Time to write about a non-poker topic! While the experiences of a software guy may not be the stuff of action novels or films, they can offer insights into the workings of a segment of the corporate world circa 2014-2022. Below is a chronological narrative, if even for myself to reflect back on the past years and lessons learned!
April 2013
Newly laid off from a plush product management role at Micro Focus - a UK-based software development firm, I mulled over my modest severance pay and contemplated the future. The Micro Focus gig had been a unique one - well paying and with frequent but not-too often travel, often to nice offshore locations like top European cities, East Asia (Singapore, China) and the like. In my role as a product manager (let's strip away all the BS titles like "Director of"...), I was designated to advance the development and marketing of an enterprise software product suite. Coming into the role in early 2010, I was handed the ideal product - one that sold quite well into an established client base, requiring minimal marketing or promotion. Over the next couple of years, as the sales numbers continued rolling in, my personal fortunes flourished. In 2012, Kevin - my newly-appointed congenial manager - met with me in his Newbury, UK office and offered me the management of another product, the original one that I had been associated with between 2006-2009 until it had been acquired by Micro Focus. It was designed to analyze legacy applications and present logical trees, stats and visuals helping companies migrating from legacy to new systems. However cool as it was, it was not a "must-have" and nobody had ever figured out how to sell it properly; consequently it languished in the <$10M annual sales purgatory that CEOs despise. Well, Kevin thought, let's get Mannes on this one, he's got the touch. I need to think about this one, was my response, since historically this has not been a winner. But from his tone, I concluded that it wasn't really a choice for me. So, after hemming and hawing for a bit, I said sure, I'll take this but it means someone else will need to manage VisiBroker (the current one, best-seller). Was I dumb? passive? overly optimistic? pick your choice.
Fast-forward to late 2012 - the "cool" lemon product whose name shall not be mentioned - still could not easily sell (although it was modestly profitable). Admittedly, I was probably not the best choice to lead the sales charge. An avowed introvert (or at least heavier on the intro- than the extro- verted scale), I was much better at working with R&D at designing and improving products, than introducing them to market - while you couldn't beat the quality of my PPTs and recorded Demos, I needed sales reps to actually push the product, and they weren't, given it was down their list of 30+ products. Moreover, I failed to properly engage the professional services consultants, who were really the "true" sales people - if they can't implement your product, it will not sell, period. Part of the challenge was being situated in the Pacific Northwest, 8-9 time zones away from my client base.
So - although the "chaps" in Newbury liked me in principle - when they saw I could not move the non-selling product, they put me on the termination shit-list and finally got the job done. By the way, if you ever work with Brits - beware that some types may be the friendliest blokes having beer with you in the pub and then stabbing you in the back next day. This isn't one of those "woe-is-me" stories - I'd been with them (and the predecessor - acquired company) for over 6 years now - and was raring for change. But I didn't really have a game plan.
May 2013 - Dec 2017
At 53, I did not have a clear vision in mind of what I wanted to do. Too young to retire, too old to start a new career? Plus, even with my wife's very decent earnings from her job, we sort of "needed" the money (tell that to someone living under a bridge). I did the typical thing - take the first month basically knocking off, then got a bit more serious. I purchased an iMac mini with the plan of learning iOS C++ programming so that I could eventually develop a math game I had patented a few years prior. I did some gig consulting online through guru.com. I attended a seminar series aimed at helping people to define and hunt after their desired careers - yielding useful resume tips alongside some totally useless "networking" ideas like cold-calling people and doing "informational interviews" with the presumption that the interviewee is "passionate" about what the target company or person does.
Then in March '14, I responded to an online ad by Tyler Technologies, calling for ERP Software Consultants to train on, and implement, Microsoft Dynamics 365. This is software used by companies for financial and human resources / payroll applications. On a whim I sent my Resume in (probably the 110th I had sent - and I was quite selective), and was called in for an interview. It ended in my being hired, with a June '14 start date.
Tyler? Most likely nobody reading this other than family members and Tyler employees have heard of that company. I admire Tyler to this day. The folks that interviewed and hired me in were top-notch - really nice and highly professional people - a rarity in our world. I entered a 6-week training course after which I became a Dynamics 365 Consultant for the public sector.
The next 2-3 years were a learning and growing experience. I became involved in two projects in Columbus OH, one as a PM / Lead and the other as a contributor. Columbus, not on the itinerary of many world travelers, has a very nice downtown with attractions like the state Capitol (where we often got lunch), the "near-north" stretch of restaurants, a swank indoor market and the oldest bar in Ohio with amazing beer selections. And, some very nice down-home folks. After that, I became involved in projects in Austin, West Hartford CT, Chicago, Kingston Ontario (of all places and in the depth of winter), Portland OR, Buffalo NY. The latter involved travel to Buffalo, a rental car ride across the border to Niagara Falls Ontario, then a daily 15-mile drive down to the Canadian side of the border to work with the border crossing agency.
