Saturday, November 22, 2008

My First Week At My New Job: Telligent

As promised in my farewell to Quick Solutions post, here's a separate post about my new job: Working as a Program Manager at Telligent Systems.

When it came time for me to leave QSI there was really only one place I looked. I opened a conversation with Telligent because I knew a number of the folks who worked there (Leon, Dave, and Dan), and I knew of a lot of other folks there. I knew the folks at Telligent were incredibly sharp and extremely engaged in the community. Furthermore, conversations with Dave and Leon cemented my impression that Telligent approaches development in a vein similar to my own philosophy. Finally, during interviews everyone was open about where the warts in their environment were, and they were looking to get those warts solved.

My kind of place.

I started Monday, 11/17, in a role as a Program Manager. I'm having a bit of a career shift since I'm getting out of the direct line of hands on keyboard for delivery, but I'll be keeping some involvement on the technical side. We're still working out exactly what my areas of responsibilities will be, but it looks like taking over the web services for Community Server will be one step.  I'm also helping with something near and dear to my heart: testing. I'll be helping refine Telligent's pre-delivery testing criteria and toolset which means I'll be playing lots with things like Selenium. I get to work closely with Dave on this which is a huge benefit for me because I've wanted to work with him for about 50 years or so.

As with any first week at a new job, it's been quite a firehose. I'm learning whom to ask what questions of, where to find various pieces of information, and starting to understand what the roadmap looks like. (And it looks wicked cool! Bwaaahaaahaaa!)

So far I really like the culture. Lots of openness, lots of great coordination with remote teams, lots of communication. I've already seen practical examples of how upper level leadership has their head screwed on straight which only cements my initial impressions.

Overall it's been a pretty good week!

(Plus Telligent uses Exchange, not Lotus Notes. That's the real reason I left QSI.)

4 comments:

Luc said...

Congrats Jim! I think you'll like the Program Manager role; I found my Product Manager role pretty rewarding. However, I had to find my own time to get in my 'code fix' at times during the wee hours of the morning. :)

From the few people I know that work there @ Telligent Systems, it's safe to say that they're a pretty 'telligent (and friendly) group of folks. I'm excited for you.

Unknown said...

Hi Jim

You don't know me yet, I was recently approached by a recruiter from QSI and doing research on the company led me inevitably to your blog. I'd love the opportunity to have a brief email exchange with you about your time there, since they seem like the kind of place I'd really enjoy working. Please email me at samuel dot hutchison at gmail dot com if you've got time to chat about it.

Thanks
Sam.

Anonymous said...

Welcome, Jim!

Anonymous said...

god be with you my child
you now have to work w/dave, are u managing him or his work in any way?

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