Quickly GIR ride the pig
I've now been up for 51 straight hours. It's 1:00AM and despite me being a morning person I'm somehow barely tired. This has me both worried and excited.
The first 38 of those 51 hours were spent coding and getting ready for the hard code freeze of the project I've been working on for 9 months now at VMware. We are finally getting ready to ship a Friends and Family preview release (or F&F as we affectionately call it internally) of the Intel Mac version of our virtualization platform.
I'm technically still an intern but I've worked for 4 of the 9 months on this project as a contractor while at school, I've conducted interviews and played a role in growing the core team working on the project, and have had the chance to tackle implementing an application framework, on which Cocoa apps can be built, that abstracts many of the rich features of VMware's virtualization platform. Not bad for some 22 year old guy still working away at a bachelor's degree.
OK so I suppose I'm boasting a little but in all honesty I probably don't boast enough some times. Sure, the application framework is built on the shoulders of giants; many of the rich featured and well engineered libraries available as part of the VMware platform and inspired by design patterns in Cocoa and software engineering tactics I've picked up in class and through self interest.
VMware's been an awesome place for me to really grow in all sorts of directions with just enough of a safety net to make me feel comfortable (many probably wouldn't think there is a safety net at all).
The engineers are first class and all amazingly bright yet not socially challenged (and I don't mean that as an insult). I've been able to make challenging steps in spotting new talent with positive feedback. Last winter I pointed out to my manager that there was someone in the company that wold make a great addition to the team; Ben joined us shortly after and has been an invaluable asset to the project and to my development as a L33t hax0r. Later this summer I happened to be around to an interview of a prospective candidate and although the comments were positive all around it was nice to see that others with much more experience shared my opinion; Vinay has completely blown me away in his first week of work and could definitely have sold himself even more during his interview.
I've also had the unique chance to quench my dual personalities and play the role of both designer and engineer. There are very few companies where this is even possible. At some time during the day I can be sketching on a pad of paper, arguing the interaction design and cognitive model of a potential user and a few hours later I can be looking at tuning OpenGL code (though with a bitter sweet sentiment I must say that Ben has been hacking away at that part of the code lately). You get the point though.
This product is going to absolutely rock! And, knock on wood, it will be the first product I've ever worked on that will actually ship.
So as Régis would say: "This pig must fly!"
Not that our software is bloated or anything like that :)
The first 38 of those 51 hours were spent coding and getting ready for the hard code freeze of the project I've been working on for 9 months now at VMware. We are finally getting ready to ship a Friends and Family preview release (or F&F as we affectionately call it internally) of the Intel Mac version of our virtualization platform.
I'm technically still an intern but I've worked for 4 of the 9 months on this project as a contractor while at school, I've conducted interviews and played a role in growing the core team working on the project, and have had the chance to tackle implementing an application framework, on which Cocoa apps can be built, that abstracts many of the rich features of VMware's virtualization platform. Not bad for some 22 year old guy still working away at a bachelor's degree.
OK so I suppose I'm boasting a little but in all honesty I probably don't boast enough some times. Sure, the application framework is built on the shoulders of giants; many of the rich featured and well engineered libraries available as part of the VMware platform and inspired by design patterns in Cocoa and software engineering tactics I've picked up in class and through self interest.
VMware's been an awesome place for me to really grow in all sorts of directions with just enough of a safety net to make me feel comfortable (many probably wouldn't think there is a safety net at all).
The engineers are first class and all amazingly bright yet not socially challenged (and I don't mean that as an insult). I've been able to make challenging steps in spotting new talent with positive feedback. Last winter I pointed out to my manager that there was someone in the company that wold make a great addition to the team; Ben joined us shortly after and has been an invaluable asset to the project and to my development as a L33t hax0r. Later this summer I happened to be around to an interview of a prospective candidate and although the comments were positive all around it was nice to see that others with much more experience shared my opinion; Vinay has completely blown me away in his first week of work and could definitely have sold himself even more during his interview.
I've also had the unique chance to quench my dual personalities and play the role of both designer and engineer. There are very few companies where this is even possible. At some time during the day I can be sketching on a pad of paper, arguing the interaction design and cognitive model of a potential user and a few hours later I can be looking at tuning OpenGL code (though with a bitter sweet sentiment I must say that Ben has been hacking away at that part of the code lately). You get the point though.
This product is going to absolutely rock! And, knock on wood, it will be the first product I've ever worked on that will actually ship.
So as Régis would say: "This pig must fly!"
Not that our software is bloated or anything like that :)
posted by shawn | 12:52 AM
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