Job change and holiday
The latest news is that I've been retrenched by ActiveSky (along with all the other developers), have found a new job with a company called Objective and have just returned from an amazing holiday in Alaska (which Objective was kind enough to extend my start date for). But anyway, the gory details follow...
Alas, another telco job bites the dust. We were just nearing the point where the revenue we were getting from customers (Itochu in Japan, AT&T in the US, etc.) was matching our expenses. Venture capitalists however had other ideas in mind however and ActiveSky had to retrench everyone except for skeleton support staff in order to try and survive. Unfortunately for me, all my components were delivered and running fine. If only I had the vision to put some back-door bugs in my code in a vain attempt to extend my stay there.
I enjoyed the technology and I was working with some smart and dedicated people and I got a lot of satisfaction out of the work. I declined to work for them for an alternate future profit sharing arrangement in leui of salary. I have a mortgage to pay off so can't afford to take risks like that. I did consider it briefly however because I believed in what we were doing and could see it making money.
On the other hand, Athena's company (a US based finance company called PIMCO) is going great and the CEO has decided to give staff (and their partners) a trip to Alaska. I understand that he's one of the most successful men in the world of finance but still, a 10 million dollar gift from his pocket (not the company's coffers mind you - his own personal stash) is totally unbelievable. I'm certainly not complaining however it was a mad holiday.
We started from San Francisco and took a 6 star cruise to Alaska. I didn't think it was possible to have more than 5 stars but I stand corrected. Unbelievable service. It made the Japanese look like, like.... I don't know, someone really bad at service (and if you've been to Japan you'll know that they are service crazy).
San Francisco Photo Album
Canada Photo Album
Alaska Photo Album
Alas, another telco job bites the dust. We were just nearing the point where the revenue we were getting from customers (Itochu in Japan, AT&T in the US, etc.) was matching our expenses. Venture capitalists however had other ideas in mind however and ActiveSky had to retrench everyone except for skeleton support staff in order to try and survive. Unfortunately for me, all my components were delivered and running fine. If only I had the vision to put some back-door bugs in my code in a vain attempt to extend my stay there.
I enjoyed the technology and I was working with some smart and dedicated people and I got a lot of satisfaction out of the work. I declined to work for them for an alternate future profit sharing arrangement in leui of salary. I have a mortgage to pay off so can't afford to take risks like that. I did consider it briefly however because I believed in what we were doing and could see it making money.
On the other hand, Athena's company (a US based finance company called PIMCO) is going great and the CEO has decided to give staff (and their partners) a trip to Alaska. I understand that he's one of the most successful men in the world of finance but still, a 10 million dollar gift from his pocket (not the company's coffers mind you - his own personal stash) is totally unbelievable. I'm certainly not complaining however it was a mad holiday.
We started from San Francisco and took a 6 star cruise to Alaska. I didn't think it was possible to have more than 5 stars but I stand corrected. Unbelievable service. It made the Japanese look like, like.... I don't know, someone really bad at service (and if you've been to Japan you'll know that they are service crazy).
San Francisco Photo Album
Canada Photo Album
Alaska Photo Album
posted by Paul at
8:29 AM
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