A year with the behemoth

A year ago today, they herded us on to a bus (just one bus, the conspiracy theorists noted) to announce to us to our deep and not-entirely-hidden surprise (the conspiracy theorists correctly named the event, other party, and had the right order of magnitude on the dollar amount) that our little startup was getting bought by IBM. It feels like it's gone pretty well to me; our group has by and large been kept together, there seems to be internal interest in the product, and our processes haven't become bureaucratic beyond the point of recognition. The move across Cambridge was even pretty reasonably handled, aside from the Powers That Be taking a really long time to decide if, and where, we'd get moved.

The work has pretty much been the same, which is good. It feels like there's been more customer-related email and bugfixes (but also more customers) and more weird bugs (for me, largely related to the hardware project I was on well before we got bought). So I'm still doing XML-flavored bit-banging and compiler work...plus, one of the person information items in the [authors] property of the XML Schema specification is a floor away.

Using Lotus Notes isn't that bad either. (Since it came up in the acquisition meeting.)

ObPlug: we're hiring. I think. Rumor is that we're starting a new support group in the not-too-distant future, and that engineering is still looking for people, but I can never find the reqs when I'm looking. Ping me if you're interested.