It has been a very interesting 2 months since my last job related post; in a nutshell I am not in Seattle and I was not able to take the position with Microsoft that I've been talking about. I have an entirely separate post that I'm working on which goes into more detail as to exactly what happened as it's a story that needs to be told, however I'd like to get settled into my new role before I post it.

Did he say new role? I think he did!...so what's this new role? After Microsoft and I decided to go our separate ways about a month ago, I was contacted about a position here in Charlotte for a company that (to be honest) I'd never heard of: Skanska USA, which is the American arm of Skanska AB which is based out of Sweden. They are the 3rd largest building company in the world, and are #433 on the Fortune World 500 this year. Their IT group also made the 2007 CIO 100 list, and they've been named to the Information Week 500 on a regular basis over the past few years. The point is that they are a solid IT group...I did my homework this go round since a previous engagement turned out to be a huge disappointment in terms of overall technological prowess (or lack thereof). Needless to say, I am extremely impressed with Skanska.

The interview process I went through with Skanska was one of the more unique experiences I've ever done. I won't give away their entire recipe to the secret sauce, but a huge part of their company philosophy is being able to have conversations with workers of any level, from the guy sweeping the floors all the way up to CxO level management, and as such I had to give a how-to presentation in front of the entire Charlotte office as part of the screen, with one stipulation: It couldn't be about anything technical (tell a geek they can't be technical for x amount of time, and interesting things are bound to happen). I did mine on how to fold origami cranes. Readers may not know this, but I have a pretty healthy fear of public speaking; it went off smashingly though as over the years it's something I've gotten used to, and channeling the fear is no longer a problem. From a technical standpoint it was also one of the more involved processes I've been through (dare I say even harder than the Microsoft interviews?)...lots of practical tests. When all was said and done, they spent around 20 man-hours total getting to know me...very impressive.

I think one of the more captivating aspects of their development group is that when I arrived, I expected there to be a pretty large team of guys writing code what with all the case studies and public notoriety they have gained over the past few years. Sufficed to say, the development team is in the single digits. I even asked during the screening process something to the effect of "man, you guys must write a lot of [efficient] code"...their response was "you better believe it." Sounds like my kind of group of guys.

I start on Monday (7/16), and that should also mark the end of my blogging hiatus as I've been doing minimal postings over the past few weeks while I've focused on landing a position which fits my career goals for both now, and the future. I'm happy to be aboard, and I have no doubt this new role will broaden my technical horizons as they are doing some amazingly innovative stuff within their technology stack and are a very advanced group.

Sidenote: One thing that really impressed me with the overall market this go round (besides the fact that it's a job hunters market right now) is that all of the groups I spoke with were familiar with Community Server. Since I'm a CS MVP, I think that definitely worked out in my favor, so congrats to the Telligent team...your product is making inroads into the corporate IT realm which of course is a huge market to tap into. Maybe I'll get to use CS in some of my daily work in my new role!

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