Past jobs, ex-coworkers, and the value of people.
Just some miscellaneous thoughts on those I have left behind...
I never blogged much about my last employer, Mary Kay, - at least directly - but I spent (almost exactly) 5 years there, and had plenty of ups and downs. I credit that experience for helping me clarify exactly what I do and do not want in my career and in my life.
I spent two stints at true "corporate style" environments like Mary Kay - the first at Paymentech (initially part of First U.S.A & Bank One) - but most of my years have been at various forms of small start-ups, consulting firms, and dotcoms. At the tail-end of the dotcom bust, I left Homebuilder.com, but first helped them transition much of their custom call center apps to the new parent company, Homestore.com, in Thousand Oaks, CA. This was back in the days of high-flying stock prices, daily IPO's, paper-millionaires, damning black-out periods, and general euphoria at the mighty invincible tech stocks (aahh, those were the days).
A few of my compatriots (Eric, Preston, and Jared) gracefully departed Homebuilder with me and joined Mary Kay at the same time. Of this group, I was eventually the first to leave Mary Kay. I worked with a lot of really good people at Mary Kay including my excellent reporting wrecking-crew, Linda, Bill, and Ray, in the Supply Chain Systems department plus Michael & Darren from our Sql Server team. Before the rise (at least budget-wise) of our Supply Chain department, the eBusiness department, where I started, was really the star. Alas, in my opinion, this was due to a large degree because of the actions of outstanding individuals like Barry Bloom and David Findley more than the leadership of their IT management. Due to new opportunities and past failures of management, David and I coincidentally left Mary Kay at the same time - him going to help our friend Bob at LearnVisualStudo.NET and me becoming a Telligenti. I like to think this had an impact, but the truth is that companies like Mary Kay are built to survive with or without key people.
Tonight, I stumbled upon the blog of another coworker, Zach, from Mary Kay's Supply Chain Systems department. We worked together initially on some core frameworks, Biztalk, and other miscellaneous back-end systems. Later he branched out to cover more ground around J.D. Edwards, warehouse management, and integration while I narrowed my focus towards Sql Server, Sql Reporting Services, and ASP.NET.
When we worked together, he didn't seem to blog much, but coincidentally it seems that he started to do some serious blogging shortly thereafter. Today, Biztalk integration with large ERP solutions still seems to be his area of focus, and as Mary Kay has increasingly deployed globally, he has undoubtedly acquired some significant experience in very large scale deployments. I sometimes wish I had been able to experience firsthand the sheer daunting scale of such a large international rollout, but then quickly I realize the magnificent mess he has on his hands, and think the better of it. :) All I gotta say is; good luck Zach!
There are numerous others like Zach who have affected my career, for good and evil, many have been consultants (Hitachi & HP consulting) and independent contractors, others have been trainers (Developmentor, Wintellect), still others have been the users, business analysts, supervisors, project managers, and even a few CEO's, CTO's, and CFO's (yeah, I did say evil didn't I? :-). Some of these people just seem to pop-up again and again in this small world of IT, its sometimes amazing how there seems always to be a divine game of 6-degrees of separation going on in IT. You never know whose resume' will be on your desk, and vice-versa.
From my experience, there is one common thread to every successful company and project I have enjoyed and every death march I have survived - People. Without a doubt, the strongest link in the chain has made us succeed, while the weakest has pulled us down into the abyss. The trick, like in any good tug-of-war contest, is to make sure you have more of the former than the latter. This is where my current employer, Telligent Systems, really impressed me, and continues to this day. Our weakest link is typically as strong (or stronger) as the best of many other companies, so even on a bad day, you really have to try hard to fail.
On that note....time to get back to work! :)