This morning I had an appointment with a neurosurgeon to discuss my back. As I expected I have a large herniated disc (L5-S1). He said sine the cortisone shot and physical therapy worked so well last time that was his first recommended treatment option. If it doesn’t help with the main and loss of strength/feeling/reflexes in my leg then he recommended doing microdiscectomy surgery.

After my appointment I met with Matt Ryan for lunch. Matt is the older brother of one of my best friends in high school. He wanted to chat with me about working at Jive. It sounded like a good opportunity but there were two things I don’t think I would like. 1. The expectation to work about 50 hours per week. 2. Coding in Java.

After lunch I came home and worked for a while, then I went in to Perfect Pitch and chatted with them for over an hour. I think I would like that company more. But they are also a start-up and working very lean right now. There is also an expectation of regularly working overtime. That was my biggest concern there. Other than that is sounded great – good salaries, fun work (python), good people. They even asked if I’d be willing to live overseas in the Philippines for a couple months to train developers there. That sounded really exciting actually.

After meeting with them I came home and did some more work, then I went to a Utah Python users group meeting. I chatted with a couple of people who work for Needle who I have also been keeping an eye on.

Something very odd happened today though. I realized that a lot of companies expect overtime. I’m actually fortunate that Neutron hasn’t every brought it up until now. I felt I was being picked on, but it seems to be a standard out there that so many developers do.

I’m not saying I agree with it or like the idea of it. I just started to wonder if I’m overreacting because I really do have one of the best jobs there is. Even the CEO said, “Neutron is a powerhouse company. We can’t compete with them as far as perks and benefits.”

Perhaps I’m being spoiled and high maintenance? Have I been overreacting to Joel? It’s all so confusing right now.