or... Boats?
Transitions can be special times, full or grey areas, vieled agendas and often littered with misdirected intentions. They are almost always packed with adventure and, in my experience, incredible lessons. My recent forray into public companies was a fascinating transition though it proved to be extraordinarily brief - the long and short of it is that my public company vessel has now cast off and set sail back into the shark filled but more lucrative private waters. These are waters and reefs that I know well; I feel no desire to venture back into waters I've tread for so many years just yet. So I hoisted my anchor (thankfully not my petard!) and have set my sights on new land.
This month I joined a new venture - I like to think of them as a band of merry privateers - on a much larger ship as an Integration Architect. I'm joined by new friends (sadly none that actually have a boat, odd, no?) and some cool new problems. I'll be working on scaling out a very large, established marketplace into the cloud and new markets. I sense peg legs and tricorns in my future. It's occasionally surreal starting at a company that has around 5000 employees and a stone's throw from a billion a year in revenue. My small division here in Vancouver is a small island in the large company but one populated by all tech people which makes it a little like a small engineering firm.
Methodology is a fascinating thing in development shops. Most of my ventures have been fast agile startups. Agile in the development world is all about iterative, responsive development that's business driven; usually the leading edge of the business flows features right into development who makes them into reality. Dominion is more like an engineering firm because we have existing customers and, in some cases, whole markets that depend on us for their continued success. This means that spiffy new features take a distant second to functionality and stability. I'm enjoying the rigour and planning that go with such a beast. If we were real pirates, we'd be the The Crimson Permanent Assurance kind.
On a completely unrelated note, I'd like to welcome Erin as my new life partner. *Erin takes a bow, audience applauds* It's safe to say that I'm loving sharing my living space again.