Last day at Freedom Scientific
News, Work ·Friday April 12, 2013 @ 17:47 EDT (link)
Today was my last day working at Freedom Scientific (interview post, a year and a half ago). A few weeks ago I accepted an offer for a new job as a lead engineer (more about which later) and resigned from my position as a Senior Software Engineer with the standard two weeks notice. My boss took the resignation well, and his boss, the VP, was only concerned that I was going to their competition, which I am not (whole new field, although the line of business was certainly interesting). Yesterday some co-workers took me out to the Brazilian Steakhouse for lunch, a true meat-lovers' paradise.
Coming from Microsoft, it was somewhat refreshing to be back in a small(er) company atmosphere, with the biggest difference that there are a lot more different things to learn and do. For example, I taught myself WiX (Windows Installer XML)—become rather expert, in fact; I worked on setup packages, wrote a (virtual) printer driver, worked on a camera driver, and designed and built features for a couple of (related) applications, WYNN and OpenBook.
I also attempted a few initiatives, with limited success: an object model for WYNN (both so it could be extended as a platform and for automated testing, which was sorely lacking); memory marking (based on ideas, but no code, from Word; using Visual Leak Detector, in fact); and developer talks, which, after about six months delay from inception, were about to start (and I hope still proceed). I wrote a lot of utilities in Python (and a few in C#) to generate code or automate tasks, including one that would have been able to replace a scary custom build system (and make it possible to complete entire build much faster and on developer machines). I am not going to hash negatives here; there was a lot of good from my experiences at Freedom Scientific; I worked with some excellent developers and testers, and clearly had, most of the time, a decent degree of autonomy to get work done, and even some extra items, while meeting my schedules. I hope, if it is applicable, I will have more ability to further such initiatives, such as automated testing, at my new position.
I will certainly miss the weather here; it's beautiful and I'll miss wearing shorts and T-shirt in February and the white sand beaches.
We have two weeks now for the move, and have been packing every night—all the books are done and most clothes and much of the bathrooms and between, with a few essential/valuable items to be transported in our cars. Old services are set to be canceled and new to begin (still concerned that I can get the Internet provider to unblock port 25 inbound, which they have the unsavory reputation of blocking, but most have had good experiences). We should be loaded up (Moovers are our brokers, using National Van Lines) on Tuesday, do a move-out inspection, then drive up to our new place in Indiana, which we picked out on a loooooong weekend drive last weekend.
Adios, Florida. We'll miss you, but not your insanely extortionate license fees.
Books finished: The First 90 Days, Elminster, Code Complete, The Art of Multiprocessor Programming, 365 Foolish Mistakes Smart Managers Make Every Day, How To Win Friends and Influence People.
