Ruminations on the transfer
Jumping from one job to the next should be relatively simple when you've secured the new job and have a relocation package in hand, right? That's what I thought, too. It would seem that my current employer, however, insists on bending the rules since although I'm technically changing companies, I'm staying within the corporation (I'm transferring from Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company to Lockheed Martin Technical Operations).
Let's examine why it's exciting for me to get this job: better money (due to reduced cost of living, but I'll take what I can get), new challenges, a promotion, working with computers that don't rival me in age, living within driving distance of my family (Illinois), living within driving distance of my in-laws (Montana), and leaving my least favorite responsibility (every job has one) behind for some other poor schmuck to get stuck with.
It's that last one that my boss won't allow. See, internal transfers have to be agreed upon by both the hiring and the releasing manager, and my current boss insists that I continue to support a terrible piece of software called MOST. This thing is C++ written by a C programmer. It relies heavily on MFC (Microsoft Foundation classes) which I neither claim nor want to know, and to top it all off, nobody seems to care about this damned program at all.
I tried to see this from my boss's perspective. I'm the only one in my group that programs for Windows, and I'm the only one that really knows C++. I offered to support it for six months at ten hours per week. Since I'm not leaving until the beginning of March, this gives my boss eight months to find a replacement or farm some hours from an employee in another group. More than fair. Generous even, I think.
Of course it's not enough. I was told (in less blunt terms) that if I don't continue to support this horrible bloated program that my transfer would be halted. Halting my transfer fucks up a mortgage application and my wife's desire to work in anthropology (you know, what she went to college for four years to study). The way I understand it, when you leave a job, you leave the fucking job. No "support this for us until we don't need it anymore." No "we're asking you a favor." I'm a lost asset, and I should be treated as such. I have no desire to work the 50 hour weeks that this will require, and I'm tempted to pull the plug on it as soon as I get to Colorado.
/rant