Adventuring On

As you may already know, my last day with STG will be Feb 21st. This was a big decision for me that is probably surprising considering how much I have loved working here.

Software Technology Group

I have nothing but praise for STG. If you aren't aware, STG is a local contracting/consulting firm. Despite the challenges of the distributed workplace, I always felt like an STG employee rather than an employee of my client. The office staff puts a lot of effort into successfully making consultants feel like a valued member of a larger team. They reinvest in their employees through in-house training, conferences, shared technical resources, evenings out with your spouse, family activities, etc. STG provides a lot of opportunities of developers who like to experience new work environments and challenging problems in their work as contractors, but want the safety of a regular pay check and great benefits. I can't emphasize enough how well STG has treated me while I have been there. If this is at all what you want to do with your career, it is worth your time to meet with STG.

HealthCare Insight / Verisk Health

I have been working with HCI for the last 18 months. It has been quite an adventure. I am sad that I won't be seeing firsthand the next phase of development with this team. As a team, we have been coached on Scrum. We survived a difficult death march. We experienced a complete change in management. We started a weekly developer forum in which we discuss topics from testing to clean pragmatic code to structuring CSS for flexibility and maintenance. We have gotten serious about automated testing; TDD/unit testing, UI testing with Selenium, acceptance testing with FitNesse and even JavaScript testing with Jasmine. We have moved from raw ADO.NET to the NHibernate ORM. We have introduced the Model View Presenter (Passive View) pattern to our web application in order to reduce coupling and enhance testability. We have started using the ASP.NET MVC 3 framework. All told, this team has made more positive change in the last year and a half than I would have suspected any team could. It amazes me to see how far we have come. I can't wait to hear where they go next. (In case you are looking, there are a couple of openings on this team for strong, passionate developers.)

Pluralsight

So given all of the praise I have for both STG and HCI, why in the world am I leaving, you ask? The answer is pretty simple really. As you probably know if you read this blog or run into me at user groups or conferences, I am very passionate about software development. I strongly believe that the best way to get both internal and external quality in your application is to work with a team of developers who are passionate about the work they do and are constantly trying to improve themselves and the code around them. For a while now, I have wanted to get into training and coaching so that I can share the true joy of programming with other developers. Pluralsight provides this very service in a way that is readily accessible to a large number of developers and is a natural fit for my passion. I will be the 5th member of the internal development team that provides the infrastructure to deliver content from presenters/authors into the hands of developers worldwide. Not only is Pluralsight a company that provides training for other developers, but the internal team is a group of smart aspiring craftsmen who implement what we provide. I am excited that I will be playing catch up on the multiple fronts as I am introduced to new tools and techniques that my team is implementing and creating. I will share more of this later as I come up to speed, but if you want a preview, check out Keith's blog. <Shameless plug>If your company relies on custom software for any critical business processes, why not have them sign up for a group membership?</Shameless plug>