My own tale goes a little something like this;

I left Sony in early 2008 for a job in Glasgow that would bring me back to my home town and closer to my family. However, it became apparent right away that I'd made a bad decision. The job was just a really bad fit for me, but I tried my hardest over the year that followed.

The situation really got me down and earlier this year I was diagnosed with depression by my doctor. A lot of other stuff happened at the same time, and after taking the advice of my doctor and my lawyer I decided to resign from the job in order to break free, and take on some freelance work I'd been offered.

So I did the freelance stuff during July, and it was quite a good size web project that did not have a lot of budget considering the work involved. This meant I had to get the work done quickly and couldn't afford to mess up the requirements, which were designing and building e-learning application for an Independant Financial Advisor.

At first I thought I'd bitten off more than I could chew, as I hadn't done a lot of code for a couple of years at this point and my confidence was kind of low. But as the days wore by I really started enjoying doing that kind of work again, and even working as a freelancer was cool. I could only do maybe 3.5 days a week due to family commitments, but it was enough to get the project done in just over a month.

I got paid, the bills got paid, but by late July I knew I needed to find another job. I had an interview with an agency and the guys there thought they could find me something, and then an independant guy who ran his own agency called and asked if I'd be interested in applying for a job with a company called Curious Group.

Now, when I was down in Liverpool and looking to move back to Scotland I'd looked at Curious Group and been really impressed, but from their jobs page it did not look like my skills were what they wanted. With that in mind I said I'd be interested in interviewing but I knew they were looking for a hardcore programmer and I wasn't strong enough. The recruitment guy said he would make that clear to them and a day or so later I had a phone interview with one of the senior tech guys.

The phone interview went well, and I was completely honest about my lack of Object Oriented Programming experience. That did seem to be a stumbling block, though, so I didn't expect to hear anything else. However, a couple of days later I was offered a trial day at Curious Group.

I was nervous and excited, and totally unprepared because it was just a day after I got back from attending The Great British Beer Festival in London. What can I say, my cousin had paid for my flight down so I wasn't going to cancel on him!

The trial day was tough - I had an hour long written test that I didn't think I did too well on, and then I had to take a look at the codebase and attempt to refactor a certain section of it. I was royally out of my depth - none of the studying I'd done could really have prepared me for this kind of thing. By the end of the day I had a stonking migraine and I left the building thinking "I'll never hear from those guys again!"

The following weekend as I prepared to go out and visit family I received a phone call from the agent who had got me the interview. He asked how I thought it had gone and what I made of the place. I said I thought it looked like a great place to work and the people were all really nice. I also said I thought I could learn a lot from the technical director and the other technical guys, but it was clear to me that I was well short of the skills required and I thanked him for the opportunity to go in there, even if it didn't amount to anything.

Which is when he told me they had offered me the job and asked if I could start on Monday morning.

I was shocked. A company that I'd wanted to work for for a long time was offering me a job when I thought I'd sucked at my trial day. Awesome!

So I started at Curious Group in mid-August. The first couple of weeks were tough - studying, learning the codebase, and getting used to being back at work 5 days a week.

I was just getting into the swing of things again when I received a phonecall on a Saturday night at 8:30pm. I was asked to attend an emergency company meeting the following afternoon in Glasgow. My experience from the games industry told me that this not good - an off site meeting and at a weekend. This means that bad things have developed very quickly and they don't want you in the building!

The next day, surrounded by almost all of the folk from my department, the news was confirmed. Curious Group was going under financially and we were unlikely to get paid for September because the company would be in liquidation and as individual employees we were very far down the food chain. My heart sank - I finally get back to a job I love doing and it lasts three weeks!

This was when our director of our department (not a company director of Curious Group) revealed to us that he had seen this coming for some time and had set up a new company. If we committed to the new company he would guarantee our salaries for September and the hope was that the new agency could stand on its own, being free of the financial collapse of Curious Group. But we had to quit in order to be free to join the new venture.

I was kind of stunned at this point. I was being asked to resign from a company I'd long wanted to work for to make a leap of faith. I'm an athiest - I'm not too big on faith! However, there appeared to be enough hard evidence and sensible people making that same choice to convince me that it was worth taking the plunge, as opposed to scurrying back to the job market.

That was nearly three months ago. Our new agency, Bourne, is going from strength to strength, my Object Oriented Programming skills are getting better every day, and I'm working for a company I believe in and doing a job I'm really enjoying for the first time in years.

For me, it's the light at the end of the tunnel. That's my story. Told you it'd be long-winded.