Tuesday, July 29, 2008

New Directions


Yesterday I submitted my resignation as COO to the Divmod officers, and today I forwarded it to the rest of the team. Divmod is headed in a new and wonderful direction, and I'm happy to have contributed to raising public awareness about our team, community, and the tech we use, thus increasing its value in the market. I am taking this opportunity to rest and then pursue interests of my own.

Even more than that contribution, I'm delighted to have worked with these guys for the past year. I've long been a supporter and fan of Divmod (since shortly after its inception, in fact). I was a community contributor before I was an employee and I will remain so for the foreseeable future. But I gotta say, that team in incomparable. The combination of technical excellence, creativity, pragmatic problem solving, quality engineering, humor and insight has made my time there a rich experience. They have made my time at Divmod one for the personal record books.

I'm ready for a break, though; the past year has been a long, hard pull...

I was originally courted by them for management, due to my community work. I deferred, and worked as a coder instead. This ended up being invaluable, as far as the insight it provided. After some early successes with a product release, I was offered the position of CEO, but deferred there too, with the mutual agreement that COO might be a better match for my skills. After a couple months as COO, I was put in charge of managing the direction of the company and raising funds, so I ended up being acting CEO anyway. I poured my heart and soul into Divmod, and it looks like that has payed off: the team is happy and they're headed for some good success. What's more, that leaves me in the enviable position of finally being able to surrender a massive workload :-)

For the next week or two, I'll be camping in the Rocky Mountains catching up on some rest and enjoying nature at her best :-) I've also got some fun sci-fi reading to catch up on (Stross and MacLeod).

When I get back, I'll be exploring 6-12 month consulting contracts... so if anyone hears anything interesting, do let me know!


3 comments:

Travis B. Hartwell said...

Good luck in your future endeavors Duncan! I'm sure the Divmod guys will miss having you!

Lakin Wecker said...

Best of luck Duncan. I'm sure the Divmod guys are sad to see you go.

What kind of contracting gigs are you looking for?

Duncan McGreggor said...

Thanks Travis and Lakin :-)

Lakin, it's tough to say. It could be anything from API design to Twisted code cleanup or from management process troubleshooting to team building and communications. I'm completely open to the possibilities :-) I can't relocate, but I can definitely travel.