Change the Third

Change is officially on its way!  I can now be less cryptic.

Symantec Corporation and I have a relatively long history as far as employer-employee relationships go.  I first heard that Symantec had a local office from a friend in my previous Ward.  He told me that I should give him my resume and come work with him.  This was back in November or December, 2000.

In the fall of 2000, I had gone through a bit of job instability.  I was working for an Internet startup company called PageLaunch.com.  A very good friend was the head technical guy (CTO if you will) and I had become friends with the CEO.  The company was funded by a venture capital firm that would fund startup companies here and there.  PageLaunch was located in the corporate offices of the venture capital company.  It was a good job…

…until the president of the venture capital firm made some purely emotional decisions.  He ended up firing the CEO while my CTO friend was on vacation.  When my friend came back from vacation, he met with the venture capital guy and ended up getting fired during that meeting.  Suddenly, I was the only one left in the very small company that knew anything about the product we had created.  The venture capital guy who had made all of these emotional decisions quickly met with me and offered me a rather large raise.  At that point, I didn’t really care that much about the money.  I was terrified that I would be the next one to go.  I did the sane thing and sent resumes out everywhere.

A couple of weeks later I had received a verbal offer from another software company, so I sent an email to everyone in the company, especially the new company president, the venture capital guy, and I shut down my computer and walked out.  About a week later, they shut off the lights at PageLaunch.com and that particular venture ended for good.

Unfortunately for me, the verbal offer never turned into an actual offer because the company that I was supposed to move to suddenly had a hiring freeze.  I was suddenly without a job and didn’t have a single prospect.  I did what any sane person would do in my situation.  I freaked out.

I called on the resumes I had sent out previously and within a couple of days, I had two job offers.  One was for a job I would really have enjoyed a lot.  The other was for a job I wouldn’t really enjoy as much, but it was at a company that had been in business and had been profitable for more than ten years.  I took the offer for the stable job.

Within a couple of months at the new “stable” job, my manager was telling us that the new version of the software (which we had barely started creating) needed to be out by a certain date or we would ALL lose our jobs because the company (mainly a hardware company, not a software company) would use off-the-shelf software.  My stable job became unstable very quickly.  I did the sane thing and sent out more resumes.

My friend that worked for Symantec told me that they had a job opening again, so I gave him a copy of my resume.  I interviewed with several people at Symantec.  One of the hiring managers was out sick the day I came in to interview, so he hadn’t met me yet.  I waited a few days and then called back to follow up.  The director of development told me that the timing of my call couldn’t have been better.  He said that the people that interviewed me were in his office at that moment and that they were making a decision.  He said that if I could come in right away, the last person I needed to meet (who obviously wouldn’t vote to hire me because he hadn’t met me) would meet with me and THEN they would make the decision.  I cam in, interviewed, and they decided to hire me.

I started working for Symantec at the beginning of July in 2001.  I was hired to support the Navy/Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI) project.  One of the requirements of NMCI was to use all Consumer Off-The-Shelf (COTS) software.  No software would be developed specifically for NMCI.  Since Enterprise Security Manager (ESM), the software developed in the American Fork office of Symantec, would have no bigger customer than NMCI, the ESM team decided that it would be good to have a development resource dedicated to NMCI.  When NMCI had requests for bug fixes, new features, or needed something done quickly, I could make these changes.  Since these changes would go into the main ESM product and would be released to everyone, the COTS requirement for NMCI was still met.

My first three years at Symantec, I worked with the NMCI team and enjoyed it tremendously.  The stock options, employee stock purchase plan, and higher salary than I had ever before earned helped us to pay off student loans, landscape our home, and even buy a new car.  However, after the first three years, things started changing.  Our site director and all of the development managers were suddenly fired.  There were several rounds of layoffs over the next couple of years.  I survived each round, but I began to feel less and less stable in my job.

On the day that I received my “thank you” gift for five years of service at Symantec, there was an all-hands meeting in which Symantec told us that the American Fork office was closing and that ESM would be relocating to Houston, TX.  I was told that my job would be ending on December 19th that year (2006).  I would receive a bonus if I worked until the end of September, and another bonus if I worked until the 19th of December.  I thought it was more important to get a new job, so I interviewed at a few companies and received a couple of job offers–one from a print layout company in Springville, and the other from Altiris, Inc. in Lindon.

I took the offer from Altiris, accepted my severance package from Symantec (which I used to finish my basement) and moved on.  I was hired to develop a Software Development Kit (SDK) for Altiris’ Notification Server platform.  There were a couple of problems early on at Altiris, mostly due to my manager at the time.  He didn’t give me any of the training that I needed so I floundered for a little while.

