3. Employer Change. Two thousand five will be marked by an employer change. Unlike other changes, this time my job stayed the same and the company changed. After my previous employer shut its doors, I got a chance to join its reincarnated form, 0culan Systems. I joined four other refugees of the previous company and together we put the wheels on the new company.
It was a busy but fun time. At one point I wore five hats: support manager, sales engineer, IT manager, training manager, and facilities manager. The things I didn’t know from the previous company I had to learn as I went. It was a wonderfully enriching experience.
The new owners were cool Minnesota venture capitalists. They set up another office in Minneapolis for the other half of the team, a group of new folks that meshed well with our original team. In March, our northern team had just moved into new space when the company president flew down with some important news.
The company was being sold. We had been full-time employees for all of three months.
This news sent our young team scattering. We lost all of the Minnesota staff and half of our Raleigh staff. All that progress stalled as we tried to integrate with the new company. It was lonely there for a little while.
Eventually things picked up. We hired more great people (including some to take some of the hats I’d been wearing!), and progress was made on a new office (we’re moving in this week). The new company offers exciting new opportunities with the potential to take the product places the old company could only dream about. I like where things are heading. We are set to grow quite a bit.
In spite of this success, I will always look back fondly on those days spent in the ratty blue “sensory deprivation” cubicles, freezing in the winter mornings and cursing at the crappy phone service I slapped together. I’ll miss the oh-so-politically-incorrect discussions shared over those cube walls. I’ll miss the feeling that everything is riding on your shoulders: that you have to be the hero because nobody else will do it.
In short, I’ll miss the startup stuff. That stuff can be hard to find in a twenty-year-old global company.
That’s not to say it can’t be found here. Our being acquired could infuse some of that startup energy into the existing company. That’s what makes this year so exciting: the course of the combined company is still being charted.
It will be what we make it.