Actually I think its more like 10 days, but you get the picture.
We're looking to buy our first house, so last monday we saw one we liked, and on Tuesday we made an offer on it and we were accepted. On Wednesday we saw a morgage advisor, and on Thursday we'd pretty much decided what kind of morgage to go for and received stuff from the solicitors.
Then on Friday morning, out of the blue I was made redundant and was back at home by 9am.
I don't know how much you guys know about the UK housing market especially in the South East, but for first time buyers it takes two full-time salaries AND a sizable deposit to get on the property ladder. Bang - just like that, everything seemed to have been shot to pieces.
We spoke to our morgage advisor again on the same day, and he was surprisingly upbeat, saying that if i could line up a job by 1st March, when my month's pay in lieu of notice runs out we could still get the morgage arranged, because it would still be continuous employment. The problem was I only had one week (this week) to get said job as certain house arrangements needed to be confirmed within the fornight, and ideally it needed to be in IT.
So over the weekend I got on the recruitment sites, bought the local paper, contacted some local media and advertising agencies, and as a long shot, on Monday applied for an ASP.NET position!
The next morning they interviewed me, and the same afternoon they offered me the job! The miracle was, they weren't fussed that I hadn't ever touched .NET because the rest of my skills were valuable enough, and even though I've had my ass bust back down to junior I'm being offered slightly more money than I was on last week.
So what does this mean? Well I have to learn ASP.NET, not only that I have to use VB with it...yuk. Also they don't use PHP. Not at all. So I guess that means that I won't be around here much from now on, but I'll keep checking in now and again so that I don't get completely consumed by the Dark Side of the Force. I'm trying to think of it as a Gap Year, or maybe like going undercover! Plus its a chance to broaden my skillset a bit.
Anyway I start on Monday barring any more nasty surprises so I've spent some of my severence pay on ASP.NET books to read until then....ugh I feel so dirty!!!
By the way, I read Ole's post today - great news, good luck to you too!
A lot can happen in a week!
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Congrats skittlewidth. I think it is great that you are learning .NET. I am slowly teaching myself as well. Although, if I could, I'd try to sway them to C# given the similarity in syntax and style to C/PHP etc. But either way, as long as you are again gainfully employed and closer to buying your house, more power to you.