Why I Love Working for Tellago
Last November I made the decision to join Tellago full-time. I was recruited by my friend Don Demsak for about 4-5 months before joining. It meant doing a lot of travel and essentially relocating to a South Florida the majority of time, a place I had only spent about 4 days visiting a decade prior.
As for the travel, I was in a point of my life where I really wanted to get back in the air again. I traveled a little prior to starting Extreme Web Works in the summer of 2000. I enjoy the lifestyle. I realize it is not for everyone, but for me it is a natural place. I like to explore the world. While I am not travelling the world, yet, I do a lot of commuting each week.
If you know much about my story over the past 3-4 years you know it is contains a series tragic events, including some extremely dishonest clients. I am not going to mention them here, I have done that enough amongst my close friends. In fact I think Ajilon was the only really good experience I had in that time frame and they were just fantastic. So I had a natural distrust of joining another consulting company. While everything is not absolutely perfect, it never is anywhere and I do not expect it to be perfect. There are so many things that outweigh the few negatives, which to be honest are dealt with pretty quickly if you just mention a problem.
Quality of Peers
My friend and MVP from New Jersey, Don Demsak recruited me to Tellago. My role is the UX/Web Guy. I am actually an architect by title. Don is our CTO which means he ordered my laptop LOL. But working with folks like Don is so valuable. He is sharp and not limited to just .NET/WCF knowledge. I also get to work with Jesus Rodriguez (the founder), Pablo Cibraro, Gustavo Machado and a few others just on my project. All are super skilled and super talented.
We push each other because we all have a natural drive to be the best we can be. The conversations we have makes it feel like a Code Camp or MIX every week. Several of my Tellago peers are MVPs or should be MVPs types. Many are community leaders, either here in the US or in Argentina. The core competency we own is a deep understanding of enterprise quality SOA architecture and implementation. Which is not the perfect fit for my background, but it has forced me to learn and relearn many things related to the enterprise environment. It has also given me a fertile environment to learn how to build a modern AJAX/ Service oriented application.
Encouragement to Extend Yourself
Sometime this month we will formally launch Tellago Studios, a separate company where we will promote our own products created in house. The first product is SOAware, which I will explain in a later post.
We also have our own CodePlex area, called Tellago DevLabs where we create open source projects that can range all over the place really. We already have a few projects available and I know a few more will be posted in the coming months. One of the latest projects is BizTalk Data Services, a RESTful OData API to interact with BizTalk.
The goal of Tellago Studios and Tellago DevLabs is to encourage us to explore and develop solutions to either share with the masses and even make extra income while getting famous. Ok, so fame may be limited, but the fact Tellago is wise enough to realize developers of this caliber are not satisfied with turning their minds off at 5PM (which I rarely leave before 6:30) or limiting their curiosities to just the project at hand. They foster an environment of exploring and sharing with each other and the community at large.
Encouraging a Real Life
Tellago does realize you do need to relax from time to time and we all have families. So they do as much as they can to encourage us to spend time doing normal things too. Jesus wants all of us to use our vacation time each year for example. Plus traveling so much gives you a lot of free travel.
We also have company dinners from time to time where we can just hang out and get to know each other. Some have even joined together to participate in a charity marathon, etc. Although I can't get Don or Jesus to join me for cheap cheeseburger night at MacDonald's, maybe one day.
Conclusion
I am thankful to be part of Tellago. As I survey the direction technology is going with cloud computing, HTML 5, mobile, BI and many other areas I see Tellago as a company positioned to be a leader going forward. Having the SOA/BI/Enterprise knowledge we posses should be vital to success in the next phase of the web. Can I call it web 3.0 or is that too cliché?
We are always on the lookout for great talent and seem to always have the need for someone new to join the team. If you are interested contact me, Don or Jesus.
I have wanted to post something about my Tellago experience for a while now. To be honest I was just so busy I did not have the time to invest in this post till now. I also wanted to give it some time till I felt like I could express my experience adequately.