One of my fondest memories of that period was a hockey game in Columbus, Montreal vs Columbus. Montreal being my home-town, I still have the video shot of their star PK Subban, hitting a 100+ mph slapshot into Columbus' net. Another is taking an evening in Austin to visit the downtown area, have dinner with my former CEO and CMO (both of whom I had once feared), and then stop by to drink whiskey at a cool Bourbon bar.
Yet, the less desirable side of the consulting gig started to rear its head. As I added skills, I also started to pick up more billable hours, which meant more time on the road. Everyone has their own experience and interpretation of the pros and cons of business travel; for me the equation did not really work out positively. Surely, I got the miles, the per-diem pay exceeding my actual meal expenses, the extra travel pay, the fleeting camaraderie with colleagues, the war stories. The price I paid was sleeping in a bed away from home (sometimes uncomfortable with noisy air conditioning), lame breakfasts (hotels seldom have healthy low-carb options), under-equipped gym rooms, and passing evenings in front of a hotel TV. I adapted to visiting a grocery upon landing at a new location, to stock up on breakfast and healthy snack foods to help me stay on target with my diet (I had by then become a keto follower).
My final project at Tyler was in Chicago, 2017-18. What a great city if you are on the right side of the tracks (especially in the summer)! The client was unique - a transportation authority, the software division led by a smart and strong-minded lady who couldn't stop herself from spouting hilarious anti-Trumpisms, much to the glee of her acolytes and myself at times. The client team was a diverse group of people who had managed to keep a 70's era HR and Payroll system alive, in a quite complex environment with unionized pay and special taxation requirements. It was also my segue into the HCM (Human Capital Management) domain, which was later to become my functional focus.
Through that period, Tyler made a decision to stop competing for Dynamics 365 implementation projects. While they would still sell their public sector software they had bolted onto Dynamics, their implementation partners complained that having to complete for projects against Tyler put them at a disadvantage. It became clear to the consulting team that we would have to either repurpose to other Tyler products, or find Dynamics work elsewhere. I decided to stay on as long as possible to support the Chicago project, albeit in a somewhat reduced employment format (hours-based).
May 2018 - Dec 2018
With the Tyler gig drying up, I went back onto the job interview path. This time, the process was quite short. I was hired into a large, privately-held local sports attire manufacturer and importer named SanMar. They were starting the process of moving their ERP to Dynamics, and needed Business Analysts to support it. They are literally in my vicinity, a 5-minute drive and 15-minute bike ride. This is going to be the perfect job, I thought. Ride into the office at 8:00 - 8:30 am, sometimes grabbing breakfast in the in-house cafeteria. Then pass the day working productively in my cubicle with my headset tuned into Spotify, and the occasional meeting. At about 5:00, head out to the gym and be home by 6:00. Fridays were work-from-home optional. No worrying about billable hours, low enough on the totem pole not to worry about corporate BS - a great way to approach my pre-retirement years.
It took me 3 weeks to realize I had made a dreadful mistake. My private cubicle was window dressing. What they really wanted was for all of the people involved in the Dynamics project, to spend their entire day in a common project room, "collaborating" with the other project members and heading off to very frequent meetings to actually get work done. My manager at first said we can opt not to work in the project room, then was forced to require us to be there most of the time. I don't know about you, but working in a room with a bunch of people is not for me. Aside from the higher chances of getting sick (pre-Covid), if I plugged into headphones it broadcasted non-interest in the project, and if I unplugged I'd have to endure endless chatter and noise, impeding me from getting work done. The principal project manager was an egomaniacal sociopath, calling weekly meetings to gauge the pulse of the group, and then make demands, one of which was that we commit to 80+ hour work weeks to meet unrealistic project deadlines (she staged it as a "choice", the alternative being a delay in the project and her sycophants lapped it up). She also made sure that the project rooms were adorned with motivating signs and slogans, while the actual chairs and desks were mostly broken leftovers of discarded office equipment from around the building.
So, back into the interview process. Most of the consulting jobs required 70+ percent travel which was a non-starter for me and so it was not going to easy to find the next thing. Meantime at SanMar, despite the cultish, borderline-crazy work environment, I had actually made some headway in my job, being assigned to a data mapping project using Azure DevOps and Excel, now in a smaller room with a sweet, laid back group of IT analysts and a convivial Austrian Project Manager who had joined SanMar the same time I did and had become a good friend. Towards the end of the year, I approached my manager and asked for a promotion - the BA job paid little and I was over-qualified for it, essentially performing the duties of a more senior person. Her manager the CIO, rejected my request, saying that if I was over-qualified I should not have taken it in the first place - a fair point, but one that ensured I would be out the door in short order.
