A Dream Deferred

Langston Hughes once posed the question in a poem, “What happens to a dream deferred?”

The search for a new job is never easy.  The hardest part of it is finding work you love to do in an industry you love working for.  Over the past four years I have learned that one thing I love to do is program, and more specifically, I love programming dynamic tools over programming static solutions.  You see, I’d rather give someone a tool they can use to get their own answers than to give them the answers.  When you give a person answers, later, if the specifications change, you have to give them new answers, but if you originally gave them a tool, then they can tweak the tool to the new specifications and get their own answers.

A couple of weeks ago I had a job interview.  It was literally, my dream job.  As best as I could understand it from the interview I had, they wanted tools integration between purchased applications that would allow them to pull customized reports to support job functions.  This is pretty much exactly what I have been doing for the last four years, and I loved doing it.  My only problem in my last position was that I didn’t like the industry: telecommunications.  But this new job, being as I said it was my dream job, was in the gaming industry.  A company developing an MMO was looking for someone to do tools integration, custom reporting and web design.  I nearly messed my pants.

So, I suppose you can imagine my disappointment when I learned that of the seven people who interviewed for the position, three were asked back for a second interview and I was not one of them.  Now I am faced with a couple of weeks of interviews for companies in industries at least as uninteresting to me as telecommunications, and all doing work I’m not particularly enthusiastic about doing.

What exactly does happen to a dream deferred?  I guess I’m about to find out…