Collective Technologies
In September 1998 I accepted a systems administration position
with Collective Technologies,
a Pencom company. Collective
Technologies is the recognized leader in systems management services
for highly complex distributed computer environments. Founded in
1994, they employed over 400 consultants and had offices in all
major technology centers throughout the United States. I worked
there through October 2001, when I got hit by the fourth round of
layoffs.
Clients
My initial primary duties were as a consultant, basically shipped
out to a client site in order to help them accomplish some project
or task. The clients I worked with include:
 |
Motorola—Senior
Systems Administrator, Worldwide System Development Division,
October 1998-June 2000 |
 |
Genentech—ClearCase
Administrator and Release Engineer, Medical Affairs,
July-September 2000 |
 |
Well Care HMO—HIPAA
Compliance Audit, July 2001 |
|
|
An Unnamed Options
Firm—Solaris patching and JetDirect installation,
October 2001 |
Dates not listed are when I worked exclusively on internal
projects and did not bill any time to clients.
Internal
In addition to various client work, and as of January 2001 when
I officially transferred into the Corporate arena, I did a lot of
work inside the company:
- Technical member—As a technical member of the company,
I answered questions posed on several internal technical mailing
lists to help other members around the country.
- Site Lead—In July of 1999 I was appointed a Site Lead
for my client site (Motorola Schaumburg).
In addition to my normal client duties I was responsible for
introducing new members to the team, coordinating all CT business
efforts at the site, making sure that status reports and time
sheets were taken care of promptly, making sure that everything
CT-related at the client site could flow smoothly, and even
working on reviews and evaluations of the members on-site.
- Team Lead—In March of 2000 I was promoted to a full
Team Lead position. This is an official management position,
so in addition to all the Site Lead responsibilities I also
became responsible for member development plans and performance
appraisals, helping develop new business, communicating between
senior management and the team, encouraging members to participate
in internal processes and procedures, and promoting the Collective
Technologies culture.
- Central Area Web Site—I
maintained the FAQ for
the area, as well as the various district-specific web
pages.
- Health & Human Services—Based on my work in July
2001 at Well Care HMO, I became
part of the internal development team for CT's Health &
Human Services product line offering. This began with
HIPAA-related work and my role included service development,
business forecasting, deliverable development, training members
to deliver the service, and being the webmaster for the internal
web site.
- Managed Infrastructure Provider (MIP)—I worked as a
webmaster and documentarian for the Managed Infrastructure
Provider (MIP) initiative, a new service offering that Collective
launched in 2001. In addition to redesigning the web site to
be understandable to everyone in the company, I also facilitated
communications within the development team and between the team
and the rest of the company. I also assisted in defining and
documenting policies, procedures, and processes for the Level
2 and Level 3 support teams.
- Methodologies & Procedures Organization—I worked
for several months part-time and in January 2001 transferred
to work full-time with our Methodologies & Procedures
Organization (MPO), primarily on developing and designing the
company-wide documentation and knowledge
management system, as well as writing the corporate style guides for all
technical and marketing documentation, both online and hard
copy. I also worked on getting our Practices — niche-specific
project-based audits and implementations — up and running,
and on getting several methodologies written and
completed.
- Outreach—I was originally a member and later the
chair of the Outreach group, specializing in corporate-level
conference attendance (such as what conferences and trade shows
made business sense for the company at a national level to have
what sort of presence, from a booth (marketing, recruiting) to
classes and sessions (professional/technical development)).
My duties for Outreach included conference coordination (for
the 1999 USENIX, 1999 LISA, 2000 USENIX, 2000 LISA, 2001 USENIX, and 2001 LISA conferences) before,
during, and after the conferences and being the webmaster for
the internal web site.
- PubGroup—I was also a member of and webmaster for
PubGroup, which helps prospective authors get books and magazine
articles written and published, including editorial services,
document reviews, and coordination with various magazine and
book publishers. I performed the intranet site redesign and
upgrade in July and August, 2000, and again in September
2001.
- Strategic Development—I worked with various
members of the Strategic Development and Channel Sales group
to help develop packaged services for some of our partners,
including Compaq, EMC, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Legato, and System 5
Technologies.
- Technical Interviews—I was on the Techout Team, part
of the group that performs technical reviews or screenings on
prospective technical candidates (both on the telephone and in
person at hiring events). Furthermore, I participated in the
major rewrite of the Techout Team Documentation (August-October
1999).
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