(for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia Rambles)
Good morning clerics and healers, welcome to Day 120 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.
120 days since I was first made redundant. Four months worth of thinking, reflection, and trying to figure out where to do next. In terms of actual posts, this is the 92nd Redundancy Review since this all kicked off, so only off by a factor of about thirty days due to holidays, breaks, or just not feeling the flow.
In those four months I have fought the government for what is rightfully mine, waded through job boards in the hope of finding something new, expanded my horizons beyond QA to see what I might be good at, and have now found myself back in the life of a SaaS QA tester within the greater technology industry… for better or worse.
Part of what drove me to start writing a career retrospective at the start of this week is the fact I am growing incredibly weary with the tech industry as a whole. The start up culture, the grindset mindset, the need to build & scale fast with less… all of it has started to wear me down.
If we include my time at Codemasters, I am coming up on having worked for half a decade in the technology industry as a QA, with some production on the side. This comes back to something I said I need to keep in mind off the back of my redundancy, that it was a traumatic event, and it is okay to let it change me.
And one of those things that might need to change is my career as a whole.
I have already started to explore other options in addition to balancing my contract work… on top of balancing maintaining a good posting schedule… on top of trying to maintain an amount of social life and relaxation time…
Being real, things feel hard for me right now. Over the last couple of days I have found myself crying at my desk more often, with even the most routine of work tasks overwhelming me. In between uploads, downloads, or waiting for processes to finish, I take moments to let out little sobs, which shows to me that it is not the challenges of the work getting to me, it is just the nature of the work itself.
And the mental separation I try to impose on myself that this is a holdover contract role, that it will not be forever is slowly starting to break down as I realise I have fallen out of love with the greater industry as a whole, and to ensure longevity in my future; I need to make a change to one of the biggest parts of my life.
Saying goodbye to an industry that has honed me, hardened me, and shaped me into the person I am today.
This is not to say I am going to move away from technology as a whole, because I am perfectly willing to do a job that mostly revolves around a computer, and there is no denying I have made a good career in QA with how long I have survived in such a competitive industry, especially in the recent years of a turbulent job market.
It is just a matter of deciding where to go, with my current avenues for exploration being in insurance, civil service, and I have also signed up for a charity jobs board – both for QA and writing roles.
There is a part of me that thinks I am “limiting my potential” by choosing to walk away from tech, that if I committed the energy I am using to look elsewhere to doubling my effort into the tech industry, I could stand to make a lot of money by pursuing even more elite roles within the startup space.
But the redundancy has changed me. I am distrustful of investor groups, the primary way such companies would be funded. The need to keep scaling up and making things even bigger rather than focusing on steady outcomes is incompatible with my current life philosophy.
I need to move away from what has been a significant part of my life and enabled my growth into who I am today, to heal from the pain that growth has been accompanied by, and start a new chapter of my life.
Ultimately, I am still quite young, having not even hit my thirties yet. In a way my professional life has only just begun, with the role I was made redundant from being only my second job ever.
There is so much I can do, I just need to find myself to find out what I want to do.
In the meantime, my contract can hold me over, and whilst I do not want to maintain the grindset mindset, I am also not someone who can half-arse a job. My safety net is actually stronger than it was before my redundancy too, so I am in an extremely lucky position to not be pressed against the wall.
Ideally I do not want to eat into the safety net and I can transition from my contract into a new role, but I am prepared for any eventuality.
No matter what, I will continue to write. This story still has several chapters to write, and the stories inside my head still need to be told.
Time to get into the review, and I think it is time to introduce a somewhat new topic to the Redundancy Review: hot sauce.
For those who have been around for the somewhat regular food reviews, you will know I am a little bit of a spicehead, and this definitely extends into my home life as I have a very decent collection of hot sauces within my fridge. Today’s hot sauce is made from one of the spiciest peppers in the world: Bhut Jolokia, more commonly known as the Ghost Pepper.
This specific sauce is from a small UK brand called Mahi, and this was one of the three hot sauces in their “Discovery Pack”, a bundle offer for those wanting to explore more options in hot sauce outside of the main brands in the UK.
With it being such a spice forward sauce, there is actually a pleasing acidic bite that announces itself first before the heat ramps up, though it is actually variable how much heat will be delivered with each taste.
Sometimes it will be a pleasant warmth that accompanies the acidity.
And sometimes it will be a deliverance of heat worthy of the nickname my partner gave to this sauce after one accidentally trying it: “Death Sauce”.
£7.50 plus shipping was the price for the pack of three sauces, and it came in a very attractive box which included a catalogue of Mahi’s other products, most of which I will definitely want to try in future because of how nice everything included in the box was.
This does however include a Trinidad Scorpion sauce, which is supposedly even hotter than the Ghost Pepper…
…oh well, as I often yell before doing anything stupid, DEATH OR GLORY!
That should do it for today. Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are I hope you are able to relax and that your path ahead in life is clear, if not, then there is nothing to fear. You are in good company with that, and as we all know, not all who wander are lost.
For more information on Mahi’s products, visit their website here: https://saucymahi.co/
Rosalia Rambles 
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