My Resume

  • My Resume (MS Word) My Resume (PDF)


Affiliations

  • Microsoft Most Valuable Professional
  • INETA Community Champion
  • Leader, NJDOTNET: Central New Jersey .NET User Group

Saturday, July 25, 2009

On to the Next Set of Challenges!

You won’t see many of my blog entries get too personal, largely due to the fact that I am a relatively private person to start with, but also because this is supposed to be a technical blog.  That said, I wanted to break stride for one post and speak to the fact that I am leaving Infragistics and have now moved on to new challenges by deciding to start consulting.

It has been a great 3.5 years at Infragistics for me and I can not speak highly enough of my time there.  Never before have I worked in an environment so rich with knowledge, intensity, and passion.  It is an environment of productivity; it’s where teams of great minds and talented professionals join forces to produce amazing results, wasting no time in shipping amazing stuff.  It’s also fast-paced: a few of us had at one point discussed the concept of “Infragistics Time” joking that one or two days at IG would be the equivalent of up to a week anywhere else… and I’m not just talking deliverables.  To put it another way, I joined Infragistics as a Senior Web Developer, but after only one year in, I’d learned more and gained more experience than the entire rest of my career combined.

I didn’t do all this learning in a silo.  Reporting to the guy I would end up calling my mentor - Ambrose Little - was a crucial aspect of my development.  Until you’ve actually met him (and if you haven’t had the pleasure, the least you can do is follow him on Twitter!), it’s hard to describe just how awesome this guy is.  Crazy smart, level-headed, patient, and open-minded are just a few words that come to mind.  He guided both me and our group to continuously increasing levels of success… and he was really only doing it “part-time”, having another whole set of responsibilities above and beyond managing me and the website(s)!  It was also through this team that Ambrose led that I was able to foster deep personal and professional relationships with Todd Snyder and Ed Blankenship – two guys that I guarantee will continue to be two of my most valuable friends and colleagues for the rest of my professional (and personal!) life.

As an active supporter of the .NET community, Infragistics also introduced me to the amazing rewards of community involvement.  In a matter of months I had gone from never having attended a local user group meeting to becoming a presenter and eventually assuming leadership of or local group, NJDOTNET and later earning Microsoft’s MVP award!  This was all great fun, but I only recently realized just how deeply this involvement had affected me when my recent job search had me writing out my professional priorities and “community involvement” emerged as #1!  And, I owe all of this to Infragistics’ support, as well as trying to follow in the footsteps of both Ambrose and Jason Beres… which is not an easy thing to do!

I didn’t mean for this post to be a biography of my tenure at Infragistics, and as such I am focusing on those with whom I worked the longest and who had the deepest impact on my life. Unfortunately, that means leaving out the myriad other great folks that I was lucky enough to meet and work with.  So, I’m sorry that I am leaving so many of you out, but you know who you are and – even if I wasn’t able to mention you specifically – thank you for making my time at Infragistics a great one!  Farewell everyone – I’m sure I’ll see you all again sooner or later!

Shameless Plug:

So…  as you may have noticed, I opened up this post by mentioning that I decided to start consulting.  That means that if you’re looking for some help to knock out that next awesome project of yours, please feel free to contact me! 

If you’re interested, here’s a link to my resume in Word 2007 format.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wish you all the best, Jess.

See you on Thursday.

Mahesh

Lance Spence said...

Congrats on your career decision and move. You are a fantastic mentor and developer. I wish you the best!

--Lance