Work Status, January 2020
Jan. 12th, 2020 07:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bjarvisI'm writing this on the plane from San Francisco back to DC after a week onsite at the SF office and the Santa Clara data center. And in all, it went well.
My old boss, Bret McGinnis, left the company at the end of December 2019. It had been a long time coming, as he and our current CTO didn't see eye-to-eye on a lot of high priority issues. Our CTO is classic Silicon Valley start-up: break things, fail forward, be disruptive, avoid committee, beg forgiveness rather than ask permission, etc.. Bret worshiped at the alter of 100% Uptime, discussed joint issues with other teams as needed, and kept a very close eye not just on security issues, but audit compliance topics. Our CTO gives lip service to the issue of our PCI and SOC audits, but flatly disregards the actual rules if they are inconvenient and expects somehow that Bret & the rest of us will find some way of bridging the impossible gaps.
Anyway, Bret is gone and we have a new interim boss, Josh Woodward, working remotely from Armonk, NY. He seems nice and listens well, but he's a contractor brought on a few months ago by our CTO to consult on software development project planning. The hope is that he'll agree to go fulltime with us, but I'm unsure if that will actually happen.
So while there is a sudden gap in our team, there is some effort to fill it, and I had some good one-on-one meetings with both the CTO and Josh this past week. I can work with them in various degrees of enthusiasm, depending on the topic.
On the good side, on Friday, I received the first retention bonus following our acquisition by Enterprise this time last year. In 2019, I was offered a pile of cash for my stock options and a retention bonus of 40% of my base salary in January 2020 and again in January 2021. After taxes and 401k, it's still north of $40k, so I'm happy to have it, especially if we decide to go ahead with the house renovations this year.
I hired a new guy for my systems engineering group recently. I originally wanted him to start Jan 6 so I would be in San Francisco to onboard him myself, but he really wanted to start asap --I think there were some financial pressures-- so he started Dec 23 instead. I finally met him last week and he has been working out pretty well. Interestingly, I hired him based on the content of his resume and our telephone interviews, as well as the onsite interviews by other people on the Operations team; his references checked out well too. When I finally met him, I learned he's 10 years older than me, about 63 or so. Silicon Valley looks askance at anyone older than 30, so I suddenly have an appreciation for how hard it was for him to land a new position, and the value of working from the data rather than from appearances. If I were slightly more shallow than I already am, I might have overlooked him too in the interview process.
Our search for a new network engineer was stalled, but the CTO has named me the hiring manager for that spot so I'm now working to pick up where Bret had left off. The sooner we get an extra person in that position, the better.
Our San Francisco office at 642 Harrison Street is going month-to-month on the lease as we seek cheaper digs elsewhere. There is a small office being built out in Campbell, CA (San Jose area), primarily for the executives who dwell in the south bay area. I visited that site Friday to see how the office space is being renovated and it's looking pretty good. Naturally, all of the networking equipment and videoconferencing systems are top-of-the-line and brand new: the execs insisted on that for themselves; the new Oakland office for the plebes will not be so lucky. Interestingly, while the executive space has side meeting rooms, they've still gone with mostly an open office environment, including a standing desk in the main room for the CEO.
The renovations are only just starting on the new Oakland space, two floors at 1300 Broadway, just above the 12th Street BART station. I looked around the area Saturday, just to see the location and the amenities in the neighbourhood, but had no access to the building itself. I don't know how comfortable the offices will be in the end, but no one will starve and the public transit accessibility is good.
Having testing the BART accessibility and timing to the airport, I've largely decided that future trips will still likely be via SFO rather than Oakland's airport. Yes, the Oakland airport will be vastly closer, but it's hard to find a non-stop flight from the east coast to Oakland at decent times on an non-sucking airline. The Alaska Air non-stops between Dulles and SFO have been largely good to me, and I can handle an hour on BART to Oakland: it's only four more stations than the Powell one I've been using to my San Francisco hotel. Of course, I'll need to find a decent hotel near the office that's within policy...
We're about to start a round of SOC2 audits & evidence collection once again. In fact, I'm supposed to be onsite in San Francisco for the week of February 24 to face the auditors directly. I should book that air fare & hotel soon.
There's a boatload of small projects still in flight, but I'm feeling pretty confident about my working environment, relations with colleagues, and my future in general. The departure of Bret and a couple more people has made some space for me to grow into other managerial functions as a director, and as long as I ask for more responsibility from Josh and Neil, I'm relatively confident I'll get it. As long as I don't screw up, I'll be making their lives easier.
The biggest challenge for me at the moment is a kind of time management. Working three hours ahead of California has permitted me to do some personal stuff in the mornings: gym, medical appointments, commuting to the data center, etc.. My day picks up at noon eastern time though as meetings start in San Francisco, and they tend to run into the early evening because, obviously, that's still the business day for SF. I have to be firm about not letting much slide past my 6pm so I can still have dinner with my family, attend karate, go square dancing, etc.. I need to be more efficient in the 12-6pm hours, and to make sure my colleagues on the other side are as efficient about that too.
I also suspect that as I take on more management, I'm going to be spending more time working with Bangalore, which means more late night hours. But I'm typically up until midnight anyway, so that's not a huge burden.
