in reply to Should I stay with this company or leave?

I see you asking two questions:

  1. Is Perl a sane pursuit for my career?
  2. Should I stay with my company?

I can't answer your first question. I use Perl in my day job for convenient quick or large hacks, but as my boss doesn't learn Perl (he tried twice so far, and he knows enough other languages), our "main" programs are written in Python. The Python programs are the programs I write not only for my personal amusement but for the use by others.

Whether you really want to stay with a company that treats its employees the way you described is a completely different thing. Consider how most of the "valuable" senior programmers will behave - whether they will leave, or stay "until something better comes up", or stay and take a passive-aggressive stance, you'll have to live with the hostile work environment there. If all former Perl programmers will convert to Java programmers and everybody will live in lotus-eating happyness, that might be an option for you as well. My guess is that all Perl programmes will just be held within the company just until they've made themselves obsolete though, so I'd start looking.

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Re^2: Should I stay with this company or leave?
by Anonymous Monk on Nov 20, 2005 at 22:35 UTC

    Wow, even a widely respected monk like you only use Perl for personal enjoyment.

    Don't get me wrong though, the company is actually good, and the pay is decent, but as you can see it is also straight. The company has its consideration though, it is unfair to let the senior Perl guys join the Java team as senior though. I mean it is reality.

      Anything I've ever done in Perl, Python, or Ruby was on the side until I landed one job that was in Python. Eventually the switch was made to .NET ... but I still use those other languages for various tools and utilities, and for personal amusement. Hate to say it, but unless you've got a better place to go, you can't always fight the system.