WHAT A YEAR!
First few months of 2009 were pretty ho-hum. Then I unexpectedly lost my fulltime contracting role at the end of May. A week later, I had work on Times Square's biggest, coolest electronic billboard. My consulting work has BOOMED since! Overwhelmingly so! I've gone from nearly a fulltime coder to 25% management 25% sales 25% architect and 25% coder. It's good to grow ... but there are almost always unavoidable growing pains! Great learning experiences however. I miss the days of 100% geeking out a bit, but everyone's gotta move on and experience new things!
Had some family drama. Wish it hadn't happened. Wish I could ignore it. Unfortunately those things simply aren't true. Life happens. Life goes on.
December came in like a lamb and is going out like a lion! Just this week, I considered an offer from Blackbaud Inc. to join their team as a .NET Solution Architect. While I _love_ Blackbaud and the work they do, unfortunately their start date needs were a bit incompatible with my current set of consulting obligations. Today, however, I accepted an offer from Apprenda, Inc., a local .NET startup, creators of SaaSGrid, to come on-board as their Senior Client Services Engineer. VP Matt Ammerman and I will be building out the Client Services unit, working to ensure the best possible customer experience for our clients! The role will be ~50% code, with the rest of the time spent traveling on-site, including internationally, to help clients get off the ground or resolve persistent issues, doing project scope and planning, as well as architecture, type work.
Finally, best of all, I am, after years of hiding in my cave and burying myself in work, in a relationship with a pretty awesome woman. Thanks for being the frosting on the cake of my 2009! Onward to bigger and better!
Showing posts with label career. Show all posts
Showing posts with label career. Show all posts
Thursday, December 31
Tuesday, October 28
Making a career move
Monday (yesterday) morning I gave notice to my current employer, so I can officially announce: I've accepted a role as Senior Consultant with Infusion Development.
Infusion is a boutique Microsoft technologies consulting firm, with offices in Manhattan, Toronto, Boston, London, Dubai; I think there's an office in LA as well, and there's a virtual office here in Albany, NY. Infusion works pretty closely with Microsoft, doing a lot of Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS) work. They also employ a surprising number of MVPs, given their relatively small size, and have some sort of VAR or OEM relationship with Microsoft and the Surface. Once upon a time they derived a lot of revenue from the financial services sector, but the past year or two have spent time refocusing business development efforts on the resort industry in Dubai. Yes, THAT Dubai. Hey, who knows, maybe someday ...
For the first six months, at least, I'll be doing some SharePoint work here in Albany for the NYS Department of Correctional Services. I first used SharePoint and VSTO back in 2006 at Xerox; newer versions are out, but frankly, not a lot seems to have changed, at least not drastically. I'm surprised there's still so much COM interop -- wasn't Office 2007 supposed to be purely .NET-driven? Then again, so was Vista ...
Hoping to achieve another Microsoft MVP nomination, and actually win MVP status, this time around. Not sure yet where to focus my efforts -- do they have MVPs for Azure yet? I'm sure the MVPs at Infusion can offer me some insight here.
Anyhoo, my last day with Davis Vision will be Friday, November 7th. I can't say enough good things about the people and the environment at Davis -- they're good people doing good work. They're open-minded toward Agile, but not fanatical. They've started using automated unit testing. They're trying to embrace TDD and CI. I would highly advise .NET developers in the Albany area to apply, they have growing teams supporting a fairly complex web app, or collection of web apps, and the SOA-ish middle tier and desktop GUI. If I weren't constantly driven so hard to create change, I could see myself happily continuing on at Davis for quite some time to come. Their technology roadmap just isn't quite aggressive enough to keep me interested over the long term however -- I was starting to feel as though I wasn't being technically challenged, didn't have a lot of room left to grow there.
My first day on the job with Infusion will be Monday, November 10th.
Infusion is a boutique Microsoft technologies consulting firm, with offices in Manhattan, Toronto, Boston, London, Dubai; I think there's an office in LA as well, and there's a virtual office here in Albany, NY. Infusion works pretty closely with Microsoft, doing a lot of Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS) work. They also employ a surprising number of MVPs, given their relatively small size, and have some sort of VAR or OEM relationship with Microsoft and the Surface. Once upon a time they derived a lot of revenue from the financial services sector, but the past year or two have spent time refocusing business development efforts on the resort industry in Dubai. Yes, THAT Dubai. Hey, who knows, maybe someday ...
For the first six months, at least, I'll be doing some SharePoint work here in Albany for the NYS Department of Correctional Services. I first used SharePoint and VSTO back in 2006 at Xerox; newer versions are out, but frankly, not a lot seems to have changed, at least not drastically. I'm surprised there's still so much COM interop -- wasn't Office 2007 supposed to be purely .NET-driven? Then again, so was Vista ...
Hoping to achieve another Microsoft MVP nomination, and actually win MVP status, this time around. Not sure yet where to focus my efforts -- do they have MVPs for Azure yet? I'm sure the MVPs at Infusion can offer me some insight here.
Anyhoo, my last day with Davis Vision will be Friday, November 7th. I can't say enough good things about the people and the environment at Davis -- they're good people doing good work. They're open-minded toward Agile, but not fanatical. They've started using automated unit testing. They're trying to embrace TDD and CI. I would highly advise .NET developers in the Albany area to apply, they have growing teams supporting a fairly complex web app, or collection of web apps, and the SOA-ish middle tier and desktop GUI. If I weren't constantly driven so hard to create change, I could see myself happily continuing on at Davis for quite some time to come. Their technology roadmap just isn't quite aggressive enough to keep me interested over the long term however -- I was starting to feel as though I wasn't being technically challenged, didn't have a lot of room left to grow there.
My first day on the job with Infusion will be Monday, November 10th.
Friday, February 29
Professional transition
No, I'm not leaving my job as Senior Software Engineer for Davis Vision.
Actually, this is about that job.
I've worked for my current employer for about a year and a half now; this is the only place I've stayed more than a year, other than the newspaper in Rochester where I was webmaster/tech lead for a little over three years.
I really like it here. I like the people, I generally like the pace, and I love the opportunities I'm getting to refresh and renew our styles, standards and practices, on a team- and company-wide level.
However, I find myself doing more and more administrative tasks. And finding myself in more and more meetings, in lieu of one of the directors going.
I fear I'm on the verge of the balance of my workload shifting away from predominantly writing code ... in some ways, maybe that's inevitable. In some ways, I kind of look forward to that sort of transition. In many other ways, I want to stay put, in the role I'm in now, without a heavy addition of responsibility and expectations.
Is that selfish of me?
Actually, this is about that job.
I've worked for my current employer for about a year and a half now; this is the only place I've stayed more than a year, other than the newspaper in Rochester where I was webmaster/tech lead for a little over three years.
I really like it here. I like the people, I generally like the pace, and I love the opportunities I'm getting to refresh and renew our styles, standards and practices, on a team- and company-wide level.
However, I find myself doing more and more administrative tasks. And finding myself in more and more meetings, in lieu of one of the directors going.
I fear I'm on the verge of the balance of my workload shifting away from predominantly writing code ... in some ways, maybe that's inevitable. In some ways, I kind of look forward to that sort of transition. In many other ways, I want to stay put, in the role I'm in now, without a heavy addition of responsibility and expectations.
Is that selfish of me?
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