I enjoy my job. I work in a group in the RDBMS kernel. I'm very passionate about low systems-level C programming, so I think I'd be able to thrive in any enviro

I enjoy my job. I work in a group in the RDBMS kernel. I'm very passionate about low systems-level C programming, so I think I'd be able to thrive in any environment that'd let me do it. Development Environment: Everything is an "Eating our own dog food" type thing. Bug Database was built in-house and backed by an Oracle Database. Same story for the source control system (which, to my pleasant surprise, was a DVCS). Conferencing software and e-mail infrastructure is based on Oracle beehive On the logistics side, quite a bit of bureacracy; Functional Specs, then design specs by certain deadlines. Significant changes need to get approval from maybe two levels of management. I only have about one meeting every two weeks, so that's a plus. The stress level is extremely low as releases are very very far apart, so unless we're dealing with a high priority customer bug, there's not much urgency to anything.