Well, my Enigma card’s gone phut thereby depriving me of late-evening IRC with friends and colleagues, so I might as well turn my fingers to the small matter of a blog update.

The last two weeks have gone from tedious to interesting by rapid turns – the big news is that I now report to our GSO division, but rather as an equal partner instead of being an underling.

For the moment, at least, nothing changes except who is at the top of my division, but no doubt changes will come. To me, it makes sense – I find the idea of fuzzing the line between presales presentation and postsales integration to be quite a good one, not least as it should help ensure that that which we sell, works properly.

History:

I joined in 1992, when I worked for IR (Information Resources) which rapidly became IS (Information Services) and ENS (Enterprise Network Services) latterly ITOPS; inside that division first I was IT (Information Technology) or DS (Desktop Systems), then moved to NSG (Network Security Group) thence ENO (European Network Operations) and built the first European firewall. Then I worked for Netcentricity – part of “The CTO Office” which got merged with SunLabs, where after three years in very short order[1] I worked for SunSoft Security Products Group, ICG (Internet Commerce Group) Javasoft (for about a week) and finally – by dint of luck and circumstance – landed in EMEA PS.

Thank god I landed in EMEA. Pure luck, but exactly the right place.

After the great re-org which happened prior to my arrival, PS (Professional Services) has been a pretty stable part of ES (Enterprise Services) which in my early days was known as CS (Customer Services) and latterly SunService; nowadays it’s called SunServices which means that everyone had to buy new business cards just to get an extra “s”.

Now: PS reports to GSO (which is having its acronym changed) – so I think that the only major functional roles within the company for which I have not worked, are:

• Any Hardware-Production Division
• Marketing
• Field Sales
• Sustaining Engineering
• Infrastructure: HR, Payroll, Finance, Facilities, etc…

…and the list is ticking away, fast.

Managers? I’ll never remember them all:

1. Carmichael
2. Warwick
3. Johnson
4. Raduchel (yes, that Raduchel)
5. Doby
6. Keane (great backrubs)
7. King (briefly)
8. McCarthy (great hugs)
9. Baehr (great geek)
10. Sutherland (yes, one of those Sutherlands)
11. Nelson-Gal (who now says “ni!”)
12. Scott
13. Dowell
14. (I feel sure there is one missing here)
15. Wright (EMEA PS)
16. Croucher (Present Day)

…and yet for some reason people don’t take me seriously when I tell them that one of my primary measures for how good a manager is, is how often he/she manages to complete and submit my review documents; look at the above, and you might infer why I believe this.

Hmmm… also, I seem to be increasing by about one UK job grade every 2 years, which is not too bad. I suppose that I could have quit, created a startup, got bought-out and joined as an EMG-level board member during the bubble, but that’d mean having to deal with vulture capitalists, an expensive suit, ponytail, and serious dental work for that ring of confidence.

Well – this is the first half of my nostalgia trip – I shall commit it to the blog, and then do a personal entry before bed.

[1] so many managers in so short a time, I am not certain I’ve got this 100% right, but there were an awful lot of them.