Pointer re-revision
Nov. 15th, 2005 03:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drwexMonday (yesterday) I started work at a new company. It is called Newforma, and is located in Manchester, NH. My official title is Senior Product Designer. They need someone to own design and user testing activities and have been trying to fill this position for over a year.
Work email: awexelblat@newforma.com (though wex@ also works)
Work phone: +1(603) 625-6212 x334
Fax: +1(603) 218-6145
Address: 670 North Commercial Street
Suite 10 (River Entrance)
Manchester, NH 03101
I'm employee #35 in the NH office, and they have a small 5-person group out in California.
The product is a tool suite intended to help architecture, engineering, contracting, and construction (acronym AECO) businesses manage their documents and document processes. Since even a medium-sized project can generate many gig of data and a large one quickly creates terabytes of drawings, CAD models, specifications, manifests, schedules, etc - this is a problem crying out for solution and so far no one has a good custom answer.
The product itself is about to go into second beta with a tightly controlled group of customers. Some are paying, but the company is largely venture-financed and has just closed an $8m Series B round (*) under favorable terms. There will likely be a general-availability release of the product early next year though that's somewhat dependent on how this release goes.
I took a bit of a pay cut to come here, but not too bad, given that it's a start-up. Of course there are the usual options but I don't worry too much about that. The company has the important benefits, including vacation and medical/dental.
This was, without a doubt, my easiest job search in some time. I found many jobs to apply to that had really relevant job titles and descriptions, including phrases like "information architect", "interaction design", and "human factors". I can't really claim that my piece of the software business has turned some magic corner and now everyone loves us, but in speaking with people this time I really felt I no longer needed to defend what I do or the value of my skill set. People seem to realize they need HF/usability skills in their teams and I talked with a couple of boutique usability and design contracting places that are scrambling to keep up with business.
I doubt that usability will sweep the software engineering world any time soon, but I feel that a combination of factors has made this a much easier market for someone with my skill set than, say, four years ago. This is such a remarkable and unexpected turn-around from my past experiences that I'm still not sure what to make of it.
There were challenges and hiccups in the search, of course, and I did seriously apply to some non-local places but in the end I'm still mostly local. The commute is about 5-10 minutes longer than my previous one, which is not good but maybe I'll just ask for (unabridged) audio books for holiday gifts this year. I'll probably have to do more traveling for this job than I have in past situations, but it should be good travel, putting me in contact with the customers.
I had a fair bit of trepidation in accepting this offer. For one thing, it's the first offer I got. The last two times I accepted the first offer that came my way it ended up being a mistake. But the fact is that I didn't see any other offers materializing soon. I had to cancel a number of second interviews - including a planned trip down to Rockville, MD - but none of those felt like they would generate offers within a short time
and I couldn't keep delaying Newforma.
Plus, frankly, I was getting bored and demotivated sitting around at home. I'm good for about 3-4 weeks of paid goofing off, and then I start to get antsy. I didn't feel like I wanted to wait around.
On the other hand, it's *another* start-up and my track record with them hasn't been particularly stellar, to say the least. It's entirely possible that this thing could go poof in a year or two and maybe it would have been more sensible to have waited for one of the bigger companies to grind its slower gears. I'm not going to spend much more energy worrying about might-have-beens. I've been pretty clear with Newforma about my desire to do career-oriented, rather than project-oriented, things and I feel like the founders have a reasonable long-term vision for the company. That's about all one can ask for in startup land.
(*) for those who speak startup-geek this round was at 100% of desired valuation. All the series A investors re-upped and no new investors were needed.
Work email: awexelblat@newforma.com (though wex@ also works)
Work phone: +1(603) 625-6212 x334
Fax: +1(603) 218-6145
Address: 670 North Commercial Street
Suite 10 (River Entrance)
Manchester, NH 03101
I'm employee #35 in the NH office, and they have a small 5-person group out in California.
The product is a tool suite intended to help architecture, engineering, contracting, and construction (acronym AECO) businesses manage their documents and document processes. Since even a medium-sized project can generate many gig of data and a large one quickly creates terabytes of drawings, CAD models, specifications, manifests, schedules, etc - this is a problem crying out for solution and so far no one has a good custom answer.
The product itself is about to go into second beta with a tightly controlled group of customers. Some are paying, but the company is largely venture-financed and has just closed an $8m Series B round (*) under favorable terms. There will likely be a general-availability release of the product early next year though that's somewhat dependent on how this release goes.
I took a bit of a pay cut to come here, but not too bad, given that it's a start-up. Of course there are the usual options but I don't worry too much about that. The company has the important benefits, including vacation and medical/dental.
This was, without a doubt, my easiest job search in some time. I found many jobs to apply to that had really relevant job titles and descriptions, including phrases like "information architect", "interaction design", and "human factors". I can't really claim that my piece of the software business has turned some magic corner and now everyone loves us, but in speaking with people this time I really felt I no longer needed to defend what I do or the value of my skill set. People seem to realize they need HF/usability skills in their teams and I talked with a couple of boutique usability and design contracting places that are scrambling to keep up with business.
I doubt that usability will sweep the software engineering world any time soon, but I feel that a combination of factors has made this a much easier market for someone with my skill set than, say, four years ago. This is such a remarkable and unexpected turn-around from my past experiences that I'm still not sure what to make of it.
There were challenges and hiccups in the search, of course, and I did seriously apply to some non-local places but in the end I'm still mostly local. The commute is about 5-10 minutes longer than my previous one, which is not good but maybe I'll just ask for (unabridged) audio books for holiday gifts this year. I'll probably have to do more traveling for this job than I have in past situations, but it should be good travel, putting me in contact with the customers.
I had a fair bit of trepidation in accepting this offer. For one thing, it's the first offer I got. The last two times I accepted the first offer that came my way it ended up being a mistake. But the fact is that I didn't see any other offers materializing soon. I had to cancel a number of second interviews - including a planned trip down to Rockville, MD - but none of those felt like they would generate offers within a short time
and I couldn't keep delaying Newforma.
Plus, frankly, I was getting bored and demotivated sitting around at home. I'm good for about 3-4 weeks of paid goofing off, and then I start to get antsy. I didn't feel like I wanted to wait around.
On the other hand, it's *another* start-up and my track record with them hasn't been particularly stellar, to say the least. It's entirely possible that this thing could go poof in a year or two and maybe it would have been more sensible to have waited for one of the bigger companies to grind its slower gears. I'm not going to spend much more energy worrying about might-have-beens. I've been pretty clear with Newforma about my desire to do career-oriented, rather than project-oriented, things and I feel like the founders have a reasonable long-term vision for the company. That's about all one can ask for in startup land.
(*) for those who speak startup-geek this round was at 100% of desired valuation. All the series A investors re-upped and no new investors were needed.
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no subject
Date: 2005-11-15 08:43 pm (UTC)"go YOU!"
I actually understand the need for people with your skill set- and .. just
Go you!
good luck!
no subject
Date: 2005-11-15 08:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-15 08:44 pm (UTC)-If I offer you my audio copy of Dean Koontz's The Bad Place, turn me down, flat.
-And, congrats. Glad it went smoothly.
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