The resume I snail-mailed into GeoLearning over eleven years ago was replica British WWII propaganda poster. I didn’t have a lot of “official” experience at the time so I thought I would make up for it in style. It worked, The CEO called me the day he got it, we went to lunch, then over to CompUSA and picked out a new G4 Macintosh. I pushed my first product live a few days later. That was Geo; fast paced and personal.

Eleven years is a lifetime in the tech world to be somewhere. I often tell people that in reality Geo was at least three different companies over my tenure. There was the early cowboy hacker startup phase; the professional services “we’ll customize anything for anyone” middle phase; and finally the SASS app agile/TDD rock star halcyon days that ended with our eventual acquisition. It really was the kind of place where it was what you made of it. You could learn a lot, work on interesting projects, improve the product on your own initiative, and interact with some of the best peers in town. That’s not to say it was all wine and roses but overall people with the right attitude and a little patience could go quite far.

The key was, the company was never satisfied with itself. It was constantly experimenting and changing and had great courage to make leaps other companies would never have considered. Sometimes we failed epically, but failure was OK as long as you learned. In the end, that’s one of the best things you can find in a company.

I really owe my career to the people I worked with at Geo. I don’t know where my career would have taken me elsewhere but I’m sure it would not have been as good. So a big thanks to Frank and the executive team for creating a company environment where IT was allowed to be IT; and a huge thank you to all of my fellow developers, you guys are truly rock stars.

As to why I am leaving. Let’s just say that the new company is not GeoLearning.