A few months after I started working for Altiris, they announced that Symantec was purchasing Altiris.  My first reaction brought back all of the feelings I had when Symantec laid me off.  I was NOT happy and thought seriously about sending out more resumes.   But after thinking through things again, I realized that Symantec was a known entity–that I understood their processes, their benefits, and a lot of other things that you have to learn when joining a new company.  I calmed down and stayed with Symantec.  Since I had been away from Symantec for less than a year, they “bridged” my tenure.  I kept my original employee ID number and my original hire date in July, 2001.

I still didn’t like my manager, but after a year of working with him, I was told I would be working for a new manager.  Instead of sending out resumes (I had decided I couldn’t work for this manager any more), I decided to give the new manager a chance.  It turned out to be a good thing.  I really liked my new manager and things went very well for the next couple of years.

The problems started when my team changed from the “SDK Team” to “Developer Services.”  Now, in addition to developing the SDK, we were also to help/support other teams both inside and outside Symantec that use the SDK.  I kept developing software full time at first, but gradually, my daily tasks moved farther and farther from development and more and more towards support.  I let my manager know on a regular basis that I was hired to be a full-time developer, but it didn’t really change how things were progressing for my particular job.

In August, 2009, in order to help me make up for the knowledge deficit I was still dealing with because of my previous manager’s lack of help, my current manager and i decided to have me support a rather large contract.  This would help me learn the platform for which I was developing the SDK.  I took on this responsibility for two reasons:  1)  To improve my own knowledge and 2) because the person who supported this particular contract would be on vacation for a couple of months.  I also took on this responsibility with the caveat that I would be able to return to full-time development.  This change was supposed to be temporary–only six months in length.

It’s been almost a month longer than the six months in length and my job still hasn’t moved back to full-time development.  At this point, I don’t think it ever will, and I’m not ready to move away from development at all at this point.  There are some other smaller issues that I could live with, but the bottom line is that I’m a software engineer.  I want to develop software.  The “support” part of my current job drives me absolutely batty.  Things aren’t going to change.

To top everything off, Symantec had another “Reduction In Force” on Tuesday.  More than 70 people were given pink slips.  It was the ninth reduction in force that I went through at Symantec, eight of which I survived.  Symantec purchased Axent in 2000.  Axent is no more.  About 3 years later, Symantec purchased PowerQuest.  As of Tuesday, PowerQuest is no more.  Symantec purchased Altiris in 2007…  Do you see a pattern here?  I certainly do.

So after nearly nine years at Symantec (more or less), it’s time for me to move on.  I have accepted a position with the LDS Church as a software engineer and I will be starting there on Monday, 19 April.  There are a couple of things that I will like less than my current position.  I will have a longer commute–about 30 minutes when traffic is good.  It’s still not bad.  It’s just about double the commute I have currently.  The other thing is that the LDS Church is currently in the middle of a hiring freeze.  I will be working as a “contingent” employee, which means that I will be working for a contracting company called Employer Solutions Group.  I’m not exactly excited about being a contract employee, but I have been told that if I’m a good employee (and I’m not worried about that), I will be brought on as a full-time employee of the LDS Church as soon as the hiring freeze is lifted or when there is a position that opens up if someone were to leave and thereby open up a position.

There are a lot of good things, or obviously I wouldn’t be making this change.  First of all, I’ll be working for a “company” that I can believe in.  I will be working in the “Content & Media” group.  Every six months at the LDS Church’s semiannual General Conference, somewhere in the neighborhood of 7,000 documents are created.  I will be working on the system that will be used to enter, edit, store, annotate, and retrieve all of these documents for many different things such as print media (The Ensign) and the web (lds.org).  The people I will be working with will be people with my same beliefs and values for the most part.  I’ll be making more money, and I will even get benefits like medical, dental, and paid time off, even as a contractor.  I know quite a few people that work for the LDS Church in the Riverton office, so there will even be familiar faces there.  I also don’t have to worry about the possibility of Symantec purchasing my  company again.

I’m very excited about this next stage in my career.  I believe it will be a great place to continue my career.  There will be things about Symantec that I will miss.  Their benefits are great.  I’ll miss the annual bonus plan.  I’m going to miss being able to purchase Symantec software at cost.  I will mostly miss the people that I’ve worked with.  I’m excited to get to know a new group of people that will hopefully become good friends.

Change is difficult, but hopefully this change, like so many in the past, will be a good change.