I'm moving on
After about two years working for a fabulous company in RI, I am moving on. I have accepted a Program Manager position at Microsoft and am relocating to the Seattle area with my wife Ashley and Bumper, the hunter cat.
These past few years have seen a leap for GTECH, (the company I worked for in RI) and the lottery and gaming industry in terms of the use of technology that improves the quality of applications by orders of magnitude. I am happy to have been a part of that mini-revolution. We built both back-office and online wagering applications for some of the big name lotteries of the world. The challenges here have been unlike others I have faced in my career but I leave with a good feeling. The products I have worked on are much much better now than when I started on them. So naturally, our customers would be very happy.
Given this transition, I have decided to voluntarily resign from the Java Community Process (JCP) and suspend my participation from the JSR 260 (Javadoc Technology Update) Expert Group. I have some regret about leaving that wonderful team of experts but given the situation, it is the only right way forward and it serves the interests of all concerned.
I will not be writing a whole lot of Java code (not at work at least) in the next few years. My association with this language, the platform and its community will be diminished. But not my admiration.
I am really thrilled about the opportunity of working in the Avalon team within the Windows group at Microsoft. I met some of the smartest people on the planet during the course of my interviews with them; people whose names are tied to important software innovations of the past decade. That alone is a big motivation for most. But I have others too. I've always had a selfish desire of creating products that are used by millions of people around the world, that run on every desktop, even my mom's and my wife's. Working at Microsoft will make that happen. Having worked with every competing technology to Microsoft's but its own, for all my career, I know I bring ideas on building software that may be new to many at Microsoft. But I am flattered that Microsoft is willing to listen and absorb. To me, that is the sign of a great company. In my short career, I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.
All said, I am sure going to miss Dunkin Donuts. But it will be a welcome break from Rhode Island roads [for the uninitiated, these are the patches of flat surface between the potholes]. The people in New England have been truly wonderful to us, except when they are in their cars. That is when they lose all sense of logic and reason. Let's face it, some of the worst drivers in the world live in New England. Those traffic lights are not mere suggestions. They mean something! Believe me, I know. I'm from India.
These past few years have seen a leap for GTECH, (the company I worked for in RI) and the lottery and gaming industry in terms of the use of technology that improves the quality of applications by orders of magnitude. I am happy to have been a part of that mini-revolution. We built both back-office and online wagering applications for some of the big name lotteries of the world. The challenges here have been unlike others I have faced in my career but I leave with a good feeling. The products I have worked on are much much better now than when I started on them. So naturally, our customers would be very happy.
Given this transition, I have decided to voluntarily resign from the Java Community Process (JCP) and suspend my participation from the JSR 260 (Javadoc Technology Update) Expert Group. I have some regret about leaving that wonderful team of experts but given the situation, it is the only right way forward and it serves the interests of all concerned.
I will not be writing a whole lot of Java code (not at work at least) in the next few years. My association with this language, the platform and its community will be diminished. But not my admiration.
I am really thrilled about the opportunity of working in the Avalon team within the Windows group at Microsoft. I met some of the smartest people on the planet during the course of my interviews with them; people whose names are tied to important software innovations of the past decade. That alone is a big motivation for most. But I have others too. I've always had a selfish desire of creating products that are used by millions of people around the world, that run on every desktop, even my mom's and my wife's. Working at Microsoft will make that happen. Having worked with every competing technology to Microsoft's but its own, for all my career, I know I bring ideas on building software that may be new to many at Microsoft. But I am flattered that Microsoft is willing to listen and absorb. To me, that is the sign of a great company. In my short career, I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.
All said, I am sure going to miss Dunkin Donuts. But it will be a welcome break from Rhode Island roads [for the uninitiated, these are the patches of flat surface between the potholes]. The people in New England have been truly wonderful to us, except when they are in their cars. That is when they lose all sense of logic and reason. Let's face it, some of the worst drivers in the world live in New England. Those traffic lights are not mere suggestions. They mean something! Believe me, I know. I'm from India.
3 Comments:
Congratulations Ashish!
So you're going to explore the dark side now? :)
By
madfinn, at February 25, 2005 at 10:46 AM
The irony is that it is looking more and more like all those smart people you met with at MS are being setup for failure due to the ego driven arrogance of their chief software architect. Longhorn and Avalon will have to dominate in order to survive. I don't see that happening. You are boarding a sinking ship and will relatively soon find yourself still on the outside, looking in.
By
Anonymous, at February 25, 2005 at 12:11 PM
By all accounts, jobs at MS are never boring. Good luck!
By
alang, at February 27, 2005 at 2:14 PM
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