Selling out -- Round II

For my first "real" job, I was hired out of college before I'd finished my degree. I left to move to The Big City (Chicago) and to make triple what I'd been earning with two half-time computer programming jobs in Iowa. It was rough, as move-to-the-big-city-from-Hicksville-and-get-a-real-job first jobs often are, but the company I worked for was good, I really liked the people I worked with, and I was both challenged to come up with innovative solutions and given the leeway (if not the budget) to implement whatever solution I deemed best. However, the company was a non-profit, and I got discouraged whenever I talked with any of my old college friends who had likewise gotten real jobs and were making significantly more than I was. So, after a couple of years I jumped ship, selling out for a 20% raise and a change of scenery (to Philadelphia). The people at my new job were nice enough, but I was now a junior developer, and had to follow corporate standards and have a lot of my projects designed by some one else. I missed my old job, but there was no way to go back.

Fast forward to today. I'm working for a company I like, with people I really get along with, and I have the freedom to implement whatever solutions I like using whatever technologies I like. It's taken me a good four years of consulting and networking to get where I'm at, and I'm finally happy about my job for the first time in a long time. So I probably should have expected the phone call.

As it turns out, somebody (a recruiter) I'd worked with when I was consulting had kept a copy of my resume. He'd never been able to place me because I was only looking for jobs in Lincoln, and there weren't many companies in Lincoln that used Java. Now, it seems, one of the few that did was looking for new senior-level staff. So, under the misapprehension that "it never hurts to talk", I sent an updated copy of my resume to the recruiter. "Just to see what they had to say". Well, what they said was basically "20+% pay raise, team technical lead, possible promotion to junior architecture position within a year". So, I did what anyone who had been cast aside by his corporate overlord at some point in his career would do. I jumped. Sold out. Turned my back on the folks who had given me the freedom to exercise my technical judgement and the support to make me successful at it, and headed on down the line.

[Actually, I'm still on good terms with them, and agreed before I left to make myself available to provide whatever knowledge transfer I could once they hired my replacement, but still...]

So now, here I am, with my big paycheck and my serious-sounding title (not quite "Lord of the Realm, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of the Enterprise Service Bus", but better than "Spec Programmer II") and I'm wondering how I'm going to fit in around here. Everybody's very nice, and I've been able to contribute and I have projects and everything, but I still don't feel like I did the right thing. I mean, I did (it wasn't just for the money, there were significant career-direction factors that played a part), it just doesn't feel that way yet.