Joining HP

HP sign

These past two years have been filled with great personal growth. From fumbling through learning how to be a father to our now 2-year old son, to working alongside some of the most talented and dedicated people I've ever known at Fellowship Technologies, I count myself fortunate and blessed.

Choosing to move on to another opportunity was not a decision I weighed lightly. It was a bittersweet send-off lunch this past December 22nd, saying goodbye to friends and coworkers. That said, I am also excited for the new challenges that await. I will be a UX Developer at HP — starting Tuesday, January 4th.

It all came about unexpectedly, with a hypothetical "Want to work for HP?" question posed to me by fellow designer / developer Wynn Netherland, whom I know from being a guest on his podcast and through local Ruby meet-ups. Initially, I was poised to give the typical recruiter response: "Happy where I'm at, thanks" — but I figured I ought to at least hear him out, lest I snub a friend.

The more he told me, the more interesting it sounded: Doing heavy JavaScript work as a front-end developer on a Rails team, with occasional travel and in-office meetings, but for the most part a work-from-home gig. Technology and remote work environment aside, the premise sounded pretty darn cool, too.

Basically, the customers of the apps we'll be building are "ourselves" so to speak, creating tools for other developers to manage their usage of HP's forthcoming cloud computing service. From what I gather, this intrapreneurial venture is being incubated as part of HP Labs, to eventually become a full product offering.

Ultimately, to borrow a phrase from The Godfather — I was presented with an offer that I couldn't refuse. I will probably post about the job from time to time as I get more accustomed to it, but I figured I ought to blog about it here to make it "official" since several people have been asking me about my updated LinkedIn profile, and why friends were saying goodbye to me on Twitter.