Hello all! Sorry for the lack of updates, but let’s just say 2011 has started off in full gear and I’ve honestly been too busy to post. This week however I’ll take the time to write a quick update about my new job at Quiksilver. If you don’t wanna continue reading, I’ll give you the story spoiler:
I Love It.
Ask a tech guy anything they find interesting and usually they will tell you about something they do not know yet, but want to learn. That’s the great nature of the industry, everyone is striving to do more, learn more, and achieve more. The industry is rapidly evolving and no longer is doing the “newest” thing just for fun and seeing whats new, it’s now mandatory.
Throughout most of last year, I had these thoughts/dreams about the “enterprise”. What is the enterprise? How do web applications and web sites function when there are LOTS of users and visitors? What’s the server architecture like? What’s the coding process like? Many, many more… I was currently building websites, but none that were seen by more than a few thousand visitors per month. I wanted to know about a BIG site.
When I would throw out these questions, I would throw them out in my head as “wishful thinking”. At the time I was at my former job doing small scale websites and I knew I would never get the opportunity to learn a major system/setup. I’m only getting older, if I’m gonna learn something new and get some experience, gotta start now.
So here I am today, 2 1/4 months into the new job and everything I’ve wanted/dreamed about doing, I am doing!
- Working with git in a live, enterprise environment
- Setting up code in organized repositories that will be viewed by other developers in other countries
- Understanding and setting up Amazon EC2
- Learning and working with the Amazon S3 PHP API
- New PHP 5.2/5.3 features such as APC and PECL (specifically upload progress)
- Learned a new CMS called eZ Publish
- Worked on sites in an Amazon Clustered Environment
- Facebook Pages/App Development (Newest Version)
Just about 9 weeks in and I’ve done a LOT, and there’s plenty more where that came from. I like doing work that’s not only interesting, but that is difficult. As our company CIO Michael Tasooji pointed out today, there’s something about finishing a piece of code that brings out so much satisfaction for a coder. Personally doing these new things, struggling with them, and later accomplishing any issues with them for an overall finished product, is really truly satisfying.
So to end, I’m REALLY happy with where I’m at now. And all I’ve said is from the “work” perspective. I haven’t even gotten into the “lifestyle” perspective, which is just as good. I’ll get into that in another post.
Party on.