In less than a week’s time, I’ll complete one year with my current employer, SUSE. Little over a week back, I completed a year since leaving my previous employer, Red Hat. I left Red Hat once in November 2014 and rejoined in October 2015, and had been there ever since, up until I left in March 2024. And, honestly, I never thought I would leave Red Hat ever again.
Am I happy? Was Red Hat bad? Is SUSE better? Would I rejoin Red Hat if an opportunity came up?
In a few aspects, I am happier than I was at Red Hat. As they say, “you can’t have it all”. It’s absolutely true. Red Hat was not a bad place by any means, it was an amazing workplace. SUSE is a lot similar to Red Hat. Culturally, they both seem to be very similar companies!
What I have noticed in myself is that I don’t pressurize myself about being a Red Hatter any more. It’s obvious because I no longer work there. At Red Hat, I used to be extremely afraid/conscious of asking questions out of the fear of being judged as “too dumb to be employed there”. This was, I think, because it was my dream company as a teenager, and because I managed to get there early in my career. Too early by my own expectations or even hopes! Honestly, I had thought of applying for some role, any role, at Red Hat after I turned 27 or 28. Instead, I first joined Red Hat when I was just 23! And it was too soon for me, I think. I was too immature.
At SUSE, I’m always aware of working with equally smart people that I used to work with at Red Hat. But I ask questions more freely than I ever did. I ask them on team channels instead of pinging folks one-to-one on a DM/PM (although this was true even when I was at Red Hat after the first couple of years). I take more risks than I used to at Red Hat. I am saying “yes” to more things than I did earlier. Even when I don’t know something, I say yes and get into the process of figuring things out. At Red Hat, I used to be very hesitant at saying yes and would prefer knowing at least a bit about something before picking up a related task. More often than not, someone else would have picked it up as a result.
In retrospect, I was in a constant awe of the smart(est) engineers that worked at Red Hat. Plus, the emotional attachment of being at my dream place made it more difficult for me to get bold. This emotional attachment added a lot of baggage that I was unaware of or can put into words. It was the kind of constant brake pedal being applied at the same time of applying accelerator. And it was a me problem, not a Red Hat problem. If I were to get an opportunity to rejoin Red Hat, I probably would. But first I would like to learn how things are done at other organizations and see if something comes up organically instead of chasing a role there.
For the time being, I want to explore, not settle down. Hope the market scenario lets me do so. :)