As you can tell by the title, this post has sat in my drafts for wayyyy.. too long, it’s now 2021, and almost 2022! 😳 I guess the old saying “time flies when you’re having fun er.. time flies when you’re dealing with a global pandemic, changing jobs, leading your family, cremating your dad, recovering from Covid + Pneumonia. Yeah, that. I think they call it life.
Final note: instead of catching up on everything all at once. I'm going to break this into two posts, this one will focus on changes to my professional career (where I work) in the last couple of years, and the other will be focused on speaking that I've done over the last couple of years. Ok cool. Let's jump in!
It seems like from time to time I have to play catch up. This time, I’ve been pretty much neglecting this blog for over a year actually longer.. sorry about that. Now let’s do some catching up.
I left Quicken Loans
Quicken Loans was a great place to work, grow and learn. They have an amazing culture over all that I will always appreciate. That being said, my family is in Texas and Quicken Loans and my team are in Detroit.
At QL I was leading a cross functional Scrum team following SAFe, building .NET Core micro-services, deploying to containers. I had a great team of people I got to work with. I learned so much at Quicken Loans that I continue to use today – likely this will be blogging fodder for years to come.
I really should have done a better job blogging while I was at QL! There is no way to distill 2 and a half years down to a single blog post or a collection of photos… but here is my closest attempt. Enjoy!
Good times. go check out the full album on Google Photos.
I joined and then left Solera
Solera is headquartered close to my home (so no more commuting to Detroit. Detroit is a cool town and all, but I prefer being home with my family). Solera is the largest software company in the automotive sector. I joined Solera as a Director of Software and during my time there I led software engineering for two very large, very different groups.
While there I got to lead in person (pre-pandemic) with several groups that were mostly located in Westlake. We also worked with some great off-shore partners, and had a few team members that were based in various parts of the country. We built a great culture, introduced some new awards and activities that really helped pull people together. (Mario Cart Racing League – on the Switch was a big hit)
Right about the time, those teams started rolling the pandemic hit, and then I moved to help grow another group. This was my first time leading people 100% remotely – even though a lot of the people on these teams were based locally, the pandemic kept us all apart. That was new.
I got to work closely with global leadership, our new CTO,
This was also my first time working in a space that was embracing and implementing the Spotify Agile Model. That is worth a completely separate post to talk about.
I’m very proud of my time there – I went through 3 CEOs and made a lot of great friends and got to work with some truly amazing people. I don’t like to toot my own horn, so take a look at the feedback from some of the people I worked with. 👍
I ultimately left because I didn’t agree with some of their new directions, but I truly wish them the best!
Fin Tech.
At the end of 2021, I joined one of the largest firms in the fintech (Financial Technology) space. It’s a little strange being at a company with so many regulations. When I say we’re big.. we’re really really big, we’re a bank even. Whenever I ask, why do we do something a certain way, often it boils down to regulations because we’re a bank. It’s bananas.
I might be feeling this way since this is the first time I’ve joined a company during a pandemic.. so I’ve never actually worked from the office or met any of the people I work with in person. (we did have an in person lunch last month, but that was the first time I’ve met anyone in person this whole year). I guess these are the times we’re living in.
Technically, I don’t think I’m supposed to use the name of my company in my bio until it gets approved or something. So for now, I’ll just say fintech, and you can check my linkedin profile 😉 This has been a very full year. I’m with a newly formed organization – made from the acquisition of a start up and we’re all working hard to launch a new product that’s going to make a big impact. Also – my team is hiring! If you’d like to chat, drop me a note!
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