Experiences at Client - Padcom

Turn-around & transition from ad-hoc development to product operations at scale securing ~2x revenue gain, and ~ 4x engineering throughput for multi-protocol mobile VPN in HW and SW.

Managed SW engineering, HW engineering, manufacturing, architecture & tech writers through full product development life-cycle and introduction of multiple product egineering practices....

This gig crystalized a lot of my experience with change in organizations, which became the outline for the book I'm writing.

"Becoming a Technical Leader" - Weinberg.
"The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey" - part of the series.
"Execution" - Bossidy.
I was re-reading "Knowledge for Action" by Chris Argyris, and "Julius Caesar". Somebody in engineering was reading "C++ for Dummies", but I won't say who.

As Shiro-san says about his Sushi: "All are the best. Just different." While I was there, they were all finding out how good they really could be.

Investors in common with previous client. CEO / boss at the last place was former CEO / Chariman at Padcom. That led to a couple of assessments, which led to "Can you do this for a while, since I don't want to wait." from the CEO.

Down-tempo electronica. Being rural Pennsylvania, the folks there thought this kind of odd stuff.

I wish more of their operations had continued after the merger with NetMotion. Right decision for the business and a way better outcome than the trajectory in '04. Any win is a win on the record books, but a blow-out is more fun.

Corner office with a door. Two things made people look twice:
- Turned the desk to face the wall as I always do. Gave us effectively another meeting room.
- We covered the outside of my door in white board sheeting, since the one inside the office didn't have enough space.

The engineering team would go out for "Stochastic Wendys Wednesdays." Funny because that particular Wendys was literally stochastic. What you got had little to do with what you ordered.
"Wiki lunches" on Fridays were also fun.

Business-casual. Don & I are the only ones I ever saw walking around in socks.