New Job

So, I'd been doing some freelance work for different companies (mainly little web based projects in php) but 2 weeks ago or so they started to thin out, so I thought I'd check out a more solid job. (Actually a bigger issue about it was that I would have to spend a certain amount of time looking for opportunities, which is time that I wouldn't get paid for...) So on a Monday I sent out my resume to a bunch of places, and by Wednesday I'd landed a solid web developer job at a local company called Cleantelligent.

Cleantelligent started out as an in-house web tracking system for a janitorial/facilities management company called Bear Com. They needed a system to track customer work-orders/emergencies/outages and there wasn't a commercial product that really fit their industry. After they had done a significant amount of development, they realized that they could profit more by selling the system as a service to other companies than by the simple competitive advantage, so they split off the software division into it's own company.

Being a custom system, its direction is heavily based on feature requests from clients. This is one of the major benefits of the program, if a company really needs a certain functionality, they can pay us to put it in there. So that's basically what I do, in short, the bidding of the highest bidder.

Since starting I've mainly done little bug-fixes and minor customizations, but now that I'm getting the hang of how the program works, I'll move on to some bigger projects. Besides the web side of things, there is also a version of the program for Tablet PCs and blackberry/PocketPC devices, mainly for on-site inspections.

The system is mainly Java based with an increasing amount of Flex, and the desktop apps in C#. In the near future we're putting in some advanced scheduling/calendaring features, multi-language messaging, and a scaled down version of the web site for things like the iPhone.

It's been really nice there so far, its pretty laid back, with all the snacks a guy could want and benefits including monthly massage and haircut (though luckily not at the same time) I'm looking forward to continuing on there for a little while.