So many pieces in progress, but it's working out well.
My old boss, Bret McGinnis, left the company at the end of December 2019. It had been a long time coming, as he and our current CTO didn't see eye-to-eye on a lot of high priority issues. Our CTO is classic Silicon Valley start-up: break things, fail forward, be disruptive, avoid committee, beg forgiveness rather than ask permission, etc.. Bret worshiped at the alter of 100% Uptime, discussed joint issues with other teams as needed, and kept a very close eye not just on security issues, but audit compliance topics. Our CTO gives lip service to the issue of our PCI and SOC audits, but flatly disregards the actual rules if they are inconvenient and expects somehow that Bret & the rest of us will find some way of bridging the impossible gaps.
Anyway, Bret is gone and we have a new interim boss, Josh Woodward, working remotely from Armonk, NY. He seems nice and listens well, but he's a contractor brought on a few months ago by our CTO to consult on software development project planning. The hope is that he'll agree to go fulltime with us, but I'm unsure if that will actually happen.
So while there is a sudden gap in our team, there is some effort to fill it, and I had some good one-on-one meetings with both the CTO and Josh this past week. I can work with them in various degrees of enthusiasm, depending on the topic.
On the good side, on Friday, I received the first retention bonus following our acquisition by Enterprise this time last year. In 2019, I was offered a pile of cash for my stock options and a retention bonus of 40% of my base salary in January 2020 and again in January 2021. After taxes and 401k, it's still north of $40k, so I'm happy to have it, especially if we decide to go ahead with the house renovations this year.
I hired a new guy for my systems engineering group recently. I originally wanted him to start Jan 6 so I would be in San Francisco to onboard him myself, but he really wanted to start asap --I think there were some financial pressures-- so he started Dec 23 instead. I finally met him last week and he has been working out pretty well. Interestingly, I hired him based on the content of his resume and our telephone interviews, as well as the onsite interviews by other people on the Operations team; his references checked out well too. When I finally met him, I learned he's 10 years older than me, about 63 or so. Silicon Valley looks askance at anyone older than 30, so I suddenly have an appreciation for how hard it was for him to land a new position, and the value of working from the data rather than from appearances. If I were slightly more shallow than I already am, I might have overlooked him too in the interview process.
Our search for a new network engineer was stalled, but the CTO has named me the hiring manager for that spot so I'm now working to pick up where Bret had left off. The sooner we get an extra person in that position, the better.
Our San Francisco office at 642 Harrison Street is going month-to-month on the lease as we seek cheaper digs elsewhere. There is a small office being built out in Campbell, CA (San Jose area), primarily for the executives who dwell in the south bay area. I visited that site Friday to see how the office space is being renovated and it's looking pretty good. Naturally, all of the networking equipment and videoconferencing systems are top-of-the-line and brand new: the execs insisted on that for themselves; the new Oakland office for the plebes will not be so lucky. Interestingly, while the executive space has side meeting rooms, they've still gone with mostly an open office environment, including a standing desk in the main room for the CEO.
The renovations are only just starting on the new Oakland space, two floors at 1300 Broadway, just above the 12th Street BART station. I looked around the area Saturday, just to see the location and the amenities in the neighbourhood, but had no access to the building itself. I don't know how comfortable the offices will be in the end, but no one will starve and the public transit accessibility is good.
Having testing the BART accessibility and timing to the airport, I've largely decided that future trips will still likely be via SFO rather than Oakland's airport. Yes, the Oakland airport will be vastly closer, but it's hard to find a non-stop flight from the east coast to Oakland at decent times on an non-sucking airline. The Alaska Air non-stops between Dulles and SFO have been largely good to me, and I can handle an hour on BART to Oakland: it's only four more stations than the Powell one I've been using to my San Francisco hotel. Of course, I'll need to find a decent hotel near the office that's within policy...
We're about to start a round of SOC2 audits & evidence collection once again. In fact, I'm supposed to be onsite in San Francisco for the week of February 24 to face the auditors directly. I should book that air fare & hotel soon.
There's a boatload of small projects still in flight, but I'm feeling pretty confident about my working environment, relations with colleagues, and my future in general. The departure of Bret and a couple more people has made some space for me to grow into other managerial functions as a director, and as long as I ask for more responsibility from Josh and Neil, I'm relatively confident I'll get it. As long as I don't screw up, I'll be making their lives easier.
The biggest challenge for me at the moment is a kind of time management. Working three hours ahead of California has permitted me to do some personal stuff in the mornings: gym, medical appointments, commuting to the data center, etc.. My day picks up at noon eastern time though as meetings start in San Francisco, and they tend to run into the early evening because, obviously, that's still the business day for SF. I have to be firm about not letting much slide past my 6pm so I can still have dinner with my family, attend karate, go square dancing, etc.. I need to be more efficient in the 12-6pm hours, and to make sure my colleagues on the other side are as efficient about that too.
I also suspect that as I take on more management, I'm going to be spending more time working with Bangalore, which means more late night hours. But I'm typically up until midnight anyway, so that's not a huge burden.
So many pieces in progress, but it's working out well.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-13 06:55 pm (UTC)If you ever have to go to Bangalore, let me know and I'll send you my writeup of what to expect and how to arrange it so that you're happier.