Never has a cliche been more true. PETCO outsourced their enitre IT department earlier this year but offered me a retained position as a “Store Software Architect”. Now mind you I’ve never been a software guy, I’ve been pretty much in networking since I started in IT in 1998 or so (but have dabbled in SQL Server a bit). Unfortunately I was put into a situation where I was ineligible for a severance package because they offered me a job (even though it was almost 100% different than my previous position) so I accepted it.

Fast forward a few months and it turns out that one of the network engineers who was brought over from India was unable to renew his work visa. The outsourcer needed to fill the spot and by that time had realized how much more complex the environment was than they had been led to believe. The result: they offered me a network engineer job which was 90% the same as my previous job with the main difference being that I was stuck building & shipping store devices again (which I had passed along a few years back to other people). Same day to day duties, same desk; the only real changes at first were a new manager & team lead and a different logo on my paycheck (which was a bit bigger also).

Down the road the politics have gotten more complicated because my company is responsible for infrastructure while a different outsourcer is responsible for software applications and a third outsourcer kept the Tier 1 help desk (which they had been given about three years prior). That all makes for a fine mess when trying to resolve complex issues and especially reporting on performance via the ticketing system. Fortunately my new employer is strongly behind providing training courses and they reimburse for certification expenses so this should really help strengthen my skill sets and make my resume more impressive in the future when I move to a different client account or even employer some day.