>>>I wasn't rushing you. I sent the PM last night (or early this AM?). Sometimes it's easy to miss PMs, esp if they all have the same heading.
>>
>>Thanks, I did... I left one other PM (from DN) unanswered, but the topic was finished anyway...
>
>And don't mind me, I wasn't expecting an answer - actually you'd better push my cynical point of view into the bottom of the lowest drawer and pull it out only when you feel extremely optimistic and need some counterbalance :).
>
>Though, regarding Tracy's remark about people sometimes staying just a couple of months on a job (I've seen two days as the shortest - the guy just stopped coming, a real ghost), I have some kind of a law... keep a list of employees which were there when you got employed. Compare periodically with the current list. If those two overlap by less than 50%, count those who came after you. If they make more than 50% of the list, brush up your resume. Time to go.

I worked (for quite a while) for a company where people came and went constantly. One of the young guys started a "Wall of Shame" on the wall of his cubicle, consisting of the business cards of the departed. Pat marked each card with Q (for quit) or F (for fired). A few were marked with question marks indicating departures of unknown origin. They just weren't there any more. Looking back on it, one of the funniest things was that Pat's Wall of Shame was unintentionally featured in our promotional brochure. It was a glossy, expensive thing we gave to prospective clients and the WOS was right there in one of the photos. The detail wasn't such that you could tell what it was but those of us on the inside sure knew.

Pat was smart. He kept an "on deck circle" of business cards in his desk drawer, to the extent of arranging with the receptionist to give him a card from every new employee's box. A shrewd hedge -- more than one person left before even receiving their business cards.

My own career is kind of upside down. I was in that job for quite a while -- it wasn't so bad, I was out in the field most of the time in a high profile role at client sites -- then another for a while, and now in my dotage I am changing jobs like some people change underwear. Go figure. My theory is it's my subconsciousness's way of hinting that I want an entirely different line of work.

But then who will write the software?