Jan 2019-Oct 2020
In late 2018, I interviewed for Sopris, another Dynamics partner, and started there in Jan 2019. Compared to Tyler, Sopris was a different animal. While Tyler is a large, publicly traded company with a host of software products, Sopris was a family affair - approximately 30 staff, the majority of them Dynamics consultants. The owners were a handsome power couple who had founded the company many years prior and grew it "organically", meaning they actually had talent and marketing chops. At the time of my joining, the company was sold to Sonata - a large India-based Software firm, and there was some attrition as a result. But for the next 12-18 months, the company continued on with minimal intervention from the new owners, at least from the viewpoint of us minions (our "leadership" did have to deal with some crap coming from Sonata). I was happy to continue on the HR-Payroll path I carved out in my prior job, and when towards 2019 those projects dried up, moved to another Dynamics module - Projects - and became instrumental in writing specifications for a highly complex billing system for an Ohio-based energy provider.
The consultants and managers at Sopris were even nicer (if at all possible) than at Tyler. Well, aside from one douchey PMO guy who sometimes would show up at projects and make snarky remarks about how large my suitcase was (I do pack a lot of stuff) and whether I had eye-rolled when the client said something (I did not although my attention may have drifted). Travel was rare and most of the work was accomplished online, all before the Covid era.
A cool Sopris memory is a 3-day company meeting held during the second month of my employment in St Pete Beach, FL at a cool beachside hotel. The managers did a great job of combining daytime training with late afternoon and evening activities, all without "laying it on too thick" and - given the compactness of the team - were able to foster camaraderie amongst the troops. Not generally a fan of "company events", this one came off really well and made me feel like part of the company.
Nov 2020 - today
In mid-2020 and in the thick of Covid, I was approached by a recruiter with a bit of an oddball proposition - a company was looking for a Dynamics HR-Payroll client services (aka support) person who would be their specialist in that domain. It would pay a bit higher than my current gig and the job, while requiring immediate response to support cases, would also allow for more flexibility in my workday, as well as NO TRAVEL!!. Another draw was getting off of the "billable hours" treadmill consultants run on - meaning that if you bill less than a high percentage of your working hours to clients, your employers are unhappy and you don't get a bonus. I went into interviews and at the end of the process, decided to move to the new company in Nov 2020.
As an aside, the corporate software world resembles the general business environment. Companies are constantly bought and sold, sometimes rebranding in the process. Employees get shuffled around, sometimes to their advantage and mostly to their detriment. The company I had decided to join, named Campus Management, had acquired two more smaller ones and was in a rebranding stage to become "Anthology". Their client base was North American academic institutions, the vast majority of them colleges (no K-12). A small but growing part of the portfolio was Dynamics 365, to which they also had bolted addon features required by the ed-tech market.
I landed into the afore-mentioned Client Services department, of which the Dynamics group consisted of a manager, another support analyst and myself. I went through their education and quickly started to take on support cases. As we progressed into the new year, the job became busier and more interesting, handling many client cases related to year-end reporting (like W-2). When that ended around February, the workload declined and I found myself getting through my incidents in the first 2-3 hours of a typical day. I then landed on a brilliant idea (which I actually had been considering for a while). Why not cut down my work week into 4 days - Monday to Thursday - taking a pay cut - and spend Fridays doing whatever the hell? It would also allow me to glide into retirement in an easier manner, without needing to spend a 40-hour workweek nailed to an office chair?
So I brought my proposal to the powers that be, and the answer was nope. We need a full-time analyst they said. Alright then I replied, I'll be leaving my full-time job soon, but if you want me as a part time contractor, you know my number. A bit before my planned departure, the question came back - we would like you to train a replacement and stay for a few months on contract - would that work? Sure I said, as long as we keep it to the 4 day workweek. That was accepted and turned into a 4-month extension. After a few months, the manager of the HR-Payroll professional services team, a small 5-person outfit, contacted me and asked if I'd like to join her team as a consultant. Again, I thought? But she said we'll respect your 4-day / week requirement, and travel is negligible. It seemed like there was no downside to her proposal (aside from getting back on the billable hours bandwagon), and I accepted. That started in November '21 and brings us to this day (April '22).
In the meantime, Anthology acquired another ed-tech outfit (Blackboard) and become the 800-lb. gorilla of its domain. I get a ton of emails about integration between the companies, all the cool technologies we now purvey etc. But my job is so busy and intense that these all get tossed into the "Corporate" folder.
Am I happy now? That's a complicated question.
When company bigwigs ask their employees if they're "excited" about a new acquisition or some other corporate happening, I always scoff to myself. In this day and age, most people are so past the idea of idolizing the modern corporation, and execs should realize that good employees are not the ones paying lip service to their egomaniacal endeavors. Instead, their best employees are toiling away to perform their jobs properly, squeeze the maximum out of every working hour, feed their families and prepare for retirement. They shouldn't give a fig about the latest acquisition or new sales win, unless it translates into a bonus or stock value for themselves.
But back to the question at hand, given my goal of continuing to work for the next few years without undue stress and unnecessary travel, I should be thrilled. I have the golden goose, a 4-day workweek with interesting work in a team that appreciates it. Do I look forward to the accursed alarm clock ringing at 6:57AM? Hell no, and I look forward to the day I don't have to do that. But in the meantime, I have the best work gig a person could ask for! Until the next one comes around...
