open and honest conversations with there managers / bosses. I did and from early on, Gibe supported me amazingly, we tried a lot of things but in the end, it wasn't meant to be.
I will forever be grateful to the Gibe team and would recommend them to anyone.
If you are struggling, don't bottle it up. Speak to your team lead or manager as soon as you can. The sooner you speak up, the quicker things can be put in place to help you.