Goodbye AussieWeb. Hello SSW.

29 Jun 2015

After more then 13 years, I have made the decision to move on from my Software Engineering role with Monte Huebsch and team at AussieWeb and take on a Senior Software Architect position with Adam Cogan and his team at SSW.

Goodbye AussieWeb

AussieWeb has been my home for more then a decade. When I started, AussieWeb was a small business, with only 4 permanent part-time employees; .Net was still in it’s early releases (1.0 and 1.1), and the main business was Website Development & Hosting (partnered with Lloyd Ernst’s WebCentral).

Today: AussieWeb employees 10 full time staff on generous salary & benefits packages; while the business itself has transformed from a Website Development & Hosting provider to one of the leading Google AdWords Partners in the Asia-Pacific Region. The core technology stack as I am leaving it, is .Net 4.5.1, SQL Server 2008R2 (and SQL 2014SP1), Entity Framework Code First, and ASP.NET MVC 5.

My time at AussieWeb has allowed me to do things that I would never have been able to do if I had taken the normal corporate developer route. I was able to live in different cities & countries, work remotely during a period in time where the idea of “remote” workers was still a new, untested and fraught with dangers and generally follow the path I decided was the most appropriate at the time. Ultimately I had complete flexibility as to when and where I worked; the technology stacks, platforms and devices I worked on/from. It was a dream job, with a steady paycheck. All the benefits of the “Nomadic Entrepreneur”/”Tropical MBA” lifestyle, without the responsibility of having to worry about meeting costs and payroll.

Though ultimately family life has caught up.

Hello SSW

I was introduced to SSW through the Brisbane .Net User Group, to be frank, I was impressed by the level of knowledge displayed by their Brisbane staff. SSW at this point feels like an environment where I can continue to grow my craft and expand my knowledge.

Though my official start date with SSW is July 1st 2015, I have been working with the Brisbane Team in a part time capacity since June 1st 2015. This has allowed me to ease myself into SSW’s work-flow and methodologies, though not without some level of pain. It’s not always easy to move from having complete freedom to following the rules

To date: I have pushed changes to the SSW Website, SugarLearning and have started working with Brisbane Catholic Education on one of their internal Information Systems.

So a final Goodbye to my coworkers of 13+ years and AussieWeb, and hello to all of the team at